How to...

When Molly was very small I took her to a puppy class where a smart lady of a certain age was complaining vociferously that her cocker spaniel wouldn't "do his business” on walks, only in the garden, meaning she had to dry his wet feet twice. As the adoring owner of two dogs and a cat, if that's the worst mess she has to put up with, she's lucky!

Cats are mercifully fragrance-free, but inclined to bring in between 1 and 3 rodent victims a day, plus most of the Welland Valley on their paws. Surely I can't be the only cat owner who has to shake the bottom sheet out of the window mid-week to get rid of the crunchy bits?

Talking of the cat - who is a loving brother/ grovelling little git - he regularly brings Molly a freshly-killed mouse to suck. Unfortunately, we often don't realise immediately, then Molly hides it down the sofa cushions for later. It is upsetting to be searching for the TV remote and make contact with something squashy, damp and furry.

Face licking is another delight. One of my friends - yes, I mean you, Mrs P - stoutly maintains that dogs have “healing mouths” when Molly decides to provide an unsolicited face-wash. (To be fair, she hasn't seen her eat as much sheep poo as I have.) I also spend most of my toddler niece’s visits shouting “Molly. Will you stop licking that baby!” and brandishing a damp flannel.

Perhaps most disgustingly to non-pet-people, Molly is a closet alcoholic, and furtively dips her tongue in my wine glass given half a chance. I’m ashamed to say that I tend to think “Ah well, alcohol's antiseptic" and sip on unperturbed.

I consider myself winning, though, because none of my pets have pulled the same trick that Mr Jeebs, my parents’ much-loved CKC spaniel, pulled on Dad one night.

Suffice it to say that he never puts his shoes on nowadays without shaking them out first.










Molly considers herself an essential pre-wash stage for plates.


Footnote:
In case anyone thinks I'm exaggerating, yesterday we had the following conversation about our second dog:

Oh god! Bessie's face is covered in brown stuff - is it poo or just earth?

I don't know. Sniff her.

How to... Detect bulls***

Tip: Bad Science by Ben Goldacre is the most fantastic book to keep in the bathroom. I’ve been dipping in and out of it for a few weeks and it’s really made me conscious of just how much pseudo-science is peddled to try to sell stuff.

My own bugbear is beauty or cleaning products purporting to be “chemical free”. Since EVERYTHING IN THE UNIVERSE is made up of chemicals, this is a bold statement indeed. Water is a chemical. Oxygen is a chemical. Come on, people - you might not have listened in your science lessons at school, but there was probably a periodic table on the wall, no?

On QVC yesterday a £60 face cream was offered that promised to “re-oxygenate the skin”. Hmm. Your skin doesn’t have gills. There is only one place in your body that can absorb oxygen: your lungs. Skin just can’t. If you don’t believe me, take off all your clothes, stand in the garden, hold your breath and see how long it takes you to pass out and crack your head on the bird bath.

Dodgy claims and nutrition go hand in hand. To read the papers at the moment you’d think sugar was crack cocaine, but when did you last see a fat monkey, eh? The mumbo-jumbo is taken to the highest degree where juicing and – pass the bucket – “detox” are concerned. I’ve just read in a free magazine that a certain juice combination “gives your kidneys and liver a welcome rinse”. The mind boggles! The only way to rinse your liver and kidneys would be with the help of a qualified General Surgeon, in which case you probably have problems beyond the remit of fruit juice.

Spend your money on whatever you like, but do yourself a favour and pause just for a second to consider who is making the claim and why. It’s very probable that their marketing skills outweigh their scientific ones. After all, humanity has successfully survived the last 200,000 years despite blenders not being invented!

The picture below shows the only detox system your body will ever need - your liver and kidneys. Ingenious, huh?

How to... Know your class

The British are obsessed with class, and anyone who says not is deluding themselves. Trouble is, everyone now claims to be middle class, from champagne-swilling Range Rover drivers (hopefully not at the same time) to people who consider a KFC Family Bucket “dinner”. So where do you fit into this all-encompassing swathe of middleness? Let's find out...

1. Where did you buy your last sofa?
A) DFS.
B) John Lewis.
C) BUY furniture? How very vulgar.

2. Your dog is called...
A) Tyson.
B) Timmy.
C) Troilus.

3. Your typical summer holiday?
A) A static in Ingolmels.
B) A holiday cottage in Port Isaac.
C) Cannes or St. Kitts.

4. As a child, you had lessons - but in what?
A) Smoking, from your brother's mates on the rec.
B) Cello
C) Dressage/ shooting.

5. What's on your wall?
A) A 60” flat screen with full Sky package.
B) A Lawrence Coulson landscape.
C) Family portraits from the 17c onwards.

6. How do you keep warm?
A) Turn the gas fire up.
B) Another armful of logs on the woodburner.
C) By wearing lots of jumpers and burying yourself under shooting rugs and eight spaniels.

7. When you see Michael Portillo, do you think...
A) Who?
B) The poor man. He must be colour blind.
C) Lovely red chinos. I must ask Mike for the name of his tailor.





