I am a self-confessed lover of most things reality. I say most things, as even I absolutely draw the line at Australian Idol and Big Brother.

Australian Idol because it’s quite frankly a load of talentless crap, and Big Brother, because the programme is now at least 7 years past it’s ‘Sell by Date’. The first 2 series of BB in the UK were funny and captivating – due to their originality and the people who walked into the house. They had no real notion of what to expect or what wide spread coverage they would receive, and they treated each other with at least some respect.

The following series that have been thrown up on screens every year since, have however, been just plain boring. This is due to their predictability and the attention seeking w*nkers, sorry, I mean housemates, who clamber over each other to live like guinea pigs, fight like toddlers and mate like rabbits.

The audition requirements must now surely be about finding the oddest of oddballs. Those who are guaranteed to strip, clash and pash. So if you’re a blood drinking, devil worshiping, plastic surgery obsessed, brain-dead sex-o-holic, who can’t seem to make a definitive choice between girls or boys, then you’re definitely in with a shot of getting on the show.

Maybe I have just gotten very old in these past 8 years, but it seems to me that BB has spawned a whole new breed of desperate and talentless weirdos. People whose skill sets range anywhere from merely having had a boob job or a sex change, to looking like a pig, thinking they’re God’s gift or simply being the first person born without a single brain cell between their ears.

For these fame fanatics, their 16 step ‘life plan’ would go something like this:

1. Get onto Big Brother and humiliate myself on national TV.
2. Prove that my IQ really can be smaller than my shoe size.
3. Feature on the front cover of HEAT magazine.
4. Meet a fellow non-entity, and be caught in a trendy club having sex.
5. Marry and divorce the said non-entity within 3 months.
6. Turn orange, lose weight, get new boobs/haircut/wardrobe.
7. Release DVD of me lifting Gucci handbag in weight-loss programme.
8. Feature on the front cover of HEAT magazine.
9. Release a single – prove I can’t sing.
10. Date an entire Premier Division football club.
11. Apply to go on Celebrity Mastermind – get laughed off.
12. Apply to go on Dancing with the Stars – get turned down.
13. Apply to go on I’m a (Z list) Celebrity Get Me Out of Here – get accepted.
14. Humiliate myself on national TV.
15. Prove that my IQ is still smaller than my shoe size.
16. Feature on the front cover of HEAT magazine.

Of course truth be told, even if I wanted to watch Big Brother, I couldn’t. My husband only has to hear the music and he starts frothing at the mouth. And that’s not in excitement I might add.  As a rule he really doesn’t like any form of reality TV, and will generally protest for many, many weeks about what he is being forced to watch. He’ll complain about how pathetic the format is, how fake the contestants are, and declare, quite rightly, that the presenters are enough to make you want to throw up your dinner into your hands.

Over the years I have worn him down, and have somehow managed to successfully get him hooked on shows like Dancing on Ice, So You Think You Can Dance, The Apprentice, the Biggest Loser (only the Aussie version) and Masterchef. Wife Swap, I’m sad to say, is simply never going to happen.

But of all these shows, my favourite have to be those that prove that beauty really is only skin deep.

America’s/Australia’s/Britain’s Next Top Model – oh you’ve got to love them for the sheer drama and brilliant bitchiness that these girls, many of whom aren’t even old even to cross the road on their own, have already mastered at such an tender young age.  As they cry, sulk and pout over every makeover haircut, and squeal with every Tara/Sarah/Lisa Mail that appears, it seems they just can’t help themselves but to prove the theory true that models are an incredibly dumb breed. And that large groups of catty girls are infinitely more dangerous to be around than a stick of lit dynamite.

I know this stereotype of models is something of an unfair generalisation, namely because I too once shimmed my way down a catwalk, and I’d like to think I possess matter between my ears that I know how to use. But oh my God, most of the vain little prima donnas on these shows apparently fell right out of the nearest stupid tree, hitting each and every branch on the way down.

So yes, it does makes me realise that I must be aging considerably faster than I care to admit, because many of these model wannabes seem young enough to still need the placenta attached to survive. They also appear to be completely unequipped to deal with the big bad world of reality that awaits them, on the other side of the competition. A world of fashion that will gobble them up, strip the meat of their jutting hip bones and then spit them out when they’re 20, over the hill and past it.

The final of Australia’s Next Top of Model is on tonight, and as far as I can see there is only one obvious winner. In one corner you have Tahnee – a girl with a beautiful face and a body that looks how it should at 17. In other words, there is still some sign of the puppy fat that you are supposed to have at that age, if it hasn’t been forcibly starved off and thrown up.

In the other corner is Cassi – a chain smoking, bad mouthed brat, with bad teeth, serious anger management issues and a body that would look right at home on a 6 year old.  In a word, she’s a Bogan. An Australian word for slapper, or a common little oik who struts around wearing micro-minis, white stilettos and a chip on her bony shoulder. Think Vicky Pollard on a hunger strike.

If this girl wins it will be a sad day for mothers everywhere. For she is the worrying proof that nowadays it’s OK to be a nicotine-stained, spoilt little madam, as long as you’re stick thin and look pretty in makeup. I’d have to say she’s about neck and neck with the Pussycat Dolls, when it comes to being the best role model there is for little girls.

