Weevilstepmother

It snowed today. It attempted a couple of light flurries earlier in the day, just as a warm up. A little before lunch, it started to come down in earnest. Walking across the quad was enough to see me covered in little puffy hail/snow-stones; as I came in through the door I looked like I had been rolling in bean bag stuffing. 'Oooh Miss!' went up a chorus of cries from the assembled herberts in their IT lesson. 'Is it snowing?' I turned to look out of the end wall, which is mostly made up of glass. 'Er, yes'. Well either that or I was suffering from a skin complaint the severity of which had never before been witnessed in this world.

Normally at lunchtime we have an assortment of herberts outside our window in the quad, standing around and eating lunch, standing around and swearing, standing around, eating lunch AND swearing - there's no end to the repartee. Sometimes a small herd of Year 7 children will swarm across the quad, around and through other groups, unconsciously splitting to pass individuals and rejoin again. It puts me in mind of the bit in Jurassic Park when the kid says "They're flocking this way".

Today, the snow was greeted joyfully by many times more than the usual contingent; the massed hordes filled the quad almost to bursting. Younger kids were running around, slipping over and laughing. Older girls were taking photos of their snow-covered selves and their mates with their cameras. Older boys were making snowball after snowball, some chucking them any old way; others choosing their targets with deliberation and throwing their missiles with incredible precision.

Still the snow fell, heavier and heavier, pitching on the grass, the benches, the paths. A white backdrop to a random, excitement-fuelled ballet. The flakes were huge, but featherlight, an inexorable showering of down. For the entire lunchbreak the snow fell, and although you could see that faces and hands were chilled, still they romped. I saw not one teacher brave the long walk across the quad.

I turned to Baldrick, shaking my head. 'They've gone crazy. Just a little bit of weather and they're acting like maniacs!' You wouldn't catch me acting like that...

Although the snow had gone by the time I drove home, it continues very cold and it's going to frost tonight. Tallboy and I went out to put the sheet over the front of the car. As he crouched down by the bin to fetch out the sheet, I noticed some snow still lodged in a crevice at the bottom of the windscreen. With glee I reached in and helped myself to a handful, patting it into a little snowball. I got him right on his left shoulderblade but he was preoccupied and didn't really notice it. Annoyed, I waited till he was occupied attaching his end of the sheet and dug around for some more, packing a decent little snowball in my hand. As I walked towards the front door, I listened for his footsteps to place where he was behind me, span on my heel and launched the snowball as I turned. It got him smack in the chest, the expression of surprise on his face was priceless...

Methane Boy has a pretty much all-encompassing attitude to eating; there are few things which won't pass his lips. I felt quite elated when I almost discovered one of these items yesterday.

First let me start with a happy family scene around the dinner table yesterday evening. Methane Boy is the last to finish - he is busy scoffing his sister's swede. Everyone sits back, replete. Methane Boy eyes the gravy jug, still half full, smiles and says 'I want to drink that!'. Weevil is not convinced of his sincerity, so calls him out. 'Go on then, if you want to...' Methane Boy grabs the jug, pouts his lips and applies the spout. To shouts of 'Down in one! Down in one! Down in...two! Down in two!' from his father, he glugs the contents as the rest of the family look on queasily. Fortunately he ignores his father's instruction to place the drained jug upside down on top of his head.

*shimmery effect suggestive of time passing*

Later in the evening, Methane Boy pops out to the garage to check on his pickled onions. That's real proper huge size onions which he is pickling in my cast-off gherkin jars. He retrieves a jar and finally manages to wrench it open, spearing a Moby Dick pickled onion with his fork. Attacking it layer by layer, slurping the excess vinegar, he vocalises his enjoyment. The sounds of approbation attenuate as he makes progress through the layers until the onion is reduced to half its original size. 'Bleah! The pickle hasn't got this far yet!' *plop!* as the half-an-onion is ejected back into its vinegar bath and returned to the garage for further intensive steeping.

*more shimmery time-passing stuff*

Tallboy and I were in the kitchen as Methane Boy was poking around for sustenance. 'What's this stuff?' he enquired, indicating an anonymous-looking plastic pot with yellow lid. 'It looks nasty.' He's right. Bereft of a label to inform, an idle enquirer might recoil when opening the lid as the pot is full of heavy, sticky, incredibly viscous dark brown goop. It is, however, one of the yummiest things known to mankind - a reduction of fruit (in this case, pears), without sugar, into a divine jam-esque spread. 'It's nice,' we say. 'Try it.' Suddenly fearful, he declines. 'I don't want to.' I take a knife out of the drawer (no, a blunt one you fools) and hand it to him. 'Take a bit.'

He wimpishly pokes at the surface of the spread, attaching at least a molecule of spread to the end of the knife. 'More than that!' I cry, as I push his hand down again and achieve a much more satisfactory excavation. With a screwed-up face, he makes as if to taste, pulling it away at the last minute. And again. And again. Finally, overcome by our derision, he tastes. And his face uncrumples, and beams. 'Wow, that's lovely!' As if we'd force him to taste something yucky. He is quite capable of doing that for himself.

His sphere of influence sadly includes the Sun, an avid disciple of Methanity. This morning as I got ready in the bathroom, through the door I could hear the Sun coming up the stairs and engaging in quiet conversation with Pesky on the landing. There ensued muffled sniggering and I wondered what on earth was going on. 'What are you doing out there?' I enquired. The response was far from what I expected - 'I'm just tempting the cat with a mango.'

A sideways scuttling out of the room, arms raised above the head almost in a castanet-playing kind of way, pincers clicking alternately, uttering an excited (or possibly an anxious) 'woop woop woop woop woop'. Dr Zoidberg is by far and away my most totally completely utterly favourite Futurama character. At moments of extreme excitement, I have to admit, I too have scuttled from the room, doing the 'woop woop' thing. Even if it wasn't so much fun to do, it would be worth it for the way it renders Tallboy a helpless giggling jelly.

There was one time in the cartoon when the Professor happened to get covered in manky fishy bait. Dr Z catches a whiff as he passes him, and is overwhelmed as if by an overdose of pheremones. He sidles up behind the Professor, drapes his mouth tentacles over the Professor's bald head, and says 'I'm so into you'. Now Tallboy is a little too elevated for me to manage this, but sometimes when he's sat down, I can sneak up quietly, do the mouth tentacles thing with my hand, and do the same to him. Annoyingly, he can do it to me quite easily even when I'm stood up.

Tallboy even manages to do a Zoidberg in the bedroom. Let me explain - we arrived some time ago at a point in our relationship where we decided to adopt separate duvets. Our bed is huuuggge (though his feet still peep out of the end) and we found that even a King Size duvet didn't work out for us. My relationship to my duvet is as that of a sausage to the enveloping pastry. If Tallboy was lucky, I'd leave him a small corner for a loincloth. Too much of a gentleman, he would lie there shivering till morning. With separate duvets, I can sausage-roll as much as I like. Tallboy's duvet cover is a fancy Ikea flowery thing which does up along the bottom not with handy poppers or buttons, but with ties spaced at intervals, which make it a real faff to take off or put on.

