flossing the cat

It's been a while since I blogged. The reason, dear readers, is this:  DAISY. (No relation of Kiss lead singer Gene Simmons, in spite of the tongue) Yes folks. A couple of months ago, we acquired a dog. A two-year-old boxer called Daisy, whose role was to shake our family out of its iPad-induced inertia, and get us out and about. Like the von Trapp family. But with poo bags. But what we hadn’t quite accounted for was the sheer magnitude of Daisy’s walking habit.     The fact of the matter is that Daisy likes walking.   Daisy like walking more than Lord Sewel likes to wear orange bras and leather jackets whilst snorting coke off the chest of a prostitute. Daisy likes walking more than Gwyneth Paltrow likes to give her nether beard a good old steam clean. Daisy likes walking even more than she likes the smell of asshole, which, my friends, is saying something. All of which means I now spend seven hours a week walking Daisy, when I could be blogging,...

A contagious strain of hypochondria is sweeping through our house, thwarting all attempts at physical activity. The ten-year-old points to a cluster of tiny spots on her forearm and informs me she is allergic to sunlight. Her eyes shimmer with the kind of longing I recognize from my own teenage flirtation with exotic maladies. “I   don’t have ANY allergies”, says the five-year-old, developing a pronounced limp as she approaches us. “But the back of my knee hurts a lot.” The five-year-old has acquired a range of issues that affect her mobility.  The back of her knee is a total bastard, but there is also an itch under the nail of her big toe, and a surface scratch on her calf, which reminds her of the vulnerability of human flesh. “Such a drama queen”, says the ten-year-old. The ten-year-old has a short memory. Last year, she was THIS close to putting “crutches” on her wish list for Father Christmas. Also, those who don’t have to walk anywhere, i.e. amputees, paraplegic...

Did I tell you the one about the werewolf, the cul-de-sac in suburbia, and the courting couple? Well, the story starts one weekday evening, back in the Eighties, with my mother furiously attempting to rid the lounge window of the coating of dust produced by the crematorium opposite. “Ych a fi” she says, her face like a cat's bum. “No self-respect.” I follow her gaze to the lay-by outside the cemetery gates, where two teenagers are busy sucking each other’s faces off in the front seat of a green Ford Cortina. I am almost fourteen at the time – but my experience of open mouth kissing is limited to the time Great Auntie Maud launched her tongue into my mouth thinking I was her dead husband, the great big lezzer - so  I lean into the window to get a better view. “They’re only snogging”, I conclude. For my mother, however, there is no such thing as “only snogging”. Snogging involves EXACTLY the same level of risk as eating your dinner straight off the toilet seats ...

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As you will know by now,  I'm a self-confessed scaredy-cat. Slip roads, space hoppers, rounders, and checking voice mail, all give me the willies, as does the line: It puts the lotion in the basket. And don't get me started on that feathered monstrosity from the Seventies, Emu.  But now, following a recent visit to Bounce Below , a disused slate cavern featuring suspended trampoline nets, I have to add trampolines to the shit list. I should have known better, of course. Anything that describes itself as “offering a degree of physical challenge” is not for me.  But, as we are on a family holiday at the time, and there has already been an awful lot of visiting national monuments, a trip to a subterranean playground seems in order. ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE We make our way to Llechwedd Slate Caverns, boarding the underground train to the trampolines. “This is the actual old mining train”, I say, reading the leaflet. “It’s Victorian.”  “OMG. W...

At the risk of sounding like a hater, I HATE flashers. I don’t mean folks who like to show you their bits. Unless you’re talking about Rihanna. If I ever see any of Rihanna’s bits, ever again, I will pluck out my own eyeballs. I mean motorists who think it’s the done thing to flash you with their headlights for no discernible reason. Take the other day. There I am, driving along the country road into my village, when a motorist flashes me. I check the speedometer. The instrument panel. The mirrors.   Nothing. A second motorist flashes me, then a third, this time with eye-melting LED headlights that emit more light than a nuclear explosion.   In a state of high anxiety, overwhelmed by the mind-altering pain of the retinal burn, I consider the following possibilities:   a) There is a corpse on my car roof. b) The radiator grille is spewing out Plague. c) The flesh-eating flying demon from Jeepers Creepers is preparing to swoop down on my car...