Having seen her act out, lash out and stomp out over the last few months on TV, I for one certainly wouldn’t buy into any brand that she was the face of, so lets hope the judges vote for the right girl to win, the one that might just prove that beauty isn’t always just skin deep…

And the result? Yeah, the right girl won. Some of the judges may have been tempted with $ signs and voted for who might make them the most cash, but thankfully the Australian public proved that poise and good manners beats trailer trash and tantrums any day of the week.

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Michael Jackson’s death will no doubt go down in history as one of those moments when everyone remembers where they were when they heard – just as when the first man walked on the moon, the Berlin Wall came down, Princess Diana died and 2 planes flew into the Twin Towers.

I was in the gym, peddling furiously away on a bike when I clocked the 3 TV screens above me and realised that something was amiss in La La Land. It took a moment to figure out exactly what was going on as the volume was turned down and my lip reading skills aren’t what they should be.

I immediately sent an SMS to my husband (which is not an easy thing to do whilst going uphill on Level 7) to ask him if he’d heard. He simultaneously called me to tell me the news. Apparently by this stage we were the last 2 people in this media led world to have heard the news.

Unsurprisingly enough, what has followed his death has been nothing less than the full blown media circus that you might expect. Every single TV channel has so far leapt with both feet onto the bandwagon, and bled the story dry for every last sensationalist drop. Tasteless jokes flooded the Internet before his time of death was even called, and desperate ‘comedians’ and talentless talk show hosts thought that the news was the perfect fodder for a few quick and cheap laughs.

Oh what a charmed and hypercritical world we live in.

A place where no matter how famous, successful or talented you are, the media would rather look for a way to break you down and pull you apart. That is of course, when you are alive. Should you die, preferably in an untimely, or even better, dramatic fashion, then every red carpet commentator and entertainment presenter will sure enough have something to say.

They will stand there, all primped, preened and ready for their moment in the spotlight, as they sing the praises of the dearly departed and talk about the travesty of a life lost. Oh please, what a load of cra*p.  These headline loving vultures are about as sincere in their grief as Hannibal Lector would be giving a rousing speech at a Pro-Vegetarian Convention.

If Michael Jackson had been in the news the day before, it would have been to make some snide reference to his weird appearance or spiraling debt. A chance to snicker over his eccentric behaviour, dredge up his checkered legal history or make even more assumptions as to why he did what he did.

If he had been on the news the day before, it certainly wouldn’t have been to commend his genius lyrics, his skill on the dance floor or the 5 decades worth of contribution he has made to the music industry. These sort of accolades, sadly, only come with death.

It would be nice to think that a man who has provided so many people with the musical backdrop for a lifetime of memories, be remembered for what he has achieved and not what he so royally buggered up.

OK, so maybe he did look rather odd, and for some strange reason chose to sleep in an oxygen chamber with a chimp called Bubbles. But for heavens sake, the inhabitants of Hollywood are powered by silicon and Botox, and half the stars are already onto their 2nd face. Joan Rivers certainly looks like an extra from Thriller, and no one seems to give her such a hard time.

And perhaps Michael Jackson did somehow manage to get himself into millions of dollars worth of debt, and then have to sell off his ranch and glittery glove to bring in some cash. But so what. Who are we all to judge? After all, those who live in houses built with credit cards, wear clothes bought with store cards and drive cars paid for by legal loan sharks, really shouldn’t throw stones.

Really, if you take comparative salaries into account, Michael Jackson buying a Ferris wheel and a couple of tigers, or a pair of 6 foot solid gold flamingos for his front lawn is really no different to the average person slapping a $1000 handbag or the latest Plasma on their plastic. Especially when they know all to well that there isn’t a hope in hell of ever being able to pay it off before the interest charges double the actual cost.

Michael Jackson lived his life on the stage, lost his childhood as a result and probably never really had a chance to grow up and experience the real world. Many would say that that was his choice, that he chose the life he lived. But those same people were also probably happy to sing along to the music he made and try their hand at a spot of moon-walking.

So lets hope, that instead of dragging his death through another media rumour mill, with endless ‘explosive’ new allegations and ’shocking’ breaking headlines, he will finally be given a little respect and laid to rest in peace, and we can get back to our regular TV viewing.

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My 2 1/2 year old son has been undergoing toilet training for about 6 weeks now, and I have to say he’s doing a lot better than I ever expected him to. Boys are, after all, meant to be a lot slower on the uptake when it comes to the learning about when to poop and pee, and when to clench and hold.

Of course there have been accidents. One next to the sofa, one in the bedroom where he shut the door on himself and couldn’t get out, and a handful around the bathroom – normally as a result of him misjudging the volume of wee in his bladder and shooting off the potty before he’s completed the job.

Trying to shoo the dog away as I re-dress, empty, bleach and wipe is the hardest part of all.