I don't know how he does it, but in whichever orientation the duvet starts the night(normally the right one), in the morning he is peering out between those damn ties draped over his face. 'Ack, I did a Zoidberg again!'

I'm happiest wandering around the house barefoot, but during the winter I have been known to make an exception. I had a pair of slippers. Blue they were, fleecy, with a couple of snowflakes embroidered on them. I'd had them a while, so their scruffy lopsidedness will be no surprise. They were snuggly and warm - comfy, in fact.

I lost one of my slippers. One slipper is even more useless than no slippers. A 50% reduction in toe-warming potential, plus the added annoyance of increased temperature differential across the feet thereby increasing the perceived coldness of the unslippered foot. Plus the family laughing at you. It just wouldn't do. For some reason I didn't have the heart to throw out my remaining slipper. I left it there under the bed, peeking coyly out. Every time I noticed it, I had a little pang for its lost partner. And was reminded of my cold feet.

Eventually I was able to move on enough emotionally to consider a new pair. Pink and purple this time, with oh so fancy embroidery in the shape of flowers, with petals made of faceted jewel-like plastic. Very snuggly, perky, totally toasty. And amazingly, a size and a half smaller than the old pair. Told you I'd lost some weight... Sometimes I catch sight of my old slipper while I'm wearing them and I try to hide them behind each other guiltily.

Yesterday I took my shoes off when I got home and stowed them on the shoe rack in the kitchen. I felt the familiar pang as I saw my poor slipper peeping out from under the rack. I went upstairs to change out of my work gear. There was that pang again as I caught sight of my sad little slipper under the bed.

Erm, hang on a minute. Ah. Right. Not so much lost as separated by a storey. I started to feel rather stupid, till I saw sense and chose another course. I'm blaming Tallboy instead...

Baldrick's not had a brilliant couple of days. Normally a chirpy soul, he sings all day long, tapping out rhythms with his fingers, handy screwdrivers or whatever else is close by, jiggling his knees up and down as he sits at our desk, making his chair squeak and the desk vibrate. I'm sorry I need to take a minute to let the throbbing vein in my temple calm down... *And breathe*

Yesterday he had a phone call to let him know that a personal parcel for him had just been delivered at the front office. 'Ooh,' he said, grinning. 'I know what that is, I snapped up a 24 port switch for a couple of quid on eBay. Bargain!' I was dead jealous but congratulated him on his good fortune. He went to pick it up later, when he had finished what he had been working on. He came back dejected, and empty-handed. The parcel had gone. The staff member who'd signed for it had left for the day, so he'd had to go through the whole huge pile of recently-delivered parcels, and it wasn't there.

An hour later he went back and looked through all the parcels again; a mountain of a stationery order which would have kept a small country's central government in business for several months. Still no sign. He was a miserable little bunny that afternoon, but on the plus side, the singing stopped. We thought maybe someone had picked it up by mistake; but they would surely by now have discovered the error and brought it over. The alternative, that someone had snuck in to school and pinched it, was horrible.

This morning he trotted over to the front office to ask yesterday's missing staff member where the parcel might be. A few minutes later he was back, with a monster of a parcel in his arms. 'Yay! Where was it?' I asked. 'Erm,' came a rather stumbling response. 'It was there all along. I looked at it both times.' Ah well. At least he was chirpy again. Pity he had to vocalise his joy quite so much though.

This afternoon the excitement got too much for him and he opened up the parcel, revealing one of the dirtiest switches I have ever seen; and I've seen a few mucky ones too. He fired it up to test it, but there was no activity. After a smidge of troubleshooting it became apparent that he had chosen the one port out of 24 that wasn't working. Balancing the switch on its side, he grappled with hidden catches to remove the case so that he could clean the innards. Stepping to one side for a second to grab a screwdriver, he let go and the whole thing overbalanced and landed on the desk with a crash. Immediately followed by a teacher's voice issuing from the office at the other end of the classroom 'Will you lot STOP BASHING THE EQUIPMENT!' As she marched out of the office to confront the miscreants, Baldrick had to hold his hand up and admit responsibility, to the delight of the assembled class, who wished they had thought of bashing the equipment first.

Later this afternoon, just after school, we experienced every network manager's nightmare as the network fell over. One by one our connections to the servers, the intranet, our folders, our email all disappeared. Half an hour's frenzied troubleshooting uncovered the cause - a fibre optic patch lead had failed. Baldrick stood at the top of the stepladder, head in the comms cabinet, while I stood at his feet, head craned back to see him, handing up snips, holding ends, and generally doing the assistant thing. As he concentrated on a particularly fiddly bit, I piped up. 'Baldrick?' 'Hmm... yes?' 'I really look up to you, you know.' 'ARRRGGGGGGHHHH!'

On days like today, popping to the loo from the office can be quite a battle with the elements. Sadly the Ladies is all the way over the other side of the school, with a choice of the direct route across the quad or a more roundabout but sheltered route along corridors.

I've adopted a loop which takes me the sheltered way on the outward leg, past the front office where I can check for post and parcels (yay!), then on to the Ladies and finally back across the quad. Having done the sitting-in-a-chair-without-moving-except-maybe-to-get-a-coffee-from-the-cupboard-of-doom thing for hours on end, it's rather nice to stretch the legs. On the way out, I pass the Senior Management Team offices; I often pass subdued-looking faces waiting quietly outside doors with scary names on.

In the front office, there's generally a bustle going on to the backing track of the phone ringing and callers at the front door and teachers zooming in and out and admin staff trotting backwards and forwards. In the centre of all this, in the eye of the storm, is Beryl. Her arms are a blur as she answers the phone, looks stuff up on the computer, shepherds student receptionists, answers queries, reassures poorly students waiting to be picked up and thrusts messages at passing teachers topping speeds of MACH 2. I don't know how she maintains her composure and calm manner, I'd be a raging axe-wielder within minutes.

One day, leaving the mayhem in the front office behind me, I passed reception and stopped in front of the ladies. There was a woman in front of me, uncertain where she was going, clearly a visitor. She came to a halt in front of the Gents, peering closely at the door. 'Can I help you?' I asked from behind. 'Er yes,' she said. 'I'm looking for the Staffroom. Is this it?' 'Ah, no - further down the corridor there.' Had I been held up a few seconds longer in the front office, who knows what might have happened...

Just inside the Ladies is a little shelf in front of the mirrors, just right for putting down what you're carrying - books, papers, parcels - before using the facilities. The subversive streak in me always makes sure that the top item of the pile of post I put down there is addressed to Baldrick by name. I wonder how many of my colleagues have the impression that he uses the Ladies...

I think Methane Boy is still on cloud nine after the Cossack's hearty endorsement of his latest vintage. He's been experimenting for a while; some results have been brilliant, some rather less so. The coffee wine, for example, was a resounding bleurrrgh, which must have been rather a blow given his geeky aspirations. The apple wine (which started out as cider) which he produced last year went down a treat with the family. This year, he really did make cider, which was bottled last weekend and laid up in anticipation of a week in Cornwall at Easter with his friends. Poppy is worried that they will all be permanently tipsy - 'Don't walk off a cliff!' is her constant plea to him.

