flossing the cat

Once upon a time, my mother told me never to wash my dirty linen in public.   Luckily, my laundry has almost always been a private affair. These days, I am blessed with a new-fangled labour-saving device called a washing machine, which means that my smalls (which, naturally, reek of fornication and menstruation and other vile secretions) never have to make the journey to the village watercourse. Of course, there is the possibility that my mother was using A Metaphor. In my childhood home, metaphors were powerful tools, used for moulding our young impressionable minds into dark abnormal shapes. Take this one: ME: What’s the big deal with pre-marital sex? MY MOTHER: You wouldn’t go to a greengrocer’s and take a bite from an apple before paying for it, would you?  Now I’m the first to admit that sex is a fruity business. But not that fruity. But anyway, if the advice about the dirty linen was a metaphor, I am about to disappoint mother (once again). You see, a month ago, I ...