Unfortunately my sons days at nursery do set him back sometimes. Whether it’s the excitement of finger painting or the 15 or so other kids queuing up for the potty, some days I go to collect him and am met with a bag of wet clothes and a rather nasty smelling teddy. The washing machine never had such a good work out for so few clothes. One day, when he had gotten through all 3 sets of spare clothes in his Bob the Builder backpack, I arrived to find him wafting around the room wearing nothing more than a kimono from the dressing up box. That was one of those occasions when you wish you had a camera to hand.

As with many things in life, thinking about doing something is often worse than actually doing the deed. The very idea of replacing nappies with pants on a leaking child is one such time. I found the only way to really stay one step of the game in the beginning was to spend every 4th minute asking him if he needed to go, and then ferrying him backwards and forwards to the potty, armed with 16 books and a thermos of tea (for me). It was monotonous and repetitive, but it did the trick. After a while, and probably because he got so damn sick of being asked, he started to tell  me when he needed to go. Or rather he’d screech “Poo Mummy” as he scurried towards me, with one hand behind his back clutching his bottom.

Seeing that I would drop everything and leap to attention when he needed to go, he quickly realised that the whole process could be manipulated into something of a game. I’d run to get him to the bathroom, peel off the layers, sit him down and then he’d laugh. “No Poo Mummy”. Hmmmmm. That one soon wears very thin, particularly when you’re in the shower, eating your breakfast or halfway up a mountain..

A Blue Mountain to be exact. Let me explain.

We’ve just got back from spending a week in Sydney. A week in Sydney in the rain. Who knew it would be so cold, or so wet at this time of year. Everyone but us apparently. Typically, the weather forecast for the week changed upon our arrival. It went from sun and a spot of cloud every day, to rain with a touch of rain every day.

Damp weather aside, holidaying with children is always a test – a test of a parent’s patience, stamina and will to live. Air travel in particular can be stressful at the best of times (something I wrote about before),  but throw in a couple of kids and several tonnes of ‘can’t get by without you’ luggage and you can find yourself half way to a nervous breakdown at 30,000 feet.

It’s always hard to know how your children will react to leaving the ground in a vacuum packed can. My son wasn’t amused. At all. Watching the aeroplanes through the terminal window – great fun. Walking down the air-slip onto the plane – not so fun. Sitting in his seat for take off – simply not going to happen.

So what does he call out in a desperate bid for freedom? “Poo Mummy”.

Yes, just what all the passengers around us wanted to hear. I’m sure some actually recoiled and held their nose in fear. So, with the fasten seat belt sign lit up and the plane doors already closed, he was whisked up the aisle to the toilet with potty in hand. Did he need to go? Of course he didn’t, but it would have been a pretty brave parent to take the risk.

And so followed a week of untimely potty stops. In the bushes in front of the Opera House. In the undergrowth next to the museum. Sat inside the land train going around Darling Harbour. Behind the seal enclosure at Taronga zoo. On a grassy knoll overlooking Botany Bay. On the train into the shops, and around the back of the Police Station in the CBD. There was no where he didn’t go. And there was no where we could go without a potty, wet wipes and spare clothes at the ready. It really is amazing how the bowels of a small child can shape and dictate your day.

The mountains, as previously discussed, were probably the worst. When he decided he needed to go, the rain was coming in at us diagonally from both sides – with the force of Niagara Falls. We happened to be out on a nature trail at that moment, trying to take at least one photo of the view to prove we had enjoyed the grey and misty scenery. We ended up in the car pack, huddled over him with umbrellas, as he sat on the ground to give it a go. Did anything materialise?  Nope, not even with the encouraging sound of gushing water hitting his parent’s heads.

Same story in the Jenolan caves, and then twice on the way back up the mountain at night, in thick and surprisingly spooky fog. At times like this it is definitely tempting to ignore the little voice from the back seat, but the car seat was hired and the excess for damage to the car was $3000. No pee is worth that much. This time he sat perched on his potty in the boot of the car, smiling up at us, as if it were all perfectly normal.

All pit stops aside, the biggest and most costly accident that occurred during the week, was not by my toddler, but by my husband instead. We were on the ferry traveling from Circular Quay to Darling Harbour, and had decided to sit outside in the spitting rain, to take some pictures of the Opera House as we went past.

Somehow, and don’t ask me how, the camera leaped out of his pocket, dropped onto the ferry floor and slid 2 foot across to the edge of the boat. As it happened (does it ever happen any other way?), there was a gap in the side of the boat. About, oh lets say, camera sized in width. The only bloody hole, I might add, that there was down our side of the boat.

The camera then proceeded to slide through the hole and sit on the outside rim. I’m sure the camera lenses winked at me. We both looked at it in disbelief – I know I was certainly wondering what the hell is it doing down there. Having a child on my lap I couldn’t move. My husband, who swears it all happened in seconds, apparently has the reaction times of a snail on speed.

PLOP, over it went. All of our photos sank right to the bottom of the harbour. I’m not embarrassed to say I burst into tears. My husband did what any intelligent man in the same situation should do. He kept very quiet and looked at the floor. After several minutes of watching my tears mixing with the rain, my daughter helpfully piped up.

“Now you’ve lost all of my photos.” Followed by. “This wouldn’t have happened if we’d sat inside you know.” I believe she received quite a glare.