As an aside, I will add that the cider has been bottled in two litre plastic pop bottles, bought by MB on Saturday and emptied of their original contents over the course of 24 hours. At first he was going to try to drink 18 litres of coke, pretty much guaranteeing him a night without sleep. Which would be handy, because you wouldn't want to sleep through your bladder rupturing... He saw sense towards the end of Saturday and emptied some of the bottles down the loo (coke's supposed to be good at getting rid of limescale, says Tallboy) and causing the Sun quite a turn when he went for a wee. 'I think someone in the house isn't very well,' he said weakly as he emerged from the facilities.

MB has acquired a few dog-eared old winemaking books over the past year or so; he leafs through them languorously, tasting the idea of the various wines in his head. With so many myriad possibilities, how could he possibly choose? He is also influenced by our chum the Alchemist, whose house is a bubbling shrine to fermentation, demijohns and huge-spherical-vats-the-proper-name-for-which-I-don't-quite-recall-at-the-moment in every possible spot along the walls, in cupboards, on tables. His repertoire includes such taste explosions as Parsnip, Oak Leaf and Baked Bean & Banana. Seriously. MB found a few he would like to try in the books, including Elderberry. This was a Good Thing as a)I adore elderberries and even more so wine made from them, and b) there is a hedgerow just around the corner which contains a goodly number of elders.

Walking to the shops past the hedgerow, I had noticed that the berries were ripe and frankly crying out to be cut off, taken away, squished mightily and rendered into wine for my enjoyment. I mentioned this to MB, who took a couple of carrier bags, pausing for quick instructions as to the location of the bushes. 'You do know what they look like, don't you?' 'Er, probably' I gave him a description of what he was looking for and off he went. An hour later I went off in search of him and found him with three bulging carrier bags of black berries. He'd been picking like a maniac. I peered into a bag, about to congratulate him on his haul, when I realised that the elderberry count in the bag was low to non-existent. I didn't know what he had picked, but it certainly wasn't what he needed. He had in fact picked his way carefully around the elder bushes.

I'm very cagey about berries and fungus I don't recognise. Some mad instinct for self-preservation I suppose... Methane Boy doesn't seem to share this instinct: at Christmas he begged and begged me to be allowed to try a berry from the gorgeous bunch of mistletoe we brought back from Mum's apple tree. On the way back home with the unidentified berries he pestered me constantly. 'Can I try one?' 'No' 'Just one, go on, go on!' 'No!' 'Can I though, can I try one?' 'NO!!!' Actually, on second thoughts maybe Poppy does have a point about the cliff business...

I insisted that the berries be consigned to the compost heap. There were a few elderberries in there, but I didn't fancy separating them out knowing I had to be 100% accurate. My best guess, having looked in my nature books, was that they were dogwood. Which one site on the web intriguingly describes as 'slightly poisonous'. We grabbed a few more bags and headed back to the hedge. This time I stayed and picked; we ended up with three bags full of elderberries and absolutely no suspicious lurking bringers of potential death. Which was nice.

Tallboy and I stripped the berries from the stalks, MB squished them, added water and sugar and yeast and goodness knows what else, and the demijohn was sat in the corner, all wrapped in paper to stop the colour fading. Last month MB brought it down from his room and poured out a trickle in the bottom of a glass. Proffering it to me, he asked if I thought it was ready for bottling. Banishing my lingering doubts about the possibility of just one highly poisonous rogue berry having got in to the mix, I took a sip. Methane Boy looked on unamused as I retched my way to the floor, my hand clutching at my throat. Well, I thought it was funny.

Uncorking the first bottle last weekend for the Cossack, I once again had to banish my doubts. The wine was amazing, a triumph - something that delicious couldn't possibly be toxic, could it? I hadn't realised that Tallboy had shared my reservations all along. Turning to him in bed when I woke the next morning, I saw a chirpy face, pleased to see me. 'Well, at least we know it can't be poisonous now!' Well, quite.

It used to be that Pesky and her late sister were queens of the domain, strutting round the back garden and seeing off marauders. Oh yes, and woe betide any small mammal or little feathery thing that might chance to pop by. Over the past few years, though, Pesky has become much more sedate in her ways; I think the last bird she caught was the blackbird which broke its neck by flying into the kitchen window and dropped lifeless at her feet in the most cartoonesque manna-from-heaven kind of way.

I'd always fancied having stuff for the birds in the garden, but had resisted the urge - how cruel to tempt the birds in only for silent death to claim them as they tried in vain to lift their stuffed-crop little bodies into the air. Then Tallboy and I became jealous of our respective parents' bird feeding setups, and the swarms of visitors they enjoyed in their gardens. Deciding that Pesky was past all that nonsense, we bought a feeder or two and stuck them in the tree at the bottom of the garden. Then another feeder, and another, this time at the end of the climbing frame. Then a water bowl/bird bath, balanced atop the climbing frame. And a mug stuffed with lard, wedged into a crossbrace. Suddenly there are bits of bird kit all over the climbing frame. I have, without a doubt, the most expensive and exclusive bird table I have ever seen. With integrated slide and swing.

Standing at the kitchen window one day, I handed the binoculars at the Sun (we don't have a vast garden, just crap eyesight) and asked him if he could identify the bird sat on the feeder down there. It's a parent thing, I know - almost unconsciously I ask him does he know this, and where is that from, and who did such-and-such. I'm fascinated by what he knows and what his perspective is. He'll either answer me in a pitying tone, rolling his eyes and thinking to himself how sad grownups are, or he will shrug with an expression indicating amazement at why he should want to shunt useful knowledge (like in which episode of the first series of Tom Baker's stint as Dr Who you catch a glimpse of Sarah Jane Smith's knickers) out of his brain by acquiring the requested nugget of information.

This time, though, he stood quietly for a minute, the answer on the tip of his tongue. 'A Greentwit?' he asked hesitantly. Close - it was a Greenfinch, though now irrevocably christened a Greentwit. We have them all coming down to feed at the Theme Park Dining Rooms: Greentwits, Bluetwits, Coaltwits, Greattwits, Blacktwits, those bloody pigeons, several Woodpeckers all fortunately called Woody, Nuthatches, a Jay, Wrens, Dunnocks and Spadgers. Tallboy assures me that the latter is an Oxford term for a Sparrow, which fact I frankly disbelieved until Mum bought us a book about wildlife in the garden which referred to Spadgers too. The look of triumph on Tallboy's face was a sight to behold. His vindication was almost sufficient for him to forgive Chris Packham for calling newts gormless and bland later in the book.

On Sunday I heard Tallboy choking in the kitchen and rushed in to see what was the matter, fearing a replay of the 'How many cherry tomatoes can I fit in my mouth at the same time' incident. Instead, I found him peering through binoculars at the fence, his body shaking with laughter. He'd been watching a Wren which had found a juicy plump green caterpillar and had eventually managed to swallow it after a tough-fought battle. Twit!

