Being Me

My husband bought me some Ferrero Rocher chocolates for my birthday. Unfortunately for you, it got me thinking. Q. What do you call hazelnut chocolates you eat too quickly? A. Ferrero Rusher. Q. What's it called when you divide a box of hazelnut chocolates evenly between two of you? A. Fairero Rocher. Q. What do you call a hazelnut chocolate that accidentally landed on your cat before you ate it? A. Furrero Rocher. Q. What do you call a hazelnut chocolate to which you are allergic? A. Ferrero Rasher. Q. What do you call a hazelnut chocolate that's a frustratingly long way from where you are on the sofa and you can't be bothered to get up and fetch it? A. Too Farrero Rocher. Q. What do you call a hazelnut chocolate when you're being colloquial? A. Ferrero Nosher. Q. What do you call a hazelnut chocolate that goes 'Boo!' in the night? A. Fearero Rocher. Q. What do you call a hazelnut chocolate which you drop and which then bounces ag

I'm 54 tomorrow. You know you're Proper Middle-aged when .... 1. Your 93 year old Granny says, 'Oooh, really? Will you really ?' when you tell her how old you'll be next birthday. 2. People you've been feeling sorry for in the bus queue then insist you get on the bus before them. 3. You bend down to pick up a sock and try to do three other things at that level (pick fluff off carpet .. switch on a plug .... feel under the radiator for that lost button) before getting back up. 4. You feel proud of yourself for finding out how to use 'Crop' on your mobile phone pictures, barely a year since you learned to take an actual photo. 5. You think about contacting someone who taught you at school and then realise they'd be 109. 6. You visit a city centre on a Saturday and wonder if it's all on fast-forward. 7. You root for the ones with grey hair on Masterchef. 8. You understand, finally, why they say, 'Mind the gap' on the Tube n

Is someone who steals other people's work mugs a cup-leptomaniac? There was a cup-leptomaniac in a previous school I worked in. You could try to keep your own, dedicated mug in the staff room cupboard, but it wouldn't last long. Someone would lift it, perhaps thinking, 'I'll bring that back later.'  Or perhaps, 'I'll sell that on e-bay with the other ninety-six.' Even now, eight years since I left that school, I'm sure teachers are unearthing stolen mugs in dark corners of classrooms, cultivating a foot of green moss over a spongy layer of prehistoric coffee. However, it was a boys' school, with mainly male teachers, and I found a cunning plan to make sure I kept my own mug for most of the time I was there. I bought this. Four years. Four years, I managed to keep this mug for myself before it was stolen a fortnight before I left. While I've been writing this, I've remembered. I put some verses about my cheesy kitten mug in

A sonnet in honour of Bakewell Tart ice cream, written after last week's holiday in Cornwall. I bought you from an ice cream stall in Looe. The day was balmy. Seagulls screeched above. You cost me two quid which I thought was steep until I tasted you. I fell in love. I ate you by the harbour, looking out at boats, and children crabbing, while my heart expanded with a flaming passion, hot for ice cream tasting like a Bakewell Tart. My previous loves - vanilla, toffee fudge, or rum and raisin - these would all, I knew, be tossed aside, rejected, bade farewell, in favour of the ecstasy that's you. Since tasting you, you haunt my nights, my dreams.  You are the crack cocaine of Looe's icecreams. The moment Fran realised that all other loves, so far, had been inferior, and wondered how to tell her husband that she was leaving him for a dairy product.

A couple of days ago, just like Alice in Wonderland, I found a small door. However, unlike Alice, I hurtled through mine without any trouble at all. Here's a picture of the door. You: 'That doesn't look like a small door. That looks like a very big door.' Me: Look carefully and you'll see that within the big door IS another, smaller door. That's the one I hurtled (hurdled?) through, having not noticed, because it was 10pm and dark, the lintel at the bottom. I can't think of a better phrase than 'arse over tit' for what happened. 'Head over heels' is another, but not half so satisfactory to say. I was with my friend, Deborah, at Keble College in Oxford, and we were coming home from our evening out. (The door is the one at the entrance to the college, by the Porters' Lodge. During the day, they open the big door. At night, just the smaller door.) Deborah's a writer, too, and we'd booked two nights' bed and breakfa