I thought I looked quite nice last night…until the mirror was brought out. You see, Chris and I were at my niece’s house and, after a lovely chicken dinner and apple crumble for pudding, Katie’s boyfriend, Javi, produced a handful of transfers, or “lip tattoos”, as he called them (thank goodness they weren’t tattoos!).

“Do you think these would sell in England?” he asked, handing them around.

Some were a sparkling green colour, some a sparkling red; there was an American flag design and a Union Jack; one was blue with white spots, another had stripes; one was mint green with “Merry Christmas written on it; but I was attracted to the set of hot pink lip transfers with “tease me” printed on the bottom lip. I held the pink one up to my lips.

“They are a bit big, ” I laughed.

“That’s only because your lips are thin. Anyway, you’re meant to trim them to size,” explained Javi.

“My lips aren’t thin – it’s just that yours are so thick,” I explained back.

To much merriment around the table, I trimmed the enormous lip transfers; Katie held the shaving mirror in front of me while I held the lower lip transfer to my bottom lip with a damp flannel.

“Would you like the other side of the mirror?” asked Katie thoughtfully, because she noticed I had put on my reading glasses.

“No thank you,” I told her hastily before she had time to turn it over to the magnified side, “It’s quite bad enough with my glasses on!”

A couple of minutes later I was half-way towards looking like Bette Davis in “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” The top lip transfer was another matter. I held the damp flannel in place for several minutes but the transfer would not stick to my lip. The backing paper started to come off and Katie noticed that the bright pink transfer seemed to have a life of its own – it stuck out in the air independently, like the smile of “The Joker” in Batman, on an invisible face.

“Hold on,” said Kate in a knowing tone, “I think the plastic is still on.”

It was. After several more minutes of crafting, the upper lip was in place, or almost in place – the ends had curled and, unable to adhere, hung down at the sides of my mouth like a catfish’s whiskers.

“Here, I’ll cut them off,” offered Katie as she brandished a huge pair of kitchen scissors, which at close range, looked like garden shears.

“No, I’ll do do it,” I took dangerous looking cutting implements from her and carefully undertook the tricky operation myself.

At last the cosmetic surgery (of a sort) was done and I inspected it in the mirror. I burst out laughing again and Katie was howling and rocking back in her chair.

“I look like Baby Jane,” I pronounced, “or….”

“Aunty Win!” Kate and I exclaimed together.

Now I’ll have you know that there was nothing wrong with our Aunty Win – she was the dearest, kindest little lady – but in later life her sight wasn’t the best, or perhaps she thought her lips had become too thin, for her red lipstick used to go well over her natural lip-line. Needless to say, she was an exceedingly attractive lady and I wouldn’t mind looking like her… in time.

Heartened by the success of my lip transfers, my niece opted for a jaunty Union Jack pattern and we took a photo together. You will note that the first photograph is not of Katie and me but two pumpkin heads that the boys carved out for Halloween fun.

This is another of Darren’s jokes.

A nice little harmless lizard, the type that loses his tail if you catch him by it, was walking under a gum tree in an area of bush north of Cairns when someone whistled to him from above. The lizard looked up and saw a big male koala sprawled on a branch overhead; the koala’s legs hung down languidly and in one hand was a joint or spliff (the lizard wasn’t quite sure of the difference but he knew it wasn’t a normal cigarette because the koala looked “spaced out” and his eyes were like two black saucers – not flying saucers).

“Say man, want to join me up here for a few puffs?” asked the koala, adjusting his sweatband that bore a poppy motif.

“But I’ve never tried it before,” called out the surprised rather straight-laced lizard.

“Just try a little puff – for the experience man,” the koala urged.

The lizard guessed that it was no fun to get stoned on your own so he joined the koala for a puff or two. The lizard felt a little high, but put the unusual feeling down to being up a gum tree; in fact he was convinced that he was immune to the effects of the puffs.

“I feel a bit thirsty,” the lizard laughed (he wasn’t sure why it struck him as so funny), “Got any water up here?”

“No man,” replied the koala, “but if you go down to the right of those two bottle-brush trees and past the big bush oak, man, there is a creek full of water.”

So the lizard followed the koala’s directions and found the creek; he was just about to dip his little head into the water when a pair of reptilian eyes surfaced and nearly made the smaller reptile shed his skin. Funnily, his giggling stopped.

“Please don’t eat me,” he cried.

“Why shouldn’t I?” sneered the crocodile.