We all left the ferry in silence. Even my son knew better than to say he needed a poo. Half an hour later, when we were standing underneath the sharks inside the aquarium, my husband ventured to speak to me. “Well obviously we’ll buy a new camera tomorrow.”

And so we did.

He did feel marginally better when told in the camera shop that he was the 3rd person that week to drop their camera into the water. Had our home contents insurance actually covered us for the camera outside of the house, then he might have redeemed himself a little more. But of course, despite trotting along to the Police Station to report it’s loss (hence the potty stop), it didn’t. Now had he dropped it into a mug of tea at home, we’d be quids in – go figure.

The new camera is shatterproof, waterproof, snow-proof and husband-proof. That of course means it comes with a manual thick enough to sit on at the breakfast bar. By the next holiday I might just have worked out which setting goes with which, and how to use the ‘Beauty Mode’. Till then, it’s safe to say my dearest husband will be remaining on the other side of the lens, and paying for his act of clumsiness through the public humiliation on this blog.

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Now no one ever said being a dog owner was a glamorous affair, but even I didn’t envisage the day I would find myself out in the garden at night, giving Charlie a colonic.

It started with my daughter detecting a faint whiff of poo, which was quickly, and without too much investigation, traced back to Charlie. He was promptly directed through the dog flap and into the garage, to await some cleaning and de-clumping by my husband.

Said husband soon returned home, and was pointed in the direction of the dog. Wet wipes were brought out and the tail was lifted, but nothing was going to budge. After about 60 seconds of struggling to remove what obviously didn’t want to be removed, my husband declared that Charlie would have to stay outside that night. Now granted he irritates me on an hourly basis when he trips me up and empties my bin across the floor, but given how cold it’s become, I just didn’t have the heart to banish him from the fire and the fluffy rug – the dog that is, not my husband.

So back outside I went out, cornered Charlie, took him to the grass and proceeded to wipe him along behind me. A bit like you’d wipe your shoes to get the mud off.  He looked at me as if to ask ‘What the hell are you doing to me’, and my husband, who was of course watching me through the window, was shaking his head.

Of course, as any woman worth her weight in manipulation knows, the best way to get someone to help you with something they have already said they wont, is to attempt it yourself, make a complete pigs ear of it, then stand back as they can’t help themselves but to step in and show you how it’s done. Works every time.

As expected, my husband reluctantly reappeared outside to tell me that dragging Charlie backwards and forwards over the grass wasn’t going to shift anything, not even that large lump of poo that was still stuck half way up his backside, and clinging onto his tail fur for grim life.

So out came the hose. Poor Charlie, he didn’t look best pleased. Can’t say I really blame him, it was dark after all and far too nippy for an al fresco shower. I was told to hold him down while my booted and business suited husband squirted him. Every time the high pressure jet came in contact with his bottom he, understandably enough, tried to make a bolt for freedom. After 3 failed attempts and a couple of “you’ll have to hold him tighter than that”, my hubby resigned himself to my uselessness in the dog grappling department and realised he’d have to get down and dirty with the dog on the grass.

I took the hose, gave it a long hard squirt with the jet and then realised it was pointing in the wrong direction. Now that Charlie and I were both soaking wet, I had even more sympathy for him.

Poor thing, he lay there on the grass, with his back legs lifted a good foot off the ground and his tail held up high. By the 5th or 6th squirt he didn’t even flinch. I don’t know if by this stage he was enjoying the experience, or he was just numb to the cold water.

The whole event was very undignified for him, made even worse by me then whipping out a large pair of kitchen scissors to give him a Brazilian around his bottom. I’m sure it’s a memory he will want to block for a long time to come.

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Other Spoodle related posts:

What is a Spoodle – Exactly that..
Bad Fur Day - What happens when a Spoodle isn’t happy with his fur cut
Charlie turns 2 – Why Spoodles make excellent baby training pets

So Andrew Symonds, the Australian cricketer best known (aside from his skills with a bat and ball) for sporting rather dirty looking dreads and white lipstick, has been sent home from the UK in disgrace.

You have to wonder, when you look at this picture, whether he would have even made it through British customs without a full cavity search, without his cricketing credentials to back him up. He looks to me just the sort of shifty and somewhat arrogant person customs officials would be tripping over each other to inflict some of their ‘I’m having a bad day’ power on.

So anyway. He was banished from Australia’s Twenty20 World Cup squad for an ‘alcohol-related incident’, or, if you take the back-peddling spin doctors eloquent phrasing out of the equation, for turning up for practise half cut.

Apparently he is ‘disappointed and understandably upset’ by what has happened. So he bloody well should be. Here’s a man who is paid large sums of money to play cricket and represent his country. If he can’t do either, because he chooses to drown his cornflakes in Jack Daniels, then he doesn’t deserve a place on the team in the first place.

After all the other stunts he has pulled in recent years, being sent packing with his tail between his legs couldn’t have come a moment to soon for Australian cricket.

During the 2005 Ashes tour he showed up drunk for a one-day game, and was threatened with the sack – an incident that obviously didn’t teach him the error of his ways. He has had to receive counseling after ‘a string of behavioural incidents’, which also led to him being banned from selection for the tour of South Africa. He called New Zealander Brendon McCullum a “lump of s***” on radio, and was fined $4,000 for his troubles.