It wasn't as nasty weather as the last time he stayed over. Then, there was a ring at the doorbell and there on the doorstep was the Cossack, wild-eyed and somewhat rigid in his stance. 'Look at my beard!' he boomed. It had been so cold on the journey over that his beard had hoared up. 'Don't touch it!' he warned as he spotted my hand on a beardwards trajectory, 'You might break it!' We ushered him in and stood him in front of the fire to thaw. 'Ah, that's better,' he said, blinking watery eyes. 'My goggles misted over so I put them up out of the way. Then my eyes froze open. I haven't been able to blink for the past three miles.'

Puts me in mind of a joke I heard once: This Eskimo guy is driving along when there's a nasty noise from the engine compartment and the vehicle suddenly fails to proceed. Out he hops and looks under the bonnet but he can't see anything obvious so he calls the AAA (that's the Arctic Automobile Association). The AAA guy turns up and has a quick look under the bonnet. Turning to face our friend, he says, 'Looks like you've blown a seal mate.' 'I bloody well have not! It's just frost on my moustache!'

Yesterday he had no such misadventures and arrived in fine fettle. 6'3", broad and solid, cheeks permanently ruddy, a bristling black beard, curly black hair, a prodigious appetite for food and an even greater passion for red wine, the Cossack is a much-loved visitor to Weevil Towers. With his huge voice - he doesn't so much speak as declaim in a hybrid Brian Blessed/Tom Baker kind of way - I had wondered what the kids would make of him the first time they met him. I needn't have worried - they all adore him, he's one of those people universally liked.

He regaled us with tales of his travels round France on his bike; gastronomic adventures in vineyards, cafes, hotels, restaurants. 'Calves' brains!' he exclaimed, a look on his face not unlike that of the enraptured Mole in Wind in the Willows, 'Sliced, in a sandwich. Lovely!' This was too much for my vegetarian sensibilities. 'Oh Cossack, you are offal... but we do like you!'

When he arrived, he had produced from his saddlebags a couple of rather nice reds, urging Tallboy to bring them in quickly and put then in the front room to warm up. 'They're too cold, too cold!' he fretted. A bit of a wine buff, is the Cossack. Later in the evening we uncorked the first bottle of Methane Boy's 2005 Elderberry. A divine deep plum colour, incredible fruit burst on the tongue belying an alcoholic kick, and a fantastic ribena finish. The Cossack loved it. Every mouthful was accompanied by cries of delight and approbation, he appreciated the colour, the bouquet, the taste. 'That's bloody good that is! I should know, I drink enough!' He offered Methane Boy a fiver for a bottle to take away with him, and our resident brewmeister was happy to comply, beaming with pride.

Preparing to leave this afternoon, the Cossack donned his cold and wet weather gear. Boots, gaiters, overtrousers, cardigan, jacket, bodywarmer, waterproof jacket, waterproof overtrousers. Seams straining tight, he patted his stomach grandly. 'I feel like Cyril Smith!' he said. 'Hmm...Is he still around?' 'Nah,' I said, 'he died years ago.' Sorry, Sir Cyril. We waved him off (the Cossack, that is, not Cyril Smith) as he thrummed down the road, the necks of his wine bottle booty peeking cheekily from his pannier. As I turned to come back into the warm, I was musing on the practicality of knitting him a beard-warmer to ward off the frost...

Or, a guide to what Pesky says to me.

Dear Pesky, who's having a bit of a time of it of late - but that's another story, has several distinct yowls which do have distinct meanings. Honest. Over the years I've come to understand what she means. Like at four in the morning when she pops upstairs to tell me something important. Or the heart-stopping moment when I was on the phone to a client and I heard her in the hallway making *that* particular sound. "I'm sorry, I'm going to have to call you back, the bloody cat's brought a frog in."

Yowl type	Accompanied by	Approximate Translation
Urgent, pained, repeated	Urgent pacing	'I need to do a poo and I don't want to do one till I've told you, OK? So I'm going to do a poo. I just thought I'd better let you know.'
Slightly less urgent, slightly less pained variant of above.	No accompaniment	'I just did a poo and the first thing I wanted to do afterwards was tell you, OK? I just did a poo. I just thought I'd better let you know.'
High pitched, open vowel type noises, slightly muffled	Possibly some flapping, squeaking or croaking	'Hey, I'm pretty clever, me. I caught this creature and do you know what I'm going to do with it? I love you so much, I've brought it for you. Yes, I know you're a vegetarian and the blood and suffering is going to freak you, but it's a gift all right?'
Single note, medium pitch, repeat at two second intervals	Pointed looks towards exit	'You may open the door and let me out. Yes, you there, with the opposable thumbs. Get on with it. You could have fitted a cat flap, but no, you didn't want to spoil the door. So get opening.'
Dual note, medium to high pitch, volume ascending over time, repeat at ten second intervals	Letter box banging as if small creature outside the front door were flipping the flap with a paw	'Let me in then. Come on. You could have fitted a cat flap, bet you're regretting not doing it now. Let me in. LET ME IN.'
Hoarse mew, repeated infrequently	Significant looks towards bathroom door	'One of the kids has had a shower and forgot to put my water bowl back afterwards. Would you mind, at all?'
Single, high-pitched mew, repeated once or twice	Turning back on food bowl	'I didn't order this! Fetch me some salmon immediately!'
prrrrrrrrrrup!	ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum of pawsteps down the stairs	'Hello! There you are! Coo, you've been gone ages, I've been all on my own here. You may stroke me. Any salmon in the offing?'
Sustained mournful wailing, interval decreasing over time, volume diminishing in proportion	No accompaniment	'How dare you shut me in the kitchen overnight? Just because you watched some silly programme about fire safety and shutting all the doors when you go to bed. OK so I've got food, water, cushion and litter tray here but you've taken away my freedom, so I'm going to take away your sleep. Hello? Hello? Anyone there? Ah, sod you then... zzzZZZZZZZZ'

Must go now, Pesky wants to discuss tonight's sleeping arrangements...

My planning for today had included impeccable weather. I distinctly remember it. We had six or seven miles to walk and good weather was an absolute pre-requisite.

Mum, the Sun and I walked in the rain to the local train station ('When will it come?', 'Are you sure it's this platform?', 'When will it come?', 'Which direction will it come from?', 'When will it come?' etc.), took a train (11.41, Yes, 11.41, that way, 11.41) to Bristol Temple Meads. Then for a change we walked in the rain to the city centre. I had a 10% off voucher for my favourite shop and I was on a mission to use it. I needed a couple of bits and pieces and since I've found the best way to 'tice the Sun into having a bath is to lob one of my Bath Ballistics at him, I was after buying him some of his own. In order to be suitable they had to be passed by his nose and (this is important) to contain NO GLITTER. Apparently that's 'not manly'.

The pile of fizzy bath bombs in my basket grew and grew until I could hardly bear the weight. I had anticipated this likely outcome of a visit to Lush and had brought with me a backpack to spare my poor arms. I stashed my purchases, adjusted the straps, clipped up the waist belt, and off we went again. As we headed off to our next destination, an uncomfortable realisation dawned on me. Securely strapped to me were many pounds of highly effervescent sodium bicarbonate. Not a problem really, so long as they didn't come into contact with water.