“Because… because we’re related, and besides, I’m too small to be of interest to you. Do you happen to like fat, spaced out koalas?”

“Well, there is that, you have a point young fella. Spaced out eh? Now where did you say that fat koala is?” the crocodile wiped a tear with his tongue (at least the lizard thought it was a tear but it could have been saliva.)

The tiny stripey lizard stayed by the creek and quenched his thirst while the crocodile sought out the koala sitting in the gum tree past the bottle-brush trees.

“Hello there!” snapped the crocodile.

“Hey man,” the koala’s eyes widened, “you sure did drink a lot of water!”

I have a confession to make. Oh, it’s nothing awful but, all the same, I need to get it off my chest. It concerns dinner tonight. Why would I have to make a confession about dinner? Well, normally it is just Chris and me so when I think something tastes a bit funny, for example mince (mince often tastes funny to me which is why I sometimes go vegetarian), I might ask Chris, “Do you think this mince tastes peculiar?” And when I ask him that he always comes around to my way of thinking and we throw it out and go veggie for a while. Anyway, it wasn’t mince, it was a beef casserole with dumplings…

When I tasted my first mouthful of dumpling I thought, “That’s odd, it tastes like I used old suet.” I know what old suet tastes like because I once made a spotted dick (not to be confused with Moby Dick) for Dad and when I checked the date on the suet packet it was about three years out of date – and it tasted like it! But it wasn’t old suet to blame this time because I didn’t have any suet in the cupboards and I had to make the dumplings from vegetable fat, not out of date; I checked on the Internet first to make sure that you could make dumplings from anything but suet – they advised any other fat but they got it wrong – the dumplings were exceedingly light but dry and floury. I noticed that neither Chris, nor Susannah and Darren (our daughter and her boyfriend) went back for second dumplings, which is weird seeing as they were so keen on dumplings initially.

“Another dumpling?” I offered.

“They are quite filling,” answered Susannah, patting her stomach.

However, I must conclude that the dumplings, though definitely odd, were not responsible for the “old” taste that I could detect. I wondered if it was the herbs I had used, in both the dumplings and the casserole itself – a double whammy! But, no, it wasn’t a herb taste… and my mixed herbs were fresh; well, not fresh – they are dried – but newly bought.

As I delved into the meat and vegetable part of the dish my taste buds continued to assailed by the “old suet” flavour and, whilst the conversation around the table carried on, my mind wandered back to the steps of casserole preparation. There were the potatoes – bought on Saturday, no queries about them. Likewise the carrots and the onions – perfection. Ah, but what about that quarter of a swede (an orange vegetable – not a person from Sweden!); yes, what about that bit of swede I had found in the vegetable drawer of the fridge? Some of it had gone into the pumpkin soup and that tasted alright – didn’t it? Or did it have a slightly “old” taste? Or was that the previous pumpkin soup from last week? It could have been… It probably was… oh dear. That bit of swede still looked okay….

All I can say is that nobody mentioned anything about the funny taste, but that there was plenty left over for tomorrow… if anyone should have a yearning. I say, want to join us for lunch? Or have a doggy-bag? Yes, do call around if you’re longing for hearty winter warming food with funny dumplings, but please, don’t let on to Chris, Susannah or Darren about the suspect swede. Shh!

And here is a quote from Moby Dick, which could have some resonance with the diners at our house tonight (if they read this, which I hope they won’t) – “I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.”

You probably think it a bit odd, though not hinky (US – dishonest or suspicious) I hope, for a woman of my age (whatever that may be) to buy an enormous pack of PG Tips teabags just because it had a free dinky minky monkey looking at me through the packaging; but honestly, how could I resist?  Look at his dear little face – could you resist him? Chris dubbed him Minky.

Having got Minky home I didn’t know what to do with him. I thought he might be a good paintbrush holder… but no, he doesn’t have enough orifices to be of any real use in that area… and he kept mucking around. Poor Freddy, who sits sedately on a special bench (not Special Branch) on my desk every day, quickly became an object of ridicule. Now, as you can guess from the photographs, Freddy has a thing about his baldness, which is why he wears a nice wig made from the “old man’s beard” that I picked last year – no, not Chris’s beard, you know… the plant! Minky pinched Freddy’s wig and later, with his great bulk and weight, the naughty monkey upturned the bench and sent Freddy flying head over heels.

