I feel like I've saved up a whole load of annoyance since my last posting. Top of my Things That Annoy Me list are people who leave their dog's mess on the ground. OK, I own a dog, so I know that you can't always help when and where your little darling goes, but for goodness sake! It looks and smells dirty, it's unhygienic and particularly in the autumn it's well disguised by the fallen leaves in my local park I've noticed, which occasionally leads