I looked up at the dark clouds, narrowing my eyes against the falling rain. Ah. I suddenly felt like a perfume terrorist. One leak in my backpack and the whole lot could go off. I pictured myself running through the centre of Bristol with my backpack fizzing, multicoloured froth and bubbles forming a gorgeously scented trail behind me. The idea appealed for a second till I recalled how much it had all cost. On second thoughts, maybe best not. I took off my backpack and coat, and put them back on the other way round.

I may have looked like a freak but my stash was safe. The Sun didn't help matters much - he kept referring to me as 'the Hunchback of Chipping Sodbury' for the rest of the afternoon. Not that I bear a grudge. Oh no. There's absolutely no way that a glittery ballistic will find its way into his bath tonight by accident. Mwahahaha.

Today's studies have mainly centred on a subject which rejoices in the mnemonic Please Do Not Throw Sausage Pizza Away. I feel strangely hungry...

My other main activity has been assessing my music collection for suitability for stepping to. When we got it, I started using the step machine in front of Corrie but it just didn't work - it was hard to sustain a sensible rate and ended up being rather boring. I discovered that if I had music playing instead, I found it easier to focus and ended up stepping at almost twice the rate. Bonus. I also discovered that if I gave myself a target number of steps, rather than a target time, this worked better for me. Sadly it became apparent that the built-in counter on the machine itself was unreliable at best and mendacious at worst.

I mulled over potential solutions. I tried counting myself but got a bit lost after 1765 (one thousand seven hundred and sixty five steps, not the year). I could count tens and keep track of them with my fingers but keeping the hundred figure in my memory buffer wasn't the easiest thing as I was puffing away. The germ of an idea appeared, and next time I went shopping I bought some wooden beads. Locating the only piece of string in the house in the Sun's bedroom, where it had been used to lasso the TARDIS, I quietly liberated it and spent a happy macrame-based ten minutes producing a... well I suppose you'd call it a knotted length of string. With some beads on it. Now I can keep track of the hundreds, and all is well.

Apart from the music, that is. Last week I sat at my desk and trawled my mp3 collection. Applying a scientific filter something along the lines of 'stick it on the playlist if it sounds boppy' I managed to amass a collection which would keep my interest going if played in shuffle mode. Sadly, I had reckoned without my complete lack of musicality; I wouldn't know 4/4 time if it was formally announced on arrival at a posh ball by one of those announcer guys with a really loud voice.

I succeeded in putting together a playlist containing the following categories:

1. Ooh this is a nice warm-up number
2. Blimey that's getting the heart pumping
3. Sweat. Dripping. In. Eyes.
4. Face *puff* turning *puff* purple
5. "Charging 200 Joules. Clear!"

Whenever a category 4 or 5 track started up, I had to squeal at Tallboy to hit the skip button (which was miles out of my reach) before my now robotic legs caught the beat and stepped me into sweet oblivion.

Tonight, while Tallboy took his constitutional on the stepper, I ran through the playlist to trim out the faster tracks. Sadly, I couldn't do it by ear and had to pretend to step to each track to assess whether it was too fast. Tallboy found this highly amusing. So amusing that he nearly fell off twice. Hmmph. It would have served him right, too.

Right then, I'm off at a nice sedate pace to avoid consigning a bread-based, cheese and meat product topped item to the rubbish bin.

When Tallboy moved to Weevil Towers some... er, talk amongst yourselves while I work this out, ah yes... some three years ago (somehow it seems much longer), we found rather unsurprisingly that we had several duplicated items between us. The most numerous of these duplicates turned out to be kitchen utensil holders. We each had, I think, three of them. To make matters worse, at around that time I received a delivery from Lakeland with a few kitchen necessities in it. Ah, now, I know what you're thinking. I hadn't just ordered a new utensil jar, so ner.

All the same, unordered, unbidden and frankly unwanted - there was one looking up at me from the parcel. A shiny, stainless steel affair, very nice and all that, but the very last thing on the planet I wanted or needed. Not normally one to look a gift horse in the face, I felt compelled to phone their customer service department to point out their mistake. How cross they'd be at their error, and how swiftly would they reclaim the rogue item. 'Oh no,' trilled the nice young lady on the phone, 'it's a free gift for you.' I tried to point out that I hadn't selected it as a free gift. 'That's right,' she beamed down the phone, 'it's a special free gift that only a few of our customers got. You're one of the lucky ones!' Ashamed at my churlishness, I muttered a thank you and rang off.

Staring at my special new friend, I wondered what on earth I could use it for. Holding kitchen utensils was a pretty obvious course of action, but I was running out of worktop space and at this rate I would soon be running at the ratio of one utensil per jar. Inspiration struck suddenly - it was the perfect size and shape to take four or five of them, surely? I dashed into the kitchen and grabbed another one, a hoopy chrome design. That would fit another four or five. In one fell swoop I was about to solve two knotty problems. Useful jobs for utensil jars and a home for the nomadic remote controls in the front and back rooms. The remote corrals were born.

They work pretty well, too; the right kind of height, the right kind of diameter. Looking now at the one on the table next to me I do have to admit that it does look a teeny little bit incongruous in the front room, but its practicality more than makes up for that. The key feature of the corrals is that they contain and restrain the remotes, whose natural state is (as I'm sure we all know) burrowing into dark crevices such as are found down behind the sofa cushions. When left to roam freely, the remotes will also prey on each other, reducing the remote population one by one. Perhaps they band together to ambush the weakest remote, wrestle it to the carpet, lever out its batteries and kick it far into the darkest under-sofa realms.

Hmm, for a post about Tallboy's anti-social remote-using habits, this has veered slightly away from the direction I had intended it to take. Never mind, keep your eyes peeled for the release of the New Remote Corral^TM, available at all good Audio Visual and Kitchen Equipment outlets soon.

I will just mention one thing he does with the remote, which (depending on the hormone levels) hits me somewhere on a scale ranging from 'Ack, do you have to do that?' to 'Right, that does it, give me the bloody remote and bend over'. In the mornings, depending on my levels of sluggishness, I have five to ten minutes during which I can eat my breakfast, log on to my computer and watch the news before I have to leave for work. Being of the female persuasion, I tend to perform these actions simultaneously. Clearly when on the computer, my attention is drawn to the monitor, meaning that my back is to the television. I am still, however, able to slurp my coffee, ingest my porridge, and attend to the news by means of my ears.

When I hear something that interests me, I turn in my chair to view the accompanying image. Which, nine times out of ten, comprises a black background with blue and white text over. By the time my enraged squeals have caused the disappearance of the teletext pages, I have not only missed the picture, but have ranted over the top of the news report and thus missed the entire point of the broadcast. What really gets my goat is the fact that Tallboy has a whole thirty minutes after I leave during which he can surf the teletext to his heart's content...

Tallboy was heading up the stairs to bed while I performed my obsessive last-thing-at-night check-everything-is-turned-off-and/or-securely-locked thing. As I checked things in the front room, I became aware of a strange floorboard-type squeaky noise and glanced up to see Tallboy stationary on one of the stairs. Just stood there, looking at me. What, I enquired, was he doing? 'I thought I'd just stand on the stairs,' he replied, accompanying his response with a look that challenged me to assert that this behaviour was anything other than totally sane and utterly normal.