Last year he was expelled from the team because he went off on a fishing jolly instead of attending a compulsory team meeting, and in November he got into an ‘altercation’ with a patron at a Brisbane hotel.

For crying out loud, he already gets to play a game everyday that he obviously loves, and is paid incredibly well to do so. How many more chances should he get? He can hardly use his job as an excuse for the drinking and bad behaviour. Yes, cricket at this level must be stressful, but this isn’t a reason to act like a complete and utter w*nker. Shouldn’t he be grateful to have the talent to do what he does in the first place, instead of insisting on peeing it up against the nearest wall.

Why are so many sports ’stars’ allowed to become so much more important than the game itself? Why do they think they can act this way without facing any consequences? He should be permanently booted off the team to make room for someone else who really cares about the game they play.

If a politician started using public money to fund their housing…  oh hang on a minute, that might not be the best example to give… If a doctor kept turning up to work drunk, and beat up every patient he didn’t like the look of, he’d be kicked out of the hopsital before his stethoscope had time to even hit the ground. Now granted a doctors job description may he slightly different to Symonds, but only so far as a doctor saves lives and actually makes a real difference in the world.

Stop the press, hold the headlines, refresh your browsers. Susan Boyle wasn’t crowned the ‘Britains Got Talent’ winner after all.

Talk about the results not living up to the worldwide hype, or the bookmakers expectations. Despite being the favourite to sing her way to victory, the crown was whipped away from Ms Boyle and handed over to Diversity, a group of 11 incredible dancers from Essesx, aged between 12 and 25.

So why didn’t she win? Maybe the viewers, all 18.5 million of them, felt she had already achieved her place in the spotlight, and others now deserved a shot at fame more. Maybe people assumed she has her money making future in the bag, and no longer needed the prize. Or maybe people just thought the dancers were better.

Now I haven’t been watching the show, but I would have to have been blind, deaf and half way up a mountain not to have heard about the singing sensation that is Susan Boyle. I, along with some 220 million other people, watched her on YouTube back in April, when she first performed “I Dreamed a Dream”, from the musical “Les Miserables”. The video clip flooded our screens and filled inboxes everywhere. And I, along with everyone else, including the open-mouthed judging panel, sat and went – ‘Wow, that came out of that’.

Since then, she seems to have become something of the singing equivalent to Marmite – with her legion of adoring fans on one side, including Oprah Winfrey, Demi Moore and Jon Bon Jovi, and those who couldn’t wait to knock her down on the other. And there goes the fickle fame of fame, and the double edged sword of celebrity. Apparently, some people really don’t like to see a frumpy, middle aged church volunteer do well.

People’s obsession with ‘looking the part’ aside, what seems to me to be the most absurd, and probably saddest part of this whole singing circus, is that the day after losing the competition, Boyle checked herself into The Priory suffering from ‘exhaustion’. Isn’t The Priory the place that all those poor coked up celebrities crawl to, when they simply can’t deal with their charmed life and the negative press anymore?

Surely things can’t be that bad? Surely she can’t have got so bad in just a couple of months that she really feels the need for an ambulance and the assessment of the Mental Health Act – just to reconfirm that she’s tired and stressed? Why not just lock the door, take the phone of the hook and sit down with a nice cup of tea.

All this fame and glory must be a terrible thing to have to endure, it certainly never seems to make anyone happy. Oh well, she may not have won the competition, but at least she has the wealth still to come, with a reported eight million pounds up for grabs in the next year alone, from a record deal, book deal and possible film.

That should cheer her up a bit. It nothing else it will help towards the big black sunglasses, army of bodyguards and weekly sessions on the shrinks couch that she will certainly be needing, when the reality of her new life really kicks in.

I have to say, I was amazed that Susan Boyle didn’t win. Then I watched the clips below, and I could see why. She is without question a brilliant singer, but those dancers, they were just amazing.

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Watch Susan Boyle’s FINAL performance.

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Watch Diversity’s FINAL performance.

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Why is it that some companies just can’t help themselves. First they give you too much choice, flooding your brain impossible decisions. Then they fiddle around with something that already works perfectly fine – and has done for many, many years.

Take the humble deodorant bottle. It’s simple, straightforward and stops you smelling like a tramp on a hot and humid day. It’s not one of those products that really needs to be fancy. You aren’t likely to ever display it next to the cut glass or amongst the family photos. Far from it, when the deodorant bottle does makes it out of the bathroom and into public view, it is normally being whipped out of a bag and up under a jumper in a quick, trying to be inconspicuous kind of way.

And as for the design. Well it’s small, flat bottomed and rounded on the top. It’s been like this for as long as I can remember and always seemed to do it’s job to me.

So given this, why do the packaging, marketing and design gurus out there have to brainstorm themselves into a corner and come up with a new design. Surely that’s a bit like reinventing the wheel, just for the sake of making it that little bit rounder.

I’m talking, in case your wondering, about the new ‘upside down’ deodorant bottle that seem to be springing up all over the place. The adverts are of course very catchy, implying how much easier and better life would be if you lived it upside down. Would it? Really?  I can think of a number of times right of the top of my head when it wouldn’t be so great. Maybe I’m just a fan of gravity.

