At the risk of seeming to have taken on the mantle of a 'game-show' host, I thought we might open this posting with a small, if not completely cylindrical, quiz.

There are no prizes for correctly, or even, incorrectly, for that matter, guessing the origins or plight of the suspended items. However, once you have successfully identified each of the items, please call on 0800-426-2848, and leave your name and contact number, together with the number of items identified! You will receive a visit in a flash, before you can say, " I truly am a 40 watt bulb situated in a 240 watt socket!"

So, having dispensed with the trivia not to mention banale, lets deal with some of the more pressing issues that have arisen since our last meeting. Yesterday, we were truly blessed by a visit from our matriarch, heads bowed reverently at the title, ensuring our eyes never accidentally meet her gaze!. The carriage which she uses to convey herself around we lesser beings was in dire need of succour and I was deemed to be a fit and proper person to engage a lowly man to carry out the said application. "Hallejuah"

The majesty that is herself, then further endowed more blessings upon us by granting an audience with her most gracious self. (When I say that, I have been threatened not to mention the periods of time, four in total, when her most loving eyelids appeared to have stuck tight together and an eerie silence fell across the room).

It seemed no longer than the blink of one of those revered eyelids and she was gone, swept off into the dusky evening in her trusty carriage. I do feel my day was enriched in such a small, yet simple loving way.

If I may, just for a moment, pause to ponder, then to pose a question which was raised in another place by one of our troubled readers. Namely, the heated or perhaps more succintly, gone cold, matter of a number of brews of late. I was rounded upon, triangulised and downright berated for ALLEGEDLY supplying my visitor with sub-standard, nay, cold libations of the leaf.

This hurtful and thoughtless attack, left me as a punctured remnant of my former self.. ie, in leaves! I have searched for the answer, stewed, brewed, cogitated and strained and I believe that I have now found the answer to the dilemna...these postings!!

Throwing onesself into the middle of such oratory, with such gusto, not to mention, panache, results quite simply, but so sadly, in many cups of the elixir of the gods being drained of their body heat. Not in unsimilar fashion one could presuppose , to that of the weather-beaten, battered and somewhat apparently,disconsolate member as she writes of the bosom of her family life. Particularly, it would appear,around the same time as the nocturnal habits of said member's suckling offspring. Thus so it is, that the brews, so innocently left idle on the placemat at the side of the keyboard, are failing to retain their efficaciousness.

Let this be a salutory lesson to all those incorporating the blog into daily life..."tend ye to thine own lips whilst ye may".

"Ho humm...so glad I'm teapot...!"