I was a bit stumped, and the only rejoinder I could come up with was 'Who do you think you are, er, you know, what's his name, um, Kermit's nephew?' Oscar Wilde would have been proud of me... Tallboy continued stock still, looking blankly at me so I felt the need to expand a little. Summoning up my best junior Muppet voice, I began to sing.

'Half-way up the stairs
is a stair where I sit'

Tallboy's face is a picture of incredulity.

'There isn't any other stair
Quite like it'

Tallboy begins to back away up the stairs.

'It's not at the bottom
It's not at the top'

He can no longer contain his amusement and bursts out laughing as he rounds the landing corner.

'So this is the stair
Where I always stop.'

Tallboy's hysterical laughter rings in my ears as I conclude the c-e-i-t-o-a/o-s-l routine in the kitchen. He's still chuckling to himself as I stomp upstairs to brush my teeth. As I get into bed, he engulfs me with snuggle. 'I remembered that song,' he admits in my ear, 'but I didn't want to cut your performance short.' Swine. When did he recognise it then? 'Oh, when I was about half-way up the st... OUCH!'

Bike club meeting today. Of course it was - it's the first real daytime rain we've had for ages. It was cold too. Not a good start at all.

I knew something was wrong as I pulled on my leathers. They did up. Without a struggle or a single swearword. Blimey Days! In fact they were so loose that their weight was pulling them floorwards. Ack - not desperately protective then. At least I'd be wearing my waterproofs, they would keep my leathers from falling down. More amazement as I struggle into my 'proofs - they do up easily AND I can breathe with them on. Unheard of!

As I pulled away in the usual haze of blue smoke (will someone please invent two-stroke that gives purple smoke) I faffed with my visor. It was too cold to have it shut as it misted with my first breath, but too wet to have it up exposing my eyes to icy needlesticks of rain. I compromised on a half-mast kind of arrangement which just protected my eyes but left my mouth and cheeks stinging.

Before I'd even reached the end of the road, I could feel the cold seeping into the bones in my fingers. By the end of the journey I no longer had hands - just frozen claws attached to the handlebars. The roads were filthy too. To say that they were completely covered in mud would be wrong: had this been the case, there would have been nowhere for the diesel to lurk. As a child in the car, I remember looking for the pretty rainbow efflorescences on the tarmac. As a grownup on two wheels, I am none the less vigilant but massively less appreciative. Peering out at the world of damp and mud and diesel and oncoming vehicles as best I could through a visor enprismed with raindrops, I asked myself why on earth I had chosen to do this.

Yes, I would enjoy the company of my friends at the pub, but I could get there quite happily, and warmly, and dryly in the car. A big plus to riding the bikes can be smell - passing a fragrant field on a sunny day can be a wonderful experience. Unless you have hayfever, I suppose. I can't, however, say the same for passing several kilos of minced five-day dead badger, or a freshly-laid horse ziggurat. You might think that the thrill of speed, the freedom to zoom past anything and everything in front of you might be a reason. Not on a thirty-two year old 6 Volt 243cc two-stroke it isn't.

Why, then, was I grinning when I pulled up in the pub car park? Why did that little 12 mile ride give me such a lift? It wasn't the landlord coming out as I was parking up the bike and saying 'Ha ha ha, we call you the Crazy Frog crowd'. Sadly I still had my helmet on or I'd have given him quick lecture about the fact that the lad who recorded the sound was imitating a two-stroke bike and managed to produce a remarkably good facsimile of a classic two-stroke sound, and that it's therefore not amazing that our bikes, being two-strokes producing the classic two-stroke ring ding ding sound, actually sound something like it. Probably I good thing I was muzzled, all in all.

It's actually incredibly hard to quantify, to be honest. I built that bike. I know each part of it. I wired it up. I painted it. I bolted it together. I know how fast it's going from the sound of the revs, not from the speedo. I revel in the noise of the engine, the smell of the exhaust. To be propelled along the road on my bike, exposed, the elements in my face, the tyres eating up the road - it's like nothing else. Playing tiptoe through the diesel, taking the almost-perfect line on this bend, taking the perfect line on the next, planning, adjusting, predicting, winding up the accelerator, easing off, leaning _just_ the right amount, hanging on with my knees, in control, Tallboy's image slightly blurry in my vibrating rear-view mirror but always there. Perfect.

It's incredible the impact that sounds and smells from your past can have on you. You're pootling along, minding your own business, then suddenly WHAM! You're back in another time. The smell of Carex handwash brings back feelings of such awfulness and despair that I hope I never smell it again as long as I live.

Sometimes it can fade - nowadays I can now listen to 'The River' by Bruce Springsteen without dissolving into abject sobbing until a good two-thirds of the way through.

It doesn't just work with bad stuff though, sometimes a rush of memories has you on a high from hearing just a couple of notes from the start of a nearly-forgotten song. I indulged myself recently and bought a couple of CDs - 'Kings of the Wild Frontier' and 'Prince Charming' by the dandy highwayman and his band - Adam and the Ants.

I was fourteen years old, I thought they were the most amazing band in history and I had a crush on Adam Ant the size of Australia. I must have played my 'Kings of the Wild Frontier' LP so many times that the needle was in danger of breaking on through to the other side. I had posters in my room, I was glued to Top of the Pops an the Top 40 countdown on a Sunday night. Once, Adam appeared on the Multicoloured Swap-Shop. This was back in the days when telephones had big round dials with holes cut out over each number for your finger to fit through, and you had to drag the number all the way round to the stop then let go and actually _wait_ for the dial to reseat before you could go on to the next number. No redial, either. Well, apart from manual, that is. I dialled my poor finger raw as I tried and tried and tried to get through and be one of the lucky chosen ones to put a question through to Adam. It's possible that my lack of success was a blessing, as I'm sure my teenaged response as they cut to me would have been to giggle, vomit or faint (or possibly all three).

I once confessed to the Ex about my attempts to speak to my idol. In his understanding and compassionate way he laughed till tears appeared in his eyes and, adopting a sing-song phone operator's voice and holding an invisible earpiece to the side of his head, he said, 'You're through to Adam.' He still does it to this day.

My dad used to mock me too. He'd mutter about how unoriginal having two drummers was, and imply that Adam Ant was gay because he wore make-up. He'd deliberately mis-hear the lyrics and then sing them wrongly at top volume. 'Stand in the river' indeed!

Anyway, back to the present. I've been listening to both albums and can vouch that they're not CDs, they are in fact time machines. The first note is enough to propel me back in time and suddenly I'm fourteen again. I know all the words, if I shut my eyes I can see the posters I had, I can remember buying the 'Stand and Deliver' single from a friend at school and laboriously inking into obliteration her name which she had inscribed on the cover. Back in the present, I find that I've been bopping around the room singing at the top of my voice. Any family members within range are reaching for the Yellow Pages to find the number of the nearest Asylum. Ah, so what...

One morning last week as I was just about to apply my moisturiser, a mad thought struck me. I turned and nudged Tallboy, who looked at me muzzily. 'Huh?' He squinted and then dissolved into pitying laughter. I thought the white stripe across my nose looked rather dashing...