Of course being a sucker for new packaging, I went out and brought one. I’m a double sucker really, if you consider my line of work and insider knowledge of how to sell a gimmick to the blissfully unaware.  Still, like my other fellow magpies and lemmings, I like bright, shiny things and am always happy to jump off a cliff at least once. Who knows, maybe I thought life in an upside down world might be more fun, it would certainly put more volume in your hair when you’re drying it…

Oh fool that I am, for listening to heart over head and letting my curious fingers do the buying. The bloody thing is useless. Yes, it dispenses a pleasant white lotion onto my skin, that does, granted, make me smell good. But it also dispenses a pleasant white lotion all over my hands, down the outside of the bottle and onto the floor.

Surely it has been tested by small men in white coats for it’s capacity to spill? So how could this be? Hmmmm. Let’s think for a second.

Oh yes, that would be the incredibly stupid nature of the design. Something perhaps to do with the whole ‘let’s push everything to sit in the bottom of the bottle and then remove the lid’ frighteningly good idea. Now how many marketing monkeys, dressed in skinny jeans and Che Guevara t-shirts did it take to come up with this innovative new crap design?

Did they perhaps think a more aerodynamic shape would help the gloop to leave the rolling ball at a greater speed and velocity? It’s a deodorant not a cruise missile for crying out loud. It doesn’t need to break speed barriers or have more bleeding thrust than a Lamborghini.

But then I though, hang on a minute, maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s the way I’m holding the bottle. Perhaps after all these years I’ll find out I’ve been doing this, apparently idiot proof task all wrong. Then I noticed my husbands deodorant. Sat there, just like mine, all upside down on the shelf and caked in dried up gloop.

Haaa! It’s not me after all.

I know that products, especially those of the hygiene and beautifying sort do need to shout ‘I’m young, hip and trendy’ as they jostle for your attention on the shelf. They need to have sexy shaped bottles, bright shiny colours and lids that open in 10 captivating new ways. They need to make attention grabbing promise, ones that blind you with science and conjure up images of molecules, test tubes and miracles.

Of course all they really need to say is   ‘Use me today, and you too can have smooth, glowing, wrinkle free skin…. just like this pretty little pre-pubescent model in the poster’. Or even  ‘ Use me today, and you too can have hair that bounces and shines, never fades with age or splits when you brush it… just like this airbrushed, Botox injected, aging actress in the poster’.

That’s right. We did all notice that anti-aging creams are sold by toddlers, shampoos are sold by wind machines and foundations are sold by Photoshop. We may well be gullible enough to part with our cash, but we’re not stupid enough to believe in perfection.

So really packaging, marketing and advertising guys, here’s a revolutionary idea. Instead of spending 100’s of 1000’s messing around with the tried, tested and perfectly acceptable shapes of our bottles, jars and pots of potion, or trying to sneak a fuel injected turbo engine inside the lid, for a slightly faster roll, why not just lower the price instead?

Yes, yes, it’s a radical thought I know. But remember, the average buyer is of a terribly fickle breed. We hunt out discounts. We study the sales, promotions and BOGOFs like the Pope studies the bible. We want value for money and preferably change from a $10 note.  So make your product half the price of that snazzy shaped bottle sat beside it, and then sit back and watch us buy it right off the shelf.

The whole house is sick at the moment. Or should I say the inhabitants of the house are sick at the moment. The bricks, mortar and roof tiles are doing just fine.

An assortment of coughs, colds, sniffs, sore throats, blocked and dribbling noses are running a riot through the family right now, resulting in a never-ending stream of half used tissues that the dog keeps fishing out of the bin and shredding all over the floor. Horrible sticky spots have also been springing up all over the kitchen counter, where the medicine hasn’t quite made it fast enough from the plastic spoon to it’s unwilling final destination.

Of course all of this sniveling misery can only mean one thing. Winter has come. Aside from the calender telling me so, the arrival of this rather unwelcome season is evident for a number of different reasons.

Firstly the most obvious, it’s cold. Secondly the most expected, I’m cold. And thirdly, all the confirmation I needed, the dog is cold. Well I gauge this from the fact that despite his now thick rug like fur, he is spending more time hunting out a heat source to sleep in front of, and less time skulking around outside, waiting to ambush next doors cat.

So given the indisputable evidence above, I decided that this year I absolutely refuse to suffer the cold for as long as I did last year. I would say suffer in silence, but as my husband would be quick to point out, I never like to keep my suffering to myself. Far to damaging to the Yin and Yang of my well being I think – better out than in, and all that jazz.

So how does one prepare for the long months of shivering that lay ahead? That would be adding to, increasing and stock piling the various heat supplies in our home.  First stop, the log basket. Running dangerously low, with only 2 logs, a few scraps of bark and 4 firelighters left over from last year.  Panic over, another trailer load has now been delivered, and the new logs are stacked all the way up the side of the house. Asking for an invasion of termites of course. These logs, in the eyes of a hungry white ant, equate to a 5 star hotel, with complimentary breakfast, lunch and dinner laid on for a year. Never mind, a risk worth taking.

