Census

I have just had the census form through the post, and although I am not one who is particularly bothered by providing the kind of general information about myself to the government, I am a little surprised to find that question 17 on the census form is apparently 'Intentionally left blank - go to question 18'. Why would they do this? The most annoying thing is that I'm sure there's probably a good reason, but without knowing it I am forced to assume that they made a list of all the questions they wanted to ask and someone left out number 17, but because all the other questions direct you towards the next relevant question they decided it was too much of a faff and so just decided on this solution.

ETA - apparently it's about the Welsh language and hence has been redacted from the English census, so I withdraw my confusion and proclaim the census relatively simple.

Books that sound more exciting with the last letter of the title knocked off

In a tribute to the game played on Cabin Pressure, I though I would put my mind to a list of books which sound more exciting with the last letter removed

Charlie and the Chocolate Factor

Adam Bed

Of Mice and Me

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fir

A Dance to the Music of Tim

The Day of the Locus (this actually sounds less interesting, like a maths textbook)

The Invisible Ma

The Sound and the Fur

White Teet

My guilty pleasure

One of the reasons that I used to like helping my Mum with the family grocery shopping is because it gave me an opportunity to indulge my guilty pleasure of touching food. Not in a perverted way, although I'm guessing Freud would have plenty to say about it, but just in an inappropriate way for food which I have no intention of buying. The first memory I have of enjoying touching food was when I was little and I used to beg to be in charge of getting the mushrooms. I never actually liked mushrooms as a child but I really liked the feel of them and enjoyed ferreting out the littlest ones, even though my Mum always tried to encourage me not to.

Since then, the variety of foods that I like to touch has broadened and now includes things like Scotch eggs, vacuum packed meats, bread, pies and cheeses. Pre-packed snacks are also a treat as they are generally soft and pliable and something about pressing them makes me happy. I know it's wrong - I wouldn't necessarily want to eat something that someone else had poked, although I always poke through wrappers, never with my naked finger - but I don't even care because I'm just going to carry on doing it whenever the urge takes me.

Library Closure Difficulty

There is plenty of news about the potential library closures at the moment, which leaves me torn. On the one hand, I love books and I don't want people to be deprived of their access to a ready and cheap supply of reading material. However, on the other hand, I suspect that there are a fairly small number of people actually using most libraries, and as someone who doesn't use them myself, I don't really feel it's my place to demand funding for a resource which may be better spent elsewhere just to support my right-on ideas about what a community 'should' have access to.

My main concern is that if enough people like me oppose the closures without actually being users of the service, we may be doing so out of a misplaced sense of what is important. But at the same time I don't really want to be someone who says 'I don't use the library, so I'm not going to oppose its closure' if there is a genuine need for the services it provides.

In an ideal world, the consultation process would be thorough enough to weed out people who oppose the closures on idealogical grounds, but because the public perception of these exercises is that they always support the government's preferred choice of outcome, it is difficult to ascertain whether there is any validity in the results at all. So how do I tell whether to lend my support to those who need it, or whether I should butt out to allow the number of real library users to be accurately assessed. What do I do?

Lovely Mum Ladies

Some women manage to make me feel as though they are like someone's lovely Mum -the lady at Budgens who always calls us 'Darling', Linda Robson and Alison Steadman. Something about lovely Mum ladies makes me feel that all is right with the world.

Charity Shop Guilt

For some reason, even though I am quite diligent about what I will and won't take to charity shops, I still always feel a little bit guilty whenever I take stuff in there. This is in part due to the fact that by the time I actually get round to taking things down to the shop, they have been piling up in the house for weeks, and I'm thrilled at the idea of not having to look at them any more. However, I think it's partly due to the fact that I always half expect them to take a glance through the stuff in the bags and shout 'But this is just a load of old crap that you don't want!' and make me take it all home again.

Because of the way I was brought up (saving milk bottle tops to buy guide dogs, cutting out used stamps to buy...well guide dogs again - heaven knows what the damn dogs are doing with all the stamps and foil, but my guess is mailing some kind of robot to the moon) I am quite fastidious about recycling wherever possible. When the zip stopped working on my coat, I just held it together for two years on the grounds that 95% of the coat was still doing its job perfectly well, and it seemed a shame to get rid of it. So the charity shop only ever gets goods of reasonable quality that could offer plenty of use to someone else, but because I don't want them I feel as though I am using the charity shop as a way of palming off my poor purchasing decisions on some other poor fool who has to store it until someone equally misguided comes along to take it off their hands.

Despite the fact that last week I saw a multi pack of women's knickers in the shop, I still feel as though a box full of unused stationery, some barely-worn clothing and an old picture frame is in some way inappropriate. Fortunately, my desire to de-clutter, when it does rear its ugly head, is so overwhelming it compels me to forget this source of potential awkwardness and sends me off undaunted to the shops complete with bags full of my crap straining at their seams.

Things I have learnt since having an open fire

1. Although corrugated cardboard, of the kind widely used to package products for delivery, makes an excellent substitute for newspaper, it is mysteriously easier to tear it across the corrugations than along them. I assumed they would form kind of 'easy tear' lines, but instead they mostly form paper cuts on your knuckles.

2. The bags that you get medication in from pharmacies contain something magical (or possibly copper based) which burns green and are therefore to be saved for special occasions.

3. You can (or rather we can) put sparklers on the fire to add a festive touch to the flames - don't get carried away and just light outdoor sparklers indoors without a fireplace though or your smoke alarm will go off for ever.

4. Cream crackers are surprisingly flammable and if you put a whole packet on the fire, you will be impressed, then terrified at the results.

5. Dryer fluff is also surprisingly flammable, although collecting enough to replicate the 'cream cracker' effect is more likely to end up in a drier fire.

6. Fortunately for us, the huge pieces of coal which sometimes get spat out of the fire are generally not that hot, but don't assume that's true of all of them and pick one up with your fingers.

7. Holding something over the fireplace to make it draw is a much more effective way of getting things going than flapping at it ineffectually with a piece of cardboard which will do little more than cover your and the entire room in ash and smoke.

8. Just because you can burn almost anything doesn't mean you should e.g cheese rind will make the whole room smell of burning cheese, chewing gum will stick to something and sizzle for hours etc

9. Paper is surprisingly hard to burn unless you're not trying to. Many's the time I have tried in vain to coax a piece of paper into flames only to have it repeatedly put itself out, but if you drop one vital receipt anywhere near the fire it will get sucked in and vapourized before you can even weigh up the merits of jamming your hand in to get it back.

10. Chimney sweeping is a surprisingly lucrative profession - ours is constantly rushed off his feet and although his charges are perfectly reasonable as far as I'm concerned, he still must be coining it in. He also has what I consider an unhealthy interest in wood burners.

11. It's apparently lucky to have a chimney sweep at your wedding, meaning he is as much in demand for social functions as he is for professional engagements.