Possibly time to update the introductions...

Home

Weevil - Bristolian, divorced, remarried, law graduate, SysAdmin, aspires to purple hair

Tallboy - Oxonian, divorced, remarried too, obviously, service engineer, artist, all-round nice guy, met Weevil through mutual love of Eastern Bloc motorbikes

Sun - Weevil's and The Ex's son, 11 years old. Loves school, computer games, swimming and Toad in the Hole. Sometimes has to be physically restrained from talking about Dr Who.

Methane Boy - Tallboy and Poppy's eldest, soon to be 18 years old. Very helpful, great with kids, bright lad, builds robots n stuff, brews horrendous but strangely drinkable potions in his bedroom.

StepD - Tallboy and Poppy's daughter, 15 years old, very individual, sings, draws, writes, makes movies, loves charity shops.

Pesky - flatulent black cat, 14 years old, likes curling up on keyboard and turning her nose up at current contents of food bowl. Piercing yowl.

The Brazil Nut - crazy wine-loving Brazilian neighbour. Often to be seen at the front door with the 'I want a favour' look on her face.

The Cossack - enormous hairy biker friend, wont to drain a pan of cabbage water at one draught. Overnights regularly at Weevil Towers, accusing those who don't keep up with his wine consumption of being Methodists.

Family

The Ex - split 6 years ago, still friends, lives a mile down the road.

Poppy - Tallboy's ex wife, mother of four, always on the go.

Network Guy - Poppy's husband, father of Beyblade Boy and Thomas Fiend.

Mum - Weevil's mum, owner of two light brown dogs. Once exclaimed "What a wanker!" during Sunday dinner as a man with strange boots on walked past outside. Her plans for world domination are almost at the end of stage 1 - move into a small village and TAKE OVER EVERYTHING.

Brummie Stepdad - lovely man, loves walking and wine. Once spotted doing 60 year old Eminem impression with new petrol strimmer and mesh mask.

Dad - Weevil's dad, moved to little place in France. Married to:

Wicked Stepmother - little, killer sense of humour. Two cats - one diabetic, one with half a tail missing. Large smelly dog resembling hearthrug.

Cartographer - Weevil's brother and former arch-nemesis. Married to:

The Planner - lovely sister-in-law. Takes no prisoners, has yet to forgive Weevil for buying Alan Partridge DVD's for Cartographer for Christmas. Expecting first baby.

Work

Baldrick - Weevil's boss and all-round shiny guru. Often spookily knows what Weevil is thinking thus rendering her unable to bluff her way out of foul-ups.

Lanky Herberts 1 & 2 - Sixth Formers employed a couple of afternoons a week to help with the network. Often find it useful to be given instructions at least twice.

Horace the Happy Hacker - Student with precocious computer skills. Always trying to find his way into places he shouldn't go and doesn't miss a chance to avoid doing coursework. Glossy, healthy-looking coat.

Java Boy - Sixth former who discovered our coffee maker in the Cupboard of Doom and who has traded the inconvenience of keeping us supplied with coffee for the benefit of joining us in a mug or two. Once made some excruciatingly delicious doughnuts.

Strange things crop up here and there when you're in network management. Mostly, it's just people saying 'My computer doesn't work'. This is a multipurpose message, meaning anything from 'It's switched off at the mains but I can't be arsed to look' to 'I clicked something but now I think it was a bad idea and I don't like what happened' to 'there's smoke coming out of the back!' Sometimes we get something more interesting...

A couple of days ago, a laptop ignited on the bench. Baldrick asked me if I could smell anything. Tempted to chide him for descending to schoolboy nonsense, I replied in the negative. Then the laptop next to him belched smoke and expired. Ah... It wasn't as impressive as the smoke cloud I created when I pinched a wire while reassembling a PC and shorted out the internal speaker lead. That went up a treat, I can tell you. In front of a classful too...

Anyway, back to requests for help. Yesterday I was called up to an office by a staff member who assured me that the comms cabinet on the wall was vibrating so much that they were unable to print. The wall was certainly vibrating, but the switches in the cab contained moving parts no more than a few centimetres across, and I was pretty sure that they weren't the cause.

Turns out that there is a wall-mounted heater in the classroom next door; the fan was on its way out, hence the vibration. Sorted, then.

My favourite fault report of recent times, though, has to be the one which started 'Why can't you Goddam people sort this Goddam computer out?'.

Today, a member of staff was in our office talking to Baldrick and myself. The conversation concluded, a dreamy look coming over her face as she looked down on Baldrick's shiny bare head. 'I'd really like to stroke that', she said, and then wandered off wistfully.

The Brazil Nut's washing machine has been out of action for a while. The first I knew of it was answering a ring at my front door on a Sunday afternoon a couple of weeks back to reveal the Brazil Nut wearing her 'I need a favour' expression and trying to hide a large laundry basket behind her back.

Tallboy took the washing machine to bits; I acquired new bearings and a fresh element. We make a great team... All the new stuff went on OK but putting the machine back together without a leak was more of a challenge. We popped round last night to check for leakage and saw a little puddle on the garage floor. Tallboy was instantly on his knees with his head in the machine, the Brazil Nut and I chatting idly next to him.

Islay lay on the floor, legs akimbo, imploring. As I obliged with a tummy rub, I told her what a little strumpet she was. At that, she turned her head towards me with a look of such deep intelligence that I felt moved to say 'It's as if she understands everything I say,' before spoiling the effect rather by continuing, 'and I'm pretty sure the dog picks up most of it too!'. This elicited a most satisfactory squeal of outrage on the Brazil Nut's part and led to light bruising of my upper arm.

She forgave me enough to resume chatting, and I told her about a sudden death I had heard of the day before. 'Oh,' she said, 'if I was going to drop dead, I'd like to know about it beforehand.' I disagreed - without warning is OK, here today and gone tomorrow and all that. Why, I asked, would she want to know in advance? 'If I knew it was coming, I'd prepare,' she told me. How, I wondered. This flummoxed her a little, and as she flailed around for an example, a muffled voice came up from the bowels of the washing machine 'What, so you could lie down on the floor first?'

I have to admit to a partiality for pickles. Tallboy is disgusted by them, joined in the nose-wrinkling corner by the Sun. Methane Boy is here with me in the yummy crunchy corner, consuming pickled onions with such relish that he has, on occasion, been known to drain the residual vinegar from the jar in a single draught.

Poor boy - he's deprived, you see. Poppy has an intolerance to onions, so they are not available in her household. Here at Weevil Towers, Methane Boy is free to eat as many as he likes, creating his own pickle extravaganzas, including incrementally huge attempts to determine the maximum size of whole onion that he can successfully pickle. Best one so far, about three inches in diameter.

On a shopping trip last month, I managed to smuggle a 1.5kg jar of gherkins into the trolley, to be discovered at the checkout by a surprised and slightly queasy Tallboy. On arrival home, the shopping was stowed in record time. Well, most of it. All of it, in fact, save one item. I grasped the jar lovingly and twisted. I grasped more lovingly and twisted harder. In the top ten of my annoyances is asking a bloke to help me out with opening jars, but as the blood pounded in my temples and veins stood out on my neck, I knew I would have to concede defeat.