Mostly As:
Middle-class wannabe. You think The One Show is highbrow and live on an estate.
Mostly Bs:
The middliest of the middle classes. You only drink real coffee and dream of living next door to Nigel Slater.
Mostly Cs:
Upper-middle-class. Posh in denial. You also live on an estate, but in a very different way to the “mostly As”.

As if to prove my point...

All joking apart, the third paragraph makes me physically angry.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jan/18/what-thinking-bikini-waxer

Pampering

“Pampering”. What a misnomer that is! An Indian head massage while you are gently basted with sweet-smelling oils, fair enough, but many of the treatments we women gladly pay for under the guise of “pampering” would be illegal under the Geneva convention. We are sold the idea that going to a beauty salon is relaxing, essential "me-time”. Reader, they lied.

I've never endured professional waxing but I have A) accidentally stuck my finger in a hot tea-light and B) removed plasters. The thought of combining both experiences is plain wrong. Aggie McKenzie of “How clean is your house?” describes having her underarms done as “like giving birth to oversized twins”. I’ll stick with my Lady Bic, thanks.

Even seemingly innocuous treatments can hurt. A friend once “treated” me to a pedicure that began with a dry salt scrub to exfoliate the lower leg. Imagine an angry wrestler rubbing handfuls of gravel into your shins and you’re halfway there. My barely-stifled “oohs” and “ahs” must have left the therapist feeling like she was working on a PG Tips chimp instead of a human being. The subsequent cuticle removal brought to mind the techniques of the Spanish Inquisition, over a background of doleful whale music.

Spray tans are another anathema to me. Anything that involves standing in front of a stranger wearing nought but paper knickers can't be that fun. I've never met anyone with a fake tan who didn't look creosoted and smell faintly of biscuits. The proper setting for an English person is to be faintly blue for ten months of the year, then lobster pink from late June until the August bank holiday.

A little maintenance is a necessary evil if you don't want to end up looking like a cross between Bilbo Baggins and Cousin It from The Addams Family, but could we come up with a new term that doesn't suggest A) relaxation or B) enjoyment? Beaut-orture maybe. Now if you will excuse me, I need to go and sandpaper my feet.

With all good wishes.

I’ve read several mealy-mouthed columns in the papers this year decrying the abomination that is electronic Christmas cards. I'm not sure why society automatically assumes an idea someone had 150 years ago = good but an idea someone had 5 years ago = bad, and how we convey festive greetings is no exception.

One friend I worked with a decade ago sent me an e-mail to say Merry Christmas, because she’s just moved house and can’t be doing with yet another stratum of clutter. This led to an exchange of five or six long messages, during which I found out loads about how she and her family were doing, shared our news and a few photos, gossiped about old times and talked her through what it means that one of her kids has been out on the SEN register at school. I have nothing to put on the mantelpiece, but I feel 10 times closer to her than I did at the start of December.

By contrast I've received any number of “physical” cards which contain nothing but a set of names, possibly with a “best wishes” if you’re lucky, or “we must meet up in the new year” even though both parties have been saying that since 2002. What's the point? To assure people you used to know that you're not dead?

Even worse are the impersonal cards where the scribe doesn't even bother to write your name apart from on the envelope. These annoy me so much I'm tempted to put them straight in the recycling bin. If you can't be bothered to write my name, do you really care whether I have a happy Christmas or not?

I’m tempted to cull the list next year. My best friend from Suffolk, the midwife who delivered me, ancient aunts - yes, they can gladly have a handwritten card, complete with letter. People to whom I've never anything to say, I shall cut, and those who fall somewhere in the middle - the Christmas ecard awaits you in 2014!

Festive

Christmas is for children, goes the rhetoric. Well - they’re half right. The only time of year I miss teaching is December, after several years in a CofE primary school. Actively encouraged to make a big fuss, my £5.99 artificial tree would go up for the first of the month without fail. Handing out Christmas cards could be stretched out to 20 minutes when we should have been doing something boring like science, and the last few days would be entirely taken up with watching the Infant Nativity; suffering through the compulsory school Christmas dinner (as teacher, you’re guaranteed to get stuck next to the kid nobody else will sit by because he spits when he talks); colouring in Santa pictures; a paper snowflake production line to rival the slickest Beijing factory; and the occasional word-search to remind the kids what the alphabet looks like. (Before anyone writes in, how much work do you think gets done in the average office on Christmas Eve, huh?)

It is often said that you lose the excitement of Christmas as an adult. This is because adults’ presents are so very dull. No-one ever woke up early for a melon baller and a velour dressing gown. If I thought there was the chance of finding 50 felt-tips, a Terry’s Chocolate Orange and a Care Bear shoved into a pillowcase at the end of the bed, I'd probably still wake up at 4am!

Of course, learning the horrid truth about Father Christmas is a nasty shock that makes you question everything, from the existence of the Tooth Fairy to whether Mr Fluffy really did go to live on a special hamster farm in the country.

If you want to enjoy Christmas as much as you did when you were a kid, just do the same things. Go for a bike ride in the morning; munch your way through a Cadbury’s Selection Box; watch Mary Poppins, and weep piteously because you think your sister got more presents than you.

Merry Christmas!



(The picture below is me c. 1984. Check that out for a Christmas jumper.)