Walking The Dog

Recent hypothetical text message from parent to adult son - Been in the garden all day. Time for a bath first then I'll leave, with you by 8. Chilly here - have you had snow? See you soon. Lots of  love xx PS. Bought too many aubergines yesterday - would you like some? All very mundane; boring even? Hmmm. In an effort to save time or appear somehow with-it or hip or whatever term is used now to mean 'not ancient', the parent could instead have sent this - Been in the garden all day. Time for 🛁. Chilly here - do you have ❄️.  PS. Would you like some 🍆? Lots of X Yes, I punctuate my texts. Punctuation, however, isn't the point here. Or rather it's not the only thing unmasking me as someone who is not hip/cool/sic or lit (which list, of course, proves without a doubt that I am none of these things). No. The point is that with the insertion of a few emojis, I changed an innocent message about gardening, the weather and vegetables, into something x-rat...

Doing a Kim Kardashian will go down in our family annals as a moment when my embarrassment was acute and I managed to make everyone in the room ache with laughter. Proper belly laughs. Holding of sides. Tears running down cheeks. Collapsed back into chairs or rolling on the floor. Yup - proper rocking from side to side rolling. For what felt like minutes but was probably only ... minutes. My face hurt with the intensity of the laughing and burned with all-consuming embarrassment. Kim Kardashian it said. The paper scrap I'd drawn from the pot. Kim. Kardashian. Describe her in three words. Actions allowed. Ums and ehs and erms all contributing to the three word rule. A huge dinner was nestling inside my tummy. With rather too many glasses of bubbles, then wine, then pudding and more pudding. Kim. Kardashian. In three words. Easy? Well - yes; probably. Unless. Unless. Unless you make the near-fatal mistake of thinking it would be a good idea to stand up and mime the...