I felt better almost immediately as a casually triumphant Tallboy struggled with the jar too. In the end, he also had to admit defeat and handed the jar to Methane Boy, who opened it with a flourish and little apparent effort. Tallboy had 'loosened it', it appears. I didn't care who had opened it, I just wanted to get stuck in to the gherkinfest. Yumsk!

It was a large jar, full of plump gherkin torpedoes. Methane Boy and I had our work cut out, but in the end we comprehensively vanquished it. Tallboy peered into the sad-looking murk that was left when all the gherkins had gone. Reaching for a fork he chivvied the flotsam around mournfully. 'You didn't feed them, now they're dead.' Actually, it did look a little like an unkempt aquarium. Ewk.

The next installment of gherkins in a huge jar arrived last week. I couldn't open the bloody jar again, even though I tried smacking the lid against the worktop to release the vacuum. All that did was dent the lid and make it even less keen to come off. Tallboy also failed to remove the lid manually, and with Methane Boy elsewhere, we had to be cunning. Tallboy trotted off to the garage and came back with the biggest adjustable wrench he could. It was miles too small for the uber-jar.

He stood and mused for a moment, then I swear I saw the inspiration hit. He grabbed the jar and disappeared off into the garage with a sly look. A minute later, he reappeared, the lid jangling loosely on the top of the jar. In my anticipatory excitement, it took a while for anything else to permeate. Hang on though, the top of the jar was wet, in fact there was gherkin juice everywhere, dripping on the floor, on my hands, on Tallboy... 'Erm', he said in response to my enquiring look. 'I -er- I opened in the vice.' Accompanying his words with a sad mime re-enacting the events, he continued,'I had to hold it on its side, you see. And I thought it would only open a little if I was careful. But I was wrong...'

My combined crunching/cackling followed him upstairs as he went to change his besmirched sweatshirt...

So, the other night I was idly mooching up and down on the stepper in front of the TV. Tallboy was engrossed in eBay in the corner, and I was building up steam to go and run us a bath. Now some people might have been stepping up and down with a rhythmic determination and beads of sweat dripping into their eyes. No, scratch that, they'd have had a sweatband or two on. And wrist weights too, for that extra burn. To be fair, I did have a little something in each hand - the TV and Freeview remotes. A girl's got to have some input when she's bobbing up and down...

step...step...step

Flicking up and down through the channels, I lit upon QVC, always good for a guaranteed non-taxing five minutes. The tat levels were too high for me to last long, though; my finger twitched and away we went again.

step...step...step

My next stop was a quiz programme. Not a quiz show in the usual sense, but a small, sparsely furnished studio containing a pair of jolly presenters and a board. The board was sporting a simple-looking problem for viewers to solve: the answer looked like it should have been 4, but knowing these programmes, they expect you to solve it in rather a non-straightforward way, and the answer was probably 45,872. And a half.

step...step...step

Now this really piqued my interest. I listened to the patter of the hosts as they wheedled and persuaded the sofa-bound viewer not to let some other herbert phone in with the answer and swipe it from under their noses. 'I really want to give you this money,' said the girl, in tones of deepest sincerity. 'I predict a winner in the first ten minutes of the show!' opined the bloke, subsequently going on to refine that estimate to twenty, thirty, forty and then sixty minutes. (Yes, I did keep watching. It was so bad, I had to...)

step...step...step

Punter after punter called, many of them proffering the answer '4'. Even the presenters ended up jumping up and down and beseeching the sofa-bound to pay heed to the inaccuracy of this number. I became more and more intrigued as to the real answer. I tried to solve the problem as many different ways as I could. I too came up with the number 4 but resisted the temptation to give the nice TV company 75 of my hard-earned pence.

step...step...step

The pattern of the call-taking went thus: the bloke and the girl took it in turns to answer calls, first asking 'Who's that on the line?', then ignoring the response and not referring to the punter by name during the entire conversation, following up with 'And where are you calling from?', again ignoring this information, and finally asking for the answer. Which was, depressingly often, 4. Quite a number of the callers sounded elderly, conjuring up pictures of pensioners turning the electric fire down to one bar so that they could afford one more call to try to win the jackpot and keep themselves in oxtail soup all winter.

step...step...step

One dear old bid called in to have a bash at saying the number 4 live on air.

Bloke: Hello! Who's on the line?

Bid: Maud

Bloke: Hello! And where are you calling from?

Bid: Wrexham

Bloke: And what is your answer?

Girl: mmmmmmfffffffff

Bid: Is it .... 4?

Bloke: Awww no, sorry, we've had that one before, never mind, call again.

Girl: MMMMMMMMFFFFFFFFFF

Bloke: What's up with you?

Girl: *gasping for breath* Where did she say she was from?

Bloke: *shrugging* Dunno, why?

Girl: *keeping it together, but only just* Did she say Rectum?

Bloke: *puzzled* I don't think so *brightening somewhat* but it was a clear signal if she was!

Girl: *multiple hysterics, general jigging around and flapping arms, laughter till tears &c*

Bloke: *listening to screaming producer in his ear* Wrexham! She said Wrexham!


I'd stopped stepping by this point. I was transfixed. And on the verge of hysterics myself. What on earth did she think had possessed a little old dear to call up a live quiz show and claim to be from Rectum? I've been giggling about it all day...

... is anyone there?

Er, hello again. I've resisted the posting itch for too long; life has settled down a bit, and I missed blogging so much, so here I am.

A lot's happened over the past 15 months:

Tallboy and I got married. In secret. On April Fools' Day. Seriously.

Nine days later I had an accident on my bike, fracturing my arm but otherwise walking away in one piece. Fortunately we'd just sorted out the wills... (Tallboy doesn't think that's funny)

The Brazil Nut and family went to Brazil for a month and came back with a stowaway.

Methane Boy has passed his driving test and has offers of University places coming out of his ears.

I've lost three stones in weight (or 19kg for the metric amongst us).

Dad moved to France with the dog. And both cats. And my Wicked Stepmother, natch.

The Cartographer and the Planner are expecting a baby. Probably. Though to be honest, with the Cartographer's genes in the mix, it's just as likely to be a gibbon.

I've learned so much about IT that most of it has leaked out of my ears during my sleep, leaving little puddles of subnet masks and DNS records on my pillow.

I've bought a domain or two (including weevilstepmother.com), built more PCs than you can shake a stick at, and learned the joy of coding.

Shouty Neighbours' 15 year old daughter is expecting a baby. Just like both her elder sisters who became pregnant while still under age. The father? Her sister's partner. Hang on, am I the only one detecting a pattern here? And whatever you do, don't get me started on her ASBO-in-waiting little brother...

Ooh yes, and there are new characters to introduce to you, including Java Boy and Horace the Happy Hacker. Both of whom have read the blog. In HTHH's case, not only did he read every word, he even made the cake. Now that's committed stalking!

I think that'll have to do for now, though I'm itching to tell you about the little old dear, the puerile TV presenter and the naughty word - it'll keep.


*looks round with a quiet smile*

It's good to be back...