Hygiene

The Chinese veg shop stocked up on more of those luscious honey mangoes, and in addition to her £8/hr I bought a box to thank H-etc. for her recent attention to my cleaning problem. She phoned that night to give me a stern telling off for neglect of duty, but it was worth it to come home to a clean house. I'd made a real effort to improve things in advance of her visit- did the washing-up, cleaned the cooker, bathroom and toilet- so who knows what her comments would've been had these not been done. I'm hoping that she'll see me as such a needy case that she might fit me in again as a regular client, for I am truly useless.

The toilet seat broke this week, so I bought a replacement and removed the old one on Sunday in anticipation of fitting the new before the wee wan and I went out to walk the Bad Dog, Jake, at the Braidburn. The Big Wan came home from indoor rock climbing in our absence in need of a number two, and was forced to leg it over the road to the pub for his call of nature. He was less than pleased! Since he's only 14, I'm surprised he got away with it. Girls learn to hover at an early age, but males seem to never gain the skills. Later we had a laugh riot collaborating on replacing the seat, involving scatological joking in funny voices. You had to be there...

On a recent teacher consultation, an emerging problem with Big Wan's Maths success was identified. He scored quite badly in recent tests on circle geometry, factorisation, compound computation and simultaneous equations. This is a matter for concern since his interest and talents in science might be hindered. It's probably hereditary since both his dad and I only gained proficiency and competence by self-teaching later. Luckily, I should be able to help as I found myself solving simultaneous equations while calculating my alcohol ingestion in units recently. If 0.75x (litres)= 9y (units), then 1.0x=12y.

Jake is a very bad dog indeed, with a compulsive food scavenging problem. On our Sunday walk he was behaving splendidly until we came across a group of picnicers on our way back. Their dog 'Rocky' appeared to be a bull terrier/collie cross, and was wearing a sleeveless vest as a fashion statement. It's not that I should judge, but every adult in the party was overweight, pasty and heavily tattooed. The kids weren't tattoed but were already pierced. So anyway, Jake and Rocky got acquainted and Rocky had a good go at mounting Jake, as dogs will. I made some offhand joke about Jake being bisexual, and implied that Rocky might be too, which was greeted with horror by the group. A definite faux-pas on my part. We tried to get Jake back on the lead to move on, which he resisted, but eventually succeeded. 100 yards further on the path, we thought we were past danger and could let him off the lead, when he thanked us with a tailwag and perky ears, then promptly turned around and ran at full speed back to the picnicers to beg for food. They were less than pleased, and I was ashamed at having such a willfull dog. But, as they advertised Jake at the dog rescue centre, he is 'all dog'. You have to admire his spark.