Sweet seventeen

You wouldn’t believe how much traffic – in very little time – can be generated on your blog by mentioning pigs.

I am now almost as enamoured with the statistics on my dashboard as with writing the actual blog itself. Felix – there is the male mind for you – recently drew wordpress’s monthly curve to my attention, with moderate filial pride.

It took some time to filter through to me why I found the graph slightly disconcerting. Anyone of a squeamish disposition do stop reading now (and yes, Paul, that definitely includes Roshan – though he can always prove me wrong):

WordPress’s statistics look like a fertility chart, albeit an unconvincing one (too many peaks). For the innocent, uninitiated: A woman wakes up in the morning, takes her temperature before so much as going to the loo, and marks it on her gynaecologist’s chart – to give him a clue. You keep this up for a few months and, consequently, learn at what time of the month contraception is of the utmost order; or, if in the claws of needing to fulfill your biological destiny, when to throw caution to the wind.

And you guys think shaving every morning is hardship.

I was only seventeen at the time and the aim of the game had nothing to do with either of the above reasons. To my shame and utter delight, what’s new, my charts were pure invention (at least I had paid attention in my biology lessons so I knew the ideal scenario). I filled in six months’ worth of the forms five minutes before the appointment. The dear doctor is dead now so he can only turn in his grave and not haunt me with a thermometer.

It’s hard enough to rouse a teenager from the dead (I do it every morning with mixed success) without extra implements, other than a bucket of cold water.

U

Bonkers

I am so glad I am not a pig.

Not that it would make much difference in the scheme of my life.

I’d still be rosy, have a mud bath, grunt and outrun the farmer after my bacon. Dream on.

Three decades ago my sister and I made a suicide pact that if either of us ever exceeded a certain weight and shape we’d rather end it all prematurely. Her challenge being bigger than mine since she is now the mother of five children but, being her ambitious self and, like another friend I know born in the same year, mainly running on adrenaline, she is better looking now than at the time we came to our arrangement (Soon I’ll find the time to work out how to attach photographic evidence to my blog).

Yes, pigs. There is, of course, the saying that one can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ears – one I have never understood, but you tell me. Then there is the one I hope I will understand any time soon of “Throwing one’s pearls before swines” (and before you jump to the wrong conclusions: Romance is not involved in this one). And then there is Anthony Bourdain who will eat anything.

U