Who decided that pine = clean

Am I unaware of some natural predilection of pine trees to clear up after themselves? Is it perhaps some ancient tradition that before we had the chemical means to remedy bad smells, readily available pine leaves/sap/bark was used to reduce odours? I have never actually smelt a pine tree specifically, but I'm pretty sure I have never smelt anything like pine scented air freshener or toilet cleaner whilst wandering through the woods, so I can only assume that the smell we now call 'pine' is an extrapolation on the smell of some part of a tree rather than an accurate representation of the natural smell of pine.

I wonder if the other trees are aware that, by virtue of their exclusion from the world of cleansing products, they all fail to measure up to the sweet aroma of pine. Do they all feel hard done-by? Do pine trees get together and make fun of oaks because nobody wants their toilet to smell like an oak tree? Maybe Christmas trees and pine trees get together to enjoy their privileged status of being exalted by the human race either as decoration or nasal adornment. Perhaps they are shunned by other trees for aiding and abetting man despite his noted antagonism towards their fellow trees, which would be a shame seeing as Christmas trees never seem to survive the optimistic new year 'planting in the garden' and pine trees presumably don't even get near the reproduced smell that bears their name, let alone any royalties or even preferential treatment on the back of it.

Having thought about this for way too long, I am now considering a time consuming and ultimately pointless project to reveal the origins of pine scented products, so I can only hope that something else crops up to distract me before I end up wasting my time and boring other people rigid with my tales from the pine project.

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.

Living with a hedgehog

The first thing to know about living with a hedgehog is that they smell. It's not the first thing I found out about living with a hedgehog, because I have little to no sense of smell for periods of time and don't really notice that it's gone again until someone says 'What's that smell' and I have to either admit that I can't smell it (which usually results in them asking me questions about not being able to smell that I don't know the answers to), or I have to guess a smell from the look on their face and pretend that I can smell it too, which can go drastically wrong.
 However, the Boy Wonder reliably informs me that our hedgehog smells, which is unsurprising given that he is used to outdoor life in the country where pretty much everything smells, and anyway there's enough air to make smells go away quite quickly unless it's a really big area of poo in a field. I didn't really realise how much the country smells until I moved to some country, and bearing in mind that I can only smell, at a guess, two thirds of the smells available to me, it must really smell to everyone else. On the plus side, we do live near a tannery which is another surprisingly smelly business and having limited olfactory ability is definitely a blessing when it comes to the once or twice a month when they do whatever they do that smells so bad.
Another useful thing to know about living with a hedgehog is that they eat REALLY loudly. Not just quite loudly like you might think when someone says a small creature eats really loudly, but seriously loudly, to the point where you can hear our hedgehog eating in a box downstairs from our bedroom upstairs - not a huge distance, but certainly further than you would expect to hear a hedgehog eating over. (Or, to be more pedantic, a distance over which you would not expect to hear a hedgehog eating.) There are a few other interesting things about living with a hedgehog to do with an apparent fondness for burrowing into towels, a cheeky way of pretending to be on the verge of death one minute by breathing all oddly and then getting up, running about and eating some food the next minute just to keep you on your toes.
 Another hedgehog fact, further to a conversation with our local hedgehog hospital, is that our hedgehog now has pets of his own. I bought him wax worms, which are little caterpillar kind of things which will turn into wax moths if left for too long. Hopefully our hog will eat them all before it comes to that as the Boy Wonder hates moths and being as he is the one who is enduring most of the smells, it seems a bit unfair to inflict a live moth farm on him too.
 To his immense credit, the Boy Wonder is really very understanding and even came with me to take the Hog to the vet yesterday - he makes some pretty weird noises and because he spends most of the time hiding, sleeping and waiting until we go to bed before getting up and stampeding around his box it's hard to tell whether the noises are symptoms of some kind of illness or just normal noises for a hedgehog to make. Our vet is a very nice man - I took Mogbad, our stolen cat to him, and even when he fell out of the scales and weed on the table, nice French vet man was overwhelmed by his attempts to get attention and joined me in wondering how anyone could abandon him (more on Mogbad at some point). So I wasn't entirely surprised when nice French vet man was very nice to Hoggle, describing him as 'very sweet' and giving me props for taking him on.
However, nothing quite prepared me for the sight of nice French vet man trying to listen to Hoggle's chest through a stethoscope pressed to his spines - it looks about as ridiculous as you would imagine such an endeavour would look, and I was very glad to be there to witness it, particularly when the lovely vet turned to me and said 'I cannot really 'ear anything' with an admirably Gallic shrug.   As it turns out, so long as he is eating, defecating (medical terminology for the vast and unholy deposits he seems determined to leave in his water bowl) and curling up when poked, that's about all the signs you can hope for from a healthy hedgehog and I am now reassured about his health, meaning that I won't have to mute the TV every 10 minutes to attempt to engage the Boy Wonder in yet another thrilling game of "cough, sneeze or grunt".
 All in all, whilst it is quite fun to have a hedgehog in the house, don't let the fact that they seem to do all right in the wild fool you - as soon as they know you care, they need a constant temperature of 20 degrees, insects and live worms to eat to keep their teeth healthy, a never-ending supply of places to poo and people who don't mind waking up at 5 in the morning whispering 'was that a burglar or the hedgehog?'. Oh, and you have to keep them until after the last frost of the spring, so he's living with us till April now.