A public health nurse dropped by recently, it wasn’t an official appointment, just an old friend. Just as well, in hindsight. She admired Sir Fartsalot’s struts as he toddled with his funky nappy walk (you know the way they do) around the porch as we chatted on the doorstep, and commented that he had something in his mouth. I leaned down to him, gave the innards of his little mouth a sweep with my pinky finger and evicted a well chewed cigarette butt. Impressed with my mothering skills I think this lady was not, but she didn’t show it. She laughed it off, fair play to her.

He’s down to seven butts a day now, thank God.

By the time we’d hit the vegetable isle, I decided I’d had enough. Sir Fartsalot was perched in the in-built trolley seat and was also looking pretty pissed off, and not knowing the laws of physics, he seemed pretty confused, too.

Every time I touched him… ZAP. Every time I touched the trolley chassis… POP. Static electriciteh on mah trolleh. Pain in the arse.

I could either:

a) Ditch the trolley and just stuff the groceries into various crevices and pockets I had hanging around, but I’dve gotten into trouble doing that.

b) Take off my shoes and socks and declare myself strange.

c) Earth the trolley somehow, some other way.

So that’s what I did. I wedged my keyring into the metal arch of the trolley wheel and arranged everything so that the keys dragged on the ground, then tested my idea by hyper-accelerating to the butcher’s department. Dubiously I touched the baby’s nose and…

…nothing. Score!

I got strange looks. Very strange looks.

“Your keys are on the ground, love” – I got. Or…

“Don’t leave them behind ya! Haha!”

I nodded, and thanked, and I felt like the biggest weirdo on the planet, but at least the electroshock therapy wasn’t getting in the way of the retail therapy any more.

Why don’t supermarket trolleys have earthing-strips?

(I realise this is an increadibly boring conversational topic, but I don’t care. I’m bored.)

Image stolen from Slavenka and Obi

What do you get if you cross a sheep with a rat? A reep maybe. Or a shat.

Apparently it’s none of the above. Apparently you get one of these:

It’s a cross between a Bichon Frise and a Shitsu, what I might call a Scut. Certainly not a dog, that’s for sure.

When it was placed in my charge for the weekend, I accepted gracefully for the sake of the entertainment of Puppychild, but swore to take the piss out of it at every available opportunity, as you do. I bathed it, and made it look like a drowned rat and laughed at it, and laughed at it again when it re-appeared the next morning fluffier than a tumble-dried tampon.

Since introducing it to Laughingboy however, I’ve changed my mind. It respectfully pawed his chest and snuffed in his ears and made Laughingboy giggle and put up with the wild thrashing arm-flaps that ensued. It fell asleep on the kid’s chest and ignored the grabby wetness of a six month old baby with great temperance. My estimation of it went up several notches.

Then, when it came with me to the bathroom while I pee’d and curled up to scratch its itch by my feet; as if to say ‘If you run out of bogroll, I’m always here in emergencies…’ I fell another 10% in love.

Should my friend return on Sunday looking for her dog (?) only to have me tell her it’s dead while I sneakily hide it in the shed… you wouldn’t judge me, would you?

(Yeah, it was me that put the hairclips in its barnet. Not because it’s cute, but because the poor pissant can’t see for its messed up fringe.  I can identify with that.)

There are many places in this house that escape my cleaning routine.  I may visit them twice a year, maybe not at all; the greasy crevice between the oven and the cabinets being one such place for instance.  Euughh.

Another would be the place behind the giant shoe-box underneath our bed, apparently.

I spotted the glossy magazines while searching for spare change this morning, they grabbed my interest as a very strange place to keep magazines, so I pulled them out to have a better look.  I turned page after page in total shock at both the images, and the fact that each page was so well-worn and crumpled by such apparently sweaty eager hands.  I felt so confused and dirty at having found TAT’s little secret, and wondered what I should do with it.

See, I understand that a lot of men hide porn from their wives and I would be delighted if these magazines indeed were porn, but they weren’t porn at all, they were five different issues of WATCHTOWER, a Jehovah’s Witness rag that usually finds its way into the recycle bin around here (away with your claims of oozing purity!  I reserve the right to be a total fuck-up, thank you very much!).

So what am I to do?  Am I to throw the magazines on the coffee table in fury during a dramatic confrontation with TAT over a dirty-great-big fry-up one morning?

“WHAT’S THIS?!?”  I might scream…  “IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU WANT TO TELL ME ABOUT?  AM I NOT MEETING YOUR NEEDS HERE OR WHAT??  ARE YOU TALKING TO STRANGE MEN AT THE DOOR BEHIND MY BACK NOW, IS THAT IT??”

…and so on and so forth.

No, that seems too much like hard work.  Instead I shall tell all his friends so that they may look upon him with great awe and ridicule, for that is what it is all about, for God is a woman and likes wine and has a sense of humour about these things.

(I hope!)

See you in Hell.

xx

me