» Accidental innuendo

Childcare gone wrong
My sister is the anxious, controlling type (and is a bit on the stuffy side), so it took a good few years for me to convince her that maybe, just maybe, I was trustworthy enough to look after her daughter for brief periods of time - like changing her nappy whilst my sister was on the phone in the next room.

Anyway, my niece was about three, and I'd been finally trusted on my own with her for a few precious moments at a family get-together, whilst my sister and her husband had gone to fetch drinks. My niece is excited about her juice. At this stage, it is worth pointing out, any drink that is not water or milk, is juice, and is terribly exciting, and highly desirable.

She's talking about her juice:

'my juice'
'yes, your juice'
'I have orange juice'
'yes, orange juice is nice'
'all gone'
'good girl, more juice later'

The usual exciting exchanges ... It's at this point that she spots my beer. Or juice as she likes to call it. Hey, I can get on board with this mentality, they do share a lot of similar qualities ...

'More juice' (pointing at my pint glass)
'No, this is my juice'
'I have your juice'
'No, this is special juice'
'Children's juice that you like?'

It is at this point that my sister returns. Having heard none of the previous conversation. And that I utter the immortal line:

'No, I like lady juice'


Why do these things come out of my mouth!
(Sun 15th Jun 2008, 3:11, More)

» Picky Eaters

Fussy cats ...
While we're on the cat thing, mine is distinctly odd when it comes to food. I do try to make her eat meat, cos thats what cats are supposed to eat, right? You wouldn't think so with Meg. She licks the jelly off cat food and just leaves the meaty chunks behind to dry up into horrible manky lumps. Give her fresh fish or meat and she'll just ignore it, but leave your toast unattended and she's on it like a flash. Some of her favourite foods include naan bread, chocolate ice cream, chip-shop chips and carrot cake. The other day I caught her eating some of my vegetable curry (a decent spicy one, too!). Her absolute favourite one though. The only thing she will jump up onto the kitchen surface for? Soya margerine.
(Tue 6th Mar 2007, 19:16, More)

» Pet Stories

Bad boy Tom
Neither of my cats have ever accepted that they are, indeed, cats. Cute and fluffy they may be, but stereotypical cat behaviour? How boring and unoriginal.

Tommy's problem seemed to be related to a slight lack of inhibition when it came to his manly ways. He was shot in the head as a youth by kids playing with BB guns, and that seemed to signal the end of his interest in playing with cat toys or chasing small rodents and birds. Tommy would come home, sometimes after days away, covered in blood (often clearly not his own), mud, grass stains, oil, paint, you name it, and he would stay that way for weeks on end. He never cleaned, and wasn't big on sleeping much either. So, what did he do with his time? Fight. That's all life was about for our Tom. There was nothing he wouldn't challenge, and no-one he feared. You'd regularly hear foxes screaming out the back, and smile, knowing that Tommy was beating them in a fight again. It was only when I went to put the rubbish out one night that I caught a fox trying to run off down the alley, blood gushing from his neck, and three other foxes watching from a distance, and I realised just how hard Tom was. He was still hanging from the fox's neck by his jaws, trying to use his back feet as a brake.

I have to say, I always admired Tommy for his cunning and bravery, until the time I went to investigate his frenzied growling and caught him chasing a JCB down the street.
(Sat 9th Jun 2007, 19:41, More)

» Strict Parents

They never figured out it would have been better to let me wear jeans like the other kids ...
My parents like to think of themselves as middle-class. This means going to every length to cover up their inner-city Birmingham/Paisley accents and upbringing. It also meant buying our clothes from jumble sales as kids (with strict warnings to never tell anyone) so that they could afford to live in a fairly large house in one of the 'posher' estates. Its all about apprearances ...

Its relieving to know we weren't the only kids not allowed to watch ITV, due to it being too common. My Dad used to frown on Channel 4 too, until I finally convinced him to compare the Channel 4 and BBC news in the mid-nineties. Anyway, they had an interesting combination of absurd strictness, and extreme permisiveness, apparently depending on how things would look to the neighbours, and whether it was likely to affect me going to university and getting a good job (I was even warned I would be disowned if I didn't go to uni).

Me and my sister weren't allowed Barbie dolls, as they were 'far too tacky'. No, we had to play with Cindy dolls and Sylvanian families, which obviously weren't tacky at all. My mum used to get my primary school teachers to give me homework to do, at a time when no other children ever had to do homework. Then she would make me stay in during the holidays to do it, while the other kids played out on the street - something I was never allowed to do, for fear of annoying the neighbours.

At Secondary school, I was the only kid in my class forced to wear the 'recomended dress' of black trousers, white shirt, and black sweatshirt - whilst all the other kids wore jeans and trainers. Woo. What it took them over 2 years to figure out, is that I'd buy really sheap sluttly clothes at the weekend with my pocket money, and get changed after they went to work in the morning, and then back into the 'recomended dress' before they got home from work. So from the ages of 12-15 I'd generally turn up to school in mini-skirts, 3 1/2 inch platform heels, and tight, low-cut tops. I went from being a social outcast, to the one who every one knew and gossiped about, I don't think that was quite what they were hoping for when they decided I should be 'different'. Eventually they figured out that my school clothes were always miraculously clean. I wasn't allowed to pierce my ears until I was 16 because it's 'too tacky'. Two weeks later, my mum decided it looked good and had hers done too.

At the same time, I was always encouraged to try alcohol (drinking wine with dinner is cultured you know) and I used to go to the pub from the age of 13 with my parents' blessing - as long as it was with the right friends. They even bought me nice bottles of wine to take to parties when I was 15 (instead of drinking something cheap and tacky) and would give me a lift into town to go clubbing, to save me getting the bus. They'd let me go off to my bedroom for hours with boyfriends (surely they knew we were having sex??) but if I got anything less than an A in school, then there would be all hell to pay.

To be fair, despite the sex and underage drinking, I was a perfect child - no smoking, drugs or antisocial behaviour - but I always insisted on doing it my own way, which would lead to MASSIVE rows. My mum actually stopped speaking me for almost a year when I decided to take a gap year and move to London with my then boyfriend.

Having said all that, one friend's foster parents made her join a cult and stole all her money, another's Dad used to beat her, and my mate's dad used to anally rape him as a kid, so I can't really complain.
(Fri 9th Mar 2007, 22:03, More)

» Picky Eaters

I hate looking so picky!
Ok, I'm veggie and thats my choice.

First of all, let me point out that most of the decent vegetarians you won't even realise ARE vegetarians. We don't go on about it, or make any kind of fuss, and there's plenty of other things to eat, so you could easily spend a week with me without realising that I just choose the non-meat options. I recognise that while its right for me (I don't miss meat, never crave it, and am nutritionally sound), its not how others choose to live. As for 'vegetarians' who eat fish and chicken ....

The bit where I start to look picky is my gluten intolerance (being investigated for celiac disease) and lactose intolerance. I know that some people make a fuss about food, but if you actually have these, they can have a huge impact on life. Gluten makes me so ill - it actually causes swelling in the lining of the brain that causes all sorts of nasty problems .... anyway, long story short, I miss bread, pasta, pizza, ice cream, all those things sooooo much.

I'm actually really not picky at all - the best bit about going abroad for me has to be trying new foods, and there's very little I don't like. I HATE being seen as the picky one just because I can't eat sandwiches or soy sauce, when actually I'm dying to eat the same as everyone else! So f*ck off to anyone bitching about people with food intolerances!
(Tue 6th Mar 2007, 15:32, More)