Seat up, seat down - do people really have nothing better to care about?

I have just been reading this post on PassiveAggressiveNotes.com and the subsequent firestorm about the seat-up debate, and I have to say, I still don't get it. In a two person house (such as the Boy Wonder and I inhabit) where one is female and one is male, the question of seat up or seat down should be academic - you leave the seat however you used it. I am aware that lid down is a much healthier proposition, but, given current circumstances and the Boy Wonder's acquiescence I feel that a diatribe about the fact that minuscule particles of poo can apparently be flung around the bathroom if you leave the lid up would get short shrift when delivered by someone who keeps a box of poo with a hedgehog in it next to the fire in the living room (see this post for details).
So if we ignore the potential for 'lid down' then we are left with seat up or seat down. I will always leave the seat down and want the seat down. The Boy wonder will sometimes leave the seat down and sometimes want the seat down. He will also sometimes leave it up, but then be the next to use the facilities (hmmmm - euphemistic) meaning I never even know whether it was up or down, but had I insisted on him leaving it down, he would have to adjust it to the down position twice for no reason. So, given that he will sometimes leave the seat in the position I would prefer it in, and I will sometimes leave the seat in the position he would prefer it in, why is it that women (and it does seem to be only women) seem to think that 'seat down' is inevitably the optimal position?
I'm strangely taken with the way I have made this sound like a maths logic problem, but really, is this what the war on sexism has got us? Women still get paid less, are assumed to be jealous of any woman they do not like and have to demonstrate 'manly' qualities to get ahead in male dominated workplaces, but we get to whine on endlessly about toilet seats as though we are in the right? I've even heard some women claim that they will 'fall in' without the seat down - what?! I have always been surprised that a couple of inches in diameter can really make that much difference to whether men can hit the right spot, but to claim that your tiny lady bottom is so delicate and dainty that you will fall in the toilet is just poppycock! How would that happen? Normally the bowl is so much colder than the seat would be that even the merest touch of bum-cheek on porcelain has me back upright, but even if you fell all the way in, and got water up your crack - you aren't going to get flushed away into the sea on a flow of poo, so what's the big deal?
I think there are plenty of people who might need to think about their comfort zones - I have some issues with toilets/public facilities generally, but I make an effort to put these aside for my own happiness when I go to festivals etc. People who willingly bring the war on loo seats into their own home/office/anywhere they go regularly should maybe consider an alternative hobby.

When I had a doppelganger

When I worked at the sadly departed Boat Race, I had a doppelgänger. The Boy Wonder and I lived in Cambridge and I would quite often have people coming up to me and saying hello while I was out and about - I just assumed that they were people from the pub who recognised me because I am a delightful individual who makes a life-changing impression on those who meet me. Then people I knew from university started accusing me of ignoring them in town, and after a few times of saying 'I suppose I must have been in another world' I started asking for details and discovered that people were accusing me of being in places on days or at times when I wasn't. The final confirmation came when I went to the dentist - the lovely South African lady had her hands in my mouth and asked me how my children were. I told her I had no children, which seemed to confuse her as she started to decribe my son - apparently he was about four years old and had glasses. It was an awkward moment when I had to ask her to take her hands out of my mouth until she had worked out who I was, but I had to do it as I was worried she would undo all my orthodontistry with a careless flick of the wrist assuming she was in the mouth of someone with much more structural integrity. My mouth is a delicate palace of disaster, and after 2 operations, one transplant and years of wearing braces, I wasn't about to let some crazy lady loose in there without even knowing who I was. I don't know what happened to this person - presumably she was about teh same age as me, and if she had a son who was old enough to wear glasses when she was 20-ish, then he must be at secondary school by now. Since we moved out of town and I stopped working in a pub, I tend to get stopped on the street by strangers less and less anyway. But I do wonder what would have happened if we had met - would the world have ended, would it have been like looking in a mirror, or would we have both gone 'I don't look like that!'