It seemed to me that I should enlist the services of another, larger and more responsible, monkey called Andy. Now with all the babies being born into our family recently Andy has suddenly become weirdly paternal, I say “weirdly” because these days modern parents have completely different ideas on how to bring up babies and children. Needless to say, Andy is rather old-fashioned and believes in the old methods. Andy, who really belongs to my sister Mary (but she couldn’t handle him so we gave her some much needed respite care) was touchingly concerned that Minky should have something to eat; and to think that I had reservations about leaving Minky with the older monkey – I worried that Andy might be jealous. On the contrary, Andy took Minky on his knee and tempted him with the other half of his banana; Minky doesn’t fancy half-eaten bananas – I think he worries about the spit from old monkeys. Andy put the young recalcitrant over his other knee and, after an exercise in tough love, I stepped in and tossed Andy onto the floor… because I love him.

After a nice cup of PG Tips tea and a Tunnock’s Caramel Bar (I know what naughty monkeys really like) Minky said that he would like to emulate me and become an artist – Bless his heart! I gave him a pen and paper, and Freddy, happy again in his wig of old man’s beard (and not terribly bright), was content to let Minky draw his portrait.

“Show me, show me!” begged Freddy when the portrait was done.

“Keep your hair on,” said Minky.

In my humble opinion neither a lady’s age nor weight should be bandied around freely… so I won’t begin to do so now; anyway, it had nothing to do with my little weight gain during our visit to Brittany last  weekend. And also, I ask you, how much difference could be made by imbibing of a couple of bottles of wine (twice daily) and partaking, overall, of several loaves of French bread, half a slice of hard German rye bread, a kilo of delicious salty Brittany butter (a speciality of Le Conquet, which, heaped on a half-slice of rye bread, makes the aforementioned almost bearable), a nibble of goat’s cheese and a taste of ricotta – sheep’s cheese (I always follow the crowd), fish and chips from the Irish pub, and one healthy oyster?

Thankfully, I was spared the agony of discovering any weight gain for a full five days after our arrival home because our “old faithful” bathroom scales, perhaps a little delirious following the euphoric effect of not being trodden on from Thursday to Monday while we were away, had decided to fluctuate its readings within a range of one and a half stone (about 9 kilos); this depended on which tile it rested on, which way I leaned, which foot I put on first and whether or not I breathed in or out, none of which effects were unusual in themselves – it had always been possible to assuage the figures using these methods – but hitherto the range had spanned between a less remarkable, and more believable, one to three pounds. Thus  Chris and I reluctantly abandoned the ritual morning weigh-in and promised ourselves a new set of scales from Trago Mills on Saturday, which was yesterday.

“I’m not going to use those scales again!” I cried, throwing myself onto the bed and kicking my legs in a similar way that I did as a two-year-old.

Now I know you shouldn’t weigh yourself in the evening but, honestly, would anyone expect to be twelve pounds heavier? It had to be the scales. Who says that a new set of scales has to be right anyway?

After my tears I noticed that I hadn’t put away the big box of winter clothes I had brought down from the upper cupboard in the morning (luckily, the jeans still fitted – I couldn’t be that fat!). The slight problem was that the filled box was heavy and the cupboard was high; also, the step-ladder was upstairs and it wasn’t very tall anyway; I would use the same Queen Anne chair, with the spindly legs, that I had used earlier.

Funnily enough, I managed to replace the weighty box without mishap (so it wasn’t my increased weight to blame). Maybe I put my foot a bit too far forward and too far to the right on the seat of the delicate antique as I mounted again with six hats in my hands. It all happened so quickly that I can’t tell you what happened first; was it the tilt, the wobble, then the crack, followed by the hats being thrown into the air, then the fall, the scream, the pain in my rear, the abrasion on my back, the sore knee… the groan? It seemed to happen all at once.

Chris was a dear. He let me swear a bit without telling me off – guess he thought that meant there wasn’t much harm done, not much more than wounded pride and a bruised bottom. And this morning he delighted in telling me that he had fathomed the secret of the new scales (he had read the instruction leaflet – he, too, must have hated those scales):

“You see? You just have to tap the centre of the scales with your foot, like this, and it re-calibrates it back to zero.”

So I waited until he was out of sight and gently tapped my foot; and holding my breath, stepped on… Unfortunately for you, I don’t hold with ladies giving out personal information willy-nilly so you will just have to take my word for it that the reading wasn’t quite as shocking or bad as yesterday. Nevertheless, I’m no longer drinking alcohol or eating bread or fish and chips; and the closest I’ll get to butter is the nice butternut pumpkin soup that I’ve made for dinner.