flossing the cat

The OH and I like watching 'First Dates'. He likes the young couples. I like the old couples. This week, the old couple are octogenarians Eric and Jenny, who have lost spouses to cancer. Eric is an ardent devotee of Argentinian tango.  Jenny likes rock festivals and 'Snow Patrol'. "Not sure I can watch old people eating cheese fondue", says the OH, as Eric and Jenny tuck into starters. "Why not?" I say. "Reminds me of pus", he says. To be fair, it is Jenny who says the fondue looks like "bandages", so maybe it is she who puts the thought in his head.  But I am still indignant. "D'you think people would be revolted by the sight of us sharing a cheese fondue?" I say. "We're not that old yet ", he says. I am not convinced. "No, but say I dropped an after-dinner mint down my top and had to ferret around between my shrunken dugs to retrieve it, would people reach for the sick bucke...

People are starting to talk about my car. "Your car is way old", says my daughter's classmate. "Is it from Tudor times?" They're doing the Tudors in school.  "It's only seventeen years old", I say.   I admit that my car is not exactly a luxury brand. Frankly, it is a steaming turd of a car. If you stand close enough, you can hear rusting. On the other hand, it is still my car. So I am more than a little offended by the attitude of the mechanic who gives it an MOT last week. "Sorry it took so long", he says, when I pick it up from the garage. "When you brought THAT in, me and Andrew, we were, like, you're having a fucking laugh aint' ya?!"  The mechanic leans back in his chair and laughs malevolently, which makes his neck fat jiggle. I laugh too.   (Usually, the more offensive and/or the more sexist a comment is, the more I laugh.) This is because I am a pathetic people pleaser.  "Bu...

The dog has bad breath. And by bad I mean gruesome.  For example, if you were to rate smells on a scale of one to ten, where one represented good, bacterial vaginosis would be one, and Daisy’s breath would be ten. “Any chance you can take Daisy to the vet?” I say to my husband. "Her breath is rank.“ The dog has heard us talking about her.   She is wagging her tail. This is because she has no self-esteem. Zero. You could literally say anything:  Let’s put Daisy on a one-way flight to Korea.  OR: Daisy smells like she's been sampling Mike Pence's pump-action yoghurt rifle.  OR:  Daisy is a bigger twat than Michael Flatley. And she would STILL wag her tail.  My husband takes her to the vet. “Could you take a look at her teeth?” he says to the veterinary nurse. “My wife thinks her breath smells.”   “I can’t see anything”, says the nurse, taking a look. “Is your wife, maybe, being a bit neurotic?” I am a...

I still haven't set up the voice mail system on my new smartphone. This troubles my husband, who fears I could Miss Out. "Somebody could be trying to get in touch with you", he says. "It could be important". The truth is that I hate anything to do with phones and/or leaving messages, but checking voice mail is the absolute pits. Checking voice mail is like opening up Pandora's Box, except that instead of sickness, death, turmoil, strife, jealousy, hatred, and famine, you just get guilt, guilt, and then, oh hello again, guilt. The voice mail on the landline is bad enough.  All week, the message icon has been flashing at me like The Eye of Sauron. "What have I done now? What? WHAT???" I scream. "WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME!" Actually I don't scream, I just talk. To scream at the answering machine would be deranged. Meanwhile, my mind runs through messages it might be harbouring. For example: Is my mother worried sick a...

Dear Facebook Friends, Please forgive me for not posting any pictures of my darling little ones in their Roald Dahl Day costumes this week. You see, the thing is, we suck at school dress-up days. In our house, school dress-up days provoke a level of emotional fervour normally associated with nineteenth century melodrama. And besides, a photo of a child going blue in the face due to breathing problems caused by an admittedly cheap Mr Twit beard, pictured alongside a child whose face is so puffed up from twenty minutes of non-stop crying she looks more like Jupiter than Matilda, is a clear breach of the Facebook Picture Posting Etiquette Guide. This is not the first time I have failed to provide photographic evidence of school dress-up days for social media. Take last year's World Book Day. It started well, as is so often the case, with the ten-year-old announcing she wanted to go as 'Gangsta Granny'. "We can sort that in ten minutes!" I said smugly. ...