Next it was time to buy a new heater to go by my desk. Save me getting all scrunched up in my seat as I sit and type away for hours a day, with hunched shoulders and bright blue nail beds. The open grill on the front does mean Charlie is likely to go up like a furry fire ball if he gets to close, but if it’s a choice between my cold bones or his singed fur, sadly he loses.

Now for the bed. Last year, as I mentioned in my previous post, I ended up climbing in with half my wardrobe on, and my hoodie firmly zipped up and over my head. While this is undeniably a brilliant form of contraception, it was far from ideal. So this year, despite my husbands initial protests, I AM going to get an electric blanket. We may well wake up to find the feathers inside the duvet caked together with sweat, but at least my toes won’t need to curl up in shock as they hit the cold sheet.

Yes, I admit I am incredibly soft when it comes to the cold. I don’t deal with it well, and I definitely comment on it far more than is necessary – especially given that it is a yearly event and has been since time began. Well except for the Ice Age. Brrrrr… now that wasn’t a good time to be alive.

What can I say, I am English. It’s programmed into our DNA to hate the cold, talk about the cold and complain about the cold. Particularly, dare I say, those ‘less hardy’ people, like myself, who are born anywhere south of Birmingham.

I admit that I am that person who opens their front door in the middle of a freezing UK winter, wearing nothing but T-shirt and shorts, then proceeds to blast the person clear off the front door step with the scorching gust of central heating that escapes from my beautifully over-heated house.

So this said,  I am obviously not that person who would consider an Ice Hotel as a suitable holiday destination. I don’t care how warm the reindeer skin sheets and elk fur blankets are supposed to be. I am also not the sort of person who has, up until now at least, ventured anywhere near a ski slope. Though to be truthful, this is probably more to do with my incredible inability to balance on anything other than a flat, solid, stable surface. I would be that person who breaks their leg before even making it out of the ski hire shop.

Anyway, I digress somewhat. As I was saying, we’re all sick and sniffy right now. And I thought nothing of it until my daughter brought home a letter from school yesterday. I say a letter, what I mean is a ‘lets induce panic and clear our classrooms so the teachers don’t have to work’ announcement.

According to the WA Health Authorities, children showing any signs or symptoms linked with Swine Flu should not only stay off school, they should also remain tucked up at home until they are completely better.

So lets run through a few of those possible symptoms.

Fever, yes, we’re all slightly warm – Tick. Cough, yes, both kids sound like asthmatic dogs – Tick. Runny nose, well like I said we’re running and blocked – Tick, Tick.

Righty then. Given how long we were all sick for last winter, I’m calculating that according to the Health Authorities, we should all remain in quarantine until around about October time. Seriously, is this for real? We haven’t been, or even know anyone who’s been near Mexico, the US, Canada, Japan or Panama in the last 7 days. We don’t live near the one confirmed case in Western Australia. And neither I, nor any of my family suddenly feel the urge to eat from a pail or start rolling around in mud.

Maybe I’m just numb from the media always trying to fan the flames of panic, just to sell papers and fill headlines. Perhaps, after living through the SARS in Singapore, I am now somewhat unfazed by such a potential ‘threat’ to mankind. Either way, I refuse to get my tissues in a knot, hide away and hyperventilate over the very worst case scenario.

I don’t believe you can live in fear of every runny nose and cough. Swine Flu is just that – a type of flu. Just one of the many types of viruses that spreads around the world in seasonal epidemics, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands annually. It’s been a while since the big 3 influenza pandemics of the 20th century killed tens of millions of people. Medical science has progressed, vaccinations are now available, and according to the doctors I have spoken to, it is no longer the death sentence the media likes to portray. The emergency services here are apparently already under siege with people calling for ambulance with suspected Pig Flu. That’ll really help with those long, long waiting times at the A&E.

Call me completely irresponsible, but my daughter needs to learn and I need to work, so she’s not camping out in front of the TV all winter with a red nose and a box of tissues.  She’s had a flu jab and can wear a face mask if need be. So unless she suddenly grows a curly tail and starts to squeal, she is going to keep going to school.

And finally, before you tell me I’m being flippant, I’m not making light of the situation, merely questioning how the situation is being dealt with in the press. And to prove my point, here are some Swine Flu facts for those who are panicking, coughing or just curious.

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I have to quickly write this, because right now I am seething and spitting and at risk of exploding all over my office walls. It would not be pleasant, it would not be pretty and quite frankly I just don’t have time to clean up the extra mess.

Now everyone knows that the Internet means it’s impossible to protect your own work. And it’s a given that some lazy sod is going to come along and simply lift stuff straight from your blog to put on their own. This I accept, and for the most part I don’t really care – that is if they at least have the good manners to acknowledge where the words have come from and preferably link back to the original site.

So when I sit down at my screen and see that only hours after posting a new post, some thieving blog has already come along and taken my post for not 1 but 2 of their magpie filled sites. And when I say taken, I mean copied the lot and posted it as their own work… I could quite happily reach through the screen and ring the neck of ‘admin’.

To add insult to injury, when trying to leave a comment on my own article to suggest a link, I found that conveniently for them, this was not even possible to do.

Why am I so mad? Because I have little enough time as it is to write on my blog, fitted in as it is around my clients work, kids and life. So I really don’t appreciate having my time, effort and words robbed right off the screen.

Stealing is stealing, whether it’s with a ski mask, shot gun or a mouse. Why can’t people respect other people’s work, or better still, make the effort to write something for themself.

Grrrrrrrr…..

Mel Gibson, who looked like the very smug cat that got the cream, appeared on the Jay Leno show on Monday night to confirm something the media had already presumed to be true.  At the age of 53 he was to become a dad again,  for the 8th time over. With his children already ranging in ages from 10 to 26, and his new 39 year old girlfriend already having a teenage son with her ex ‘Mr Bond’, you have to ask why?

Why do so many people choose to have more and more children so late in their lives? And why would they even want to. Aside from the obvious fact that this planet is getting just a little bit overcrowded in certain parts, why do people, who should be enjoying their ‘golden years’ want to keep starting all over again? Of course in Celebrity land, this event wouldn’t even register on the ‘normality meter’. Juilo Iglesias Sr. became a daddy at 89, Paul McCartney at 61, Larry King at 65 and 66 and Charlie Chaplin at 73.

But even these walking advertisements for Viagra would have some way to go to beat the record for the world’s oldest successful sperm. That belonged to an Australian mine worker called Les Colley, who was 92 years 10 months when he had a baby with his Fijian wife in 1992.

I have to ask again. Why?

Anyone who’s ever had a baby will know that they just about zap the last drop of energy right out of you. In the early days of parenthood, you often find yourself drifting aimlessly around the house, closely resembling an unwashed tramp and wondering to yourself where you put that cup of tea you made 3 hours ago. You stare out of the window and imagine what the rest of the world is doing, while spending many hours sobbing over the fate of lambs going to slaughter, or the unimaginable horror of diminishing ice burgs in the North Pole. You sit and rock thin air to sleep,  ’sshhhushing’ anyone that dares walks past.

Yes indeed, babies certainly leave you jabbering away like an imbecile and running around in circles like a blue arsed fly with a serious caffeine addiction.

They need constant round the clock attention. Milk on demand, nappies to deal with the result of the milk on demand, and an enormous wardrobe of tiny clothes to keep up with the milk on demand, that somehow escaped the baby before the nappy could catch it. Exhausting just writing about it. And because of this busy bottle to mouth to bum lifestyle, babies require at least one full time live-in staff to wait on their every wish and whim. Needless to say this role doesn’t come with a 9 to 5 shift, compulsory lunch break and weekends off to hide away under the duvet.

More often than not babies can stay awake for, what can seem like anyway, months on end, and therefore so do you – the full time live-in staff. And the worst part of this not sleeping lark? When they do finally switch off for 30 minutes, either at night or in the daytime, you often find yourself so overtired and wired up on Red Bull, that you then spend that precious little time doing something completely pointless, like wiping down the fridge and defrosting the freezer. Or worse still you hover over them at blanket level, and try to determine whether their chest is still rising.

It’s really quite surprising that babies aren’t used in the global crack down on terror. Sleep deprivation is the cruelest form of torture, and most men, even those with militia background training, would crack in a matter of hours.

So all of that said, I have to wonder again why people choose to have babies so late in life. Why do some women, who have obviously opted for long and successful careers ahead of having a family, then turn around as they hit retirement age and think, you know what, now I think I’m ready to be a mum. Freedom of choice and all that, but how can that be right? Babies aren’t something that you fit in and around your workload and lifestyle. Surely if you’d wanted one that much, you might have thought to do something about it when you were still young enough to pass of as the mum.

Take Elizabeth Adeny for example, at 66 she is set to become the oldest mum in the UK. This lady, who is by all accounts a ‘wealthy divorcee businesswoman’, has obviously decided that she now wants to have her slab of baby shaped cake and eat it.

Given her age and the fact that most British clinics refuse to treat women over the age of 50, she had to leave the UK  and go to the Ukraine to receive IVF. I do believe there’s a clue hidden away in the fact that she had to do that. Should those who receive concessionary tickets with SAGA and a bus pass really have the right to be checking into the nearby maternity ward – against the wishes of Mother Natures herself?

It does make you wonder whether she’s stark raving mad or just plain selfish. Mad, because most women in their 20’s 30’s and 40’s are run ragged and completely wiped out when looking after a baby all day, let alone a toddler. Selfish, because she will be coming up for 80 as her child hits their teens.

Given that Ms Adeny is single and has no other children, this child will be left with no family to call their own, at a time when they will certainly need one the most.

So I’d settle for selfishness as the underlying problem here. But I guess wealth can buy you pretty much anything you want these days, from the live-in nanny who she already has on stand by, to a second chance at experiencing those childbearing years she was too busy to appreciate the first time around.

Ms Adeney reportedly told friends she wanted a child so she has someone to “leave my money to”. You don’t need to have a baby to do that. Leave your money to a children’s charity, or a cat’s home. Or to those poor diminishing ice burgs up in the North Pole

sdasd

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