flossing the cat

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. ...

My husband has a condition called anosmia. This means he has no sense of smell.  For the most part, this works out pretty well for me. For a start, I never have to buy scented sanitary towels. (Although why any woman needs a scented sanitary towel, unless she has a) neglected to change her sanitary pad in, like, two days, and also happens to be in a heatwave, or b) recently noticed her vagina is exuding a pyroclastic flow of green slime, is beyond me.)   Ditto any other feminine hygiene products.  But there are downsides to having a husband who can't smell. For example, deep down, my husband believes there is no such thing as a bad smell. He prefers the idea that bad smells are simply figments of my imagination, originating in deep-seated neuroses and hysteria. So, if I say, "Darling, the living room is redolent with the smell of shite", or, "Did you happen to tread in a bunch of dog shit when you went to get those logs from the garden and then smear it over...

My eleven year old has become obsessed with the question of lady whiskers. MY lady whiskers. I catch her standing in the kitchen doorway staring at me as I cook dinner. She looks decidedly queasy. "You ok?" I say. "Something wrong?" She is staring directly at my face. Clearly, my face is the thing that is wrong. "It's a stubble isn't it?" I say, finally. Her concern over my chin hair has become routine. Terrified that I might be morphing into Gandalf, she has taken to scanning my face for deviant follicles. I give my chin a quick sweep to reassure her. "Nothing there", I say breezily.  "I plucked them this morning!" I see her gag and little and figure that "plucked" is one of those words, (like "moist" or "Michael Gove"), that revolts people. "It's underneath. In the middle!" she says, with rising hysteria. "It's sticking out loads. It's totally black...

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 ...