Naughty Pets - Rabbits

The rabbits were definitely my idea - I wanted rabbits when I was a kid, but we always had cats, and following a particularly unfortunate spell with a school guinea pig called Hellraiser, pets of the small furry variety were discouraged from the house. So when we bought the house and got our hanky-sized garden, the Boy Wonder carpented (that may not be a word, but he did carpentry, so it should be) me a massive rabbit hutch (I can get into the top half, should I feel the need) and we toddled off to the local animal rescue centre and adopted two rabbits, sisters, one of whom has a massive afro. I was very excited so I learned as much as I could and bought them everything I thought they would need. They needed to be warm and have somewhere cosy to sleep, so I bought them one of those furry animal igloos to snuggle up in. They did look very cute when they sat in it, and fortunately I made the most of it because it wasn't long before their lovely fluffy bed was a pile of dirty, trodden down fabric scraps in their hutch. So I bought them another one, and that one lasted even less time. Then we had snow, and I walked home from the station in the snow (it was only a mile, but still!) worried that they would be too chilly in the garden, only to find that they had dragged the old top I had given them to keep warm down into the run where they had trampled it into the mud, and were happily sitting in the snow looking as though butter wouldn't melt in their tiny naughty mouths. So I gave up trying to make them warm and comfy and let them get on with their own agenda, which worked well because they showed little to no interest in me, preferring to enjoy their own company rather than come into the house where they would slide around on the floor boards and try to eat inappropriate things. Then they started digging. At first it was a hole in the corner of the run - I first noticed it as they chose to spread the soil that they had excavated all around the run, on top of the lovely grass with which we had lovingly provided them. But we stuck a brick down the hole, tried to scoop up as much soil as possible and put wire mesh underneath the end of the run. So they dug at the other end of the run, we filled in the hole and put more mesh down. They they dug in the 6 inch gap that I had not meshed because I felt mean, and we left them to it as they had already killed all the grass in the run and we had run out of bricks. Then one day the Boy Wonder went out into the garden and fell down a rabbit hole - they had dug a tunnel out of the run, round the front of the hutch and down the side. The tunnel didn't surface - they aren't trying to escape - until the Boy Wonder's whole foot disappeared into it. So we stuck a new-found brick down the hole and shook our heads at their persistence. The next day, the rabbits were sitting in the garden when the Boy Wonder went to leave for work, and he and our lovely next door neighbour had to shoo them back into their hutch. So we put a massive piece of concrete over the hole and since then they have spent most of their time in the sizable underground lair that they have constructed. It must be quite well appointed as every treat, toy and piece of hutch furniture I have ever given them has disappeared - there are currently about 4 feeding bowls, two wooden panels held together with wire designed to be used as a hidey-hole, several miscellaneous chew toys and a nifty little ball with holes in it that could be filled with treats which would then fall out when they pushed it around, all of which are underground in the lair. They would rather chew the wood that their very home is made from than any of the expensive, purpose-made items which I have bought them over the years, and although it took a while, I have now given up spending any money on things for them beyond food and bedding and trips to the pet shop often spark an internal battle between the part of me that still thinks they're misunderstood and the part of me that knows that anything I buy them will end up covered in mud, abandoned in a part of the lair they don't really use that much - maybe the utility room, or some other such decadent extension that they have down there. I assume that they are plotting evil, because plans for good could easily have been formulated from the comfort of their lovely fluffy bun-igloo and there is something about an underground lair which lends itself to the darker arts of planning to take over the world or plotting the downfall of a specific nemesis. That and doing what nature tells them to do by going underground and growing an unholy amount of fur over the winter. They know when the door opens that it's often feeding time, and will scuttle up to the top hutch for a snack as soon as I come out, but the rest of the time they remain resolutely in the Bun Cave, planning. They also, possibly in cahoots with the fish, spend a fair amount of time assuming positions that are strangely reminiscent of what a dead rabbit would look like. They have no qualms about arranging themselves in positions which simply cannot be comfortable, with their legs at odd angles and their heads lolling, only to leap into action as soon as I rush out in a panic, because by then they know I'll be so glad they're alive, I will spend hours hunting around for dandelion leaves and fresh grass to feed them. The more I think about it, the more likely it seems that our house is on some kind of ley-line which mostly affects animals in the vicinity, compelling them to undertake wildly complex and dangerous activities in the hope that their reign of terror will eventually lead to world domination. However the Boy Wonder insists that they just exhibit similar tendencies towards bloody-mindedness, willful disobedience and defiant naughtiness as I do, so maybe it's more a case of pets being like their owners.

Naughty Pets - Fish

There is either something about me or we are just really unlucky to have such badly behaved animals in our lives. Since the addition of the hedgehog, the Boy Wonder and I are responsible for a total of 6 animals - 3 fish, 2 rabbits and the aforementioned hedgehog. Technically, these are all my 'pets' (a hedgehog isn't really a pet, but as we will ultimately end up looking after him for 6 months, he counts) but the Boy Wonder does some of the cleaning and feeding work as well, though he lays the blame for their naughtiness squarely at my door. I would previously have argued that fish cannot be naughty, or that rabbits must surely have a limited ability to perform acts of evil, but now I know better. So, to catalogue the trail of destruction that tank-living fish can wreak: 1. Upsetting Mental Health/Spatial Awareness problems All the fish I have had since I went tropical 8 years ago (courtesy of the Boy Wonder - he is not entirely without blame!) have had a suicidal misunderstanding of the limits of their environment - they have jumped out of the tank into laundry baskets, onto the floor and the ancient Silver and Dollar who currently reside in my tank are notorious for headbutting the lid of the tank when excited about their dinner. 2. Pretending to be dead Ronnie, the 8 year old plecostomus who has moved house with us three times and refused to leave the tank each time necessitating vastly complicated tank moving scenes where being able to have removed all the water would really have helped, regularly pretends to be dead. He is quite shy, and as such is quite sensitive to any noise or movement in the room, which normally results in him shooting under a log to hide. However, when the house is quiet, he arranges himself in a variety of unhealthy poses, ranging from the subtlety of sideways drifting to make me think there's a problem with his swim bladder to full on lying belly up on the surface of the water in an astonishingly good impression of a completely dead fish. 3. Ungrateful destruction of gifts When I first got the fish tank I decorated it with lovely fresh plants and within a week of having fish in there, they had eaten them all. I bought more, they ate them, and so now we have a tank full of delightful/garish plastic plants which they tolerate. I think their ingratitude was best manifested when I bought them toy jellyfish - they were lovely little plastic bulb-shaped items which floated in the tank suspended from fishing line attached to a rock at the bottom. I put them in the tank one evening and by the next morning they were floating listlessly around the bottom of the tank with their fishing line caught up in the plastic plants, their anchor rocks failing to blend with the existing gravel. So, that's how fish can be naughty and I haven't even started on the others yet...

The mystery of Clamato juice

What is wrong with people? I simply cannot fathom the kind of mind that either drinks a glass of tomato juice and thinks 'Hmm, this is a tasty and strangely filling drink - what would really enhance it is something fishy' or eats a clam and thinks 'there's something a little too solid about this - and once you have realised it needs to be runnier, the natural choice of thinning agent would be something like tomato juice.' It is an unholy combination - clams and tomatoes may well go together in a bisque or soup, but a drink? Really? I mean, I'm not really a fan of tomato juice as a drink, despite an enduring love for tomatoes in almost any other form, but I can envisage how it could be enjoyed - I don't have to like something to understand what others see in it, but clamato juice is where I draw the line. One of the worst things about it (apart from the concept, the taste, the unforgivable lack of respect for both clams and tomatoes and the possibly apocalyptic nature of the horrific combination) is the 'Red Eye' which consists of a beer with a shot of clamato juice in it - I genuinely cannot imagine a less appealing beverage. I can't really drink beer much now due to being old and incapable, but when I did drink it I loved the beeriness of it. I never ever grasped a nice cold Heineken, sipped of the froth off the top, and then thought to myself 'If only this had a fishy-tomato aftertaste it would really add something to the deliciousness'. But it seems that this is just what someone has done, and quite honestly, why the first person who tried this actually bothered to tell anyone else what they'd been up to is beyond me. I can only assume that this was some kind of 'Jackass' style stunt whereby those involved were actively trying to concoct a drink which would make their friends throw up. Or possibly someone trying to poison a person allergic to shellfish by sneaking it into their tomato juice onthe grounds that you would be less likely to notice clams in tomato juice than you would in, say, a gin adn tonic. Either way, there seem to be no redeeming features of this drink - the Boy Wonder and I tried it when we were in Canada after asking a waiter what the hell it was, and three years later, the memory of it still haunts me, as does the look on the waiter's face. It reminded me of the look of smugness my brother used to get when he had oversalted his chips - he didn't like them either, but tricking me into eating them amused him greatly, and I can only assume that the phenomenon of Clamato juice is a similarly juvenile prank which has really got out of hand.

The tragedy of disappearing food - update

My last post on this topic inspired me to embark on another of my periodical and depressing searches for two of my favourite snacks - rice paper and unflavoured/salted Pepperidge Farm Goldfish. Technically the main problem with the Goldfish is that not one of availability so much as location. I am personally aware of several shops where I could theoretically purchase as many bags of Goldfish as I want, they're just all in the US. Rice paper is quite another matter - I know that if it is available, I should be able to get it in this country. So a quick search of EBay revealed not only a distributor of Goldfish, but also some angel who has stocks of rice paper! No sooner had I lamented the lack of these items than a solution is found! Like a flash, I e-mailed the links to the Boy Wonder who had been badgering me for Christmas present ideas, and lo and behold, Christmas day came around and I was presented with a large box containing all the rice paper and goldfish I could ask for! The rice paper was interesting - instead of the normal four coloured packs (featuring orange, pink, yellow and white) these were two coloured packs including such unexplored colours as green and blue and, more importantly, printed with Euro note markings so it's like eating money. I have had monetary rice paper before, but it wasn't quite right as it always had too much flavouring and I am a big fan of the bland. I could tell these ones were different, but the proof was in the tasting, which proved that they are indeed made to the same exacting standards as the stuff I am used to. The only slight downside is the tenacious nature of the ink, which I won't explain further, but even this downside has an upside as it means that I can only eat a limited amount at a time, thus rationing my provisions and avoiding the gluttony I have exhibited in the past. The stuff doesn't even have a 'Nutritional Information' sticker telling me how bad they are for me, but what they lack in substance they certainly make up for in potato starch and colourings, so I think my insides will benefit from a more restricted intake. The Goldfish have only been broken out today - in a display of inhuman strength of will, I have managed to keep them untouched for two weeks, mostly by keeping them upstairs and keeping a range of other easily available snacks within reaching distance to avoid temptation. But today, in the absence of anything more suitable for a work snack, I brought one in and although I resisted their lure until around 10.30 once I opened the bag, there was (almost) no stopping me. They are just as delicious as I remember and I can't believe I have lived without them for so long. Things are going to have to change - either we need to have more holidays when a person can reasonably request hard to come-by snack foods as a gift, or we will have to find a house in between Pepperidge Farm and the press where they print the paper money...

Snow!

The sad thing about getting up before 7 (apart from the very fact of being awake at such a time) is that on the very rare occasions that it snows, you don't get that weird light through the curtains when it snows like you do if you wake up when it's light. And although there was a fairly hefty dusting, there certainly wasn't enough for sledging. When I was a kid, it felt as though snow was relatively common, and when it came we would go to the nearest hill with our variety of sledges, have a snowball fight and make a snow-man leaving plenty of snow to spare. If the Boy Wonder and I had done that yesterday, there wouldn't have been any left for anyone else. But, undeterred I did try to enjoy the snow of yesterday - everything looked pretty and I felt all strident and tough, but after a lunch-time wander to the garden centre to get worms for the hedgehog and another trip to another garden centre to get salt for the fish, I felt all active and worthy and decided to use the unnecessary plastic bag I had received to collect some of the rubbish I had encountered along the way. However, having filled one carrier bag, collected another one from a tree and filled that as well before I was even half way back to the office, I felt decidedly less hearty and worthy, much less enthusiastic about improving the look of the white-frosted countryside and had mad hair and filthy hands which were an unfortunate combination as the latter meant that I was unable to do anything about the former, so I ended up back at work looking like a slightly confused scarecrow. I was surprised at the variety and nature of the stuff I picked up though - there were the usual cans, bottles and bits of miscellaneous paper, but I also found a thermos flask, slightly dented, but with something in it, which had conveniently frozen solid and hence much heavier than expected, a scarf which looked quite nice but was covered in ice and mud, a book without a cover and an array of random bits of plastic. Since discovering 'Found' courtesy of my brother I have been hoping to find something of even the vaguest interest whilst wandering about the place, and I suspect that this desire played no small part in my otherwise completely altruistic attempt to clear up the countryside. But alas, there was nothing of any note to be found, although I suppose snow is not particularly conducive to paper-based discoveries. I did once find some kind of school report for a girl who was clearly in trouble and had to get every teacher to sign in a box before each lesson. I wondered briefly what she had done to warrant such a punishment, but there was nothing to indicate what that might have been. So, whilst the snow didn't mean that we couldn't leave the house, build a snowman or even create a passable snowball, it did provide a worthwhile lesson in litter picking - it's not for the fainthearted and you probably won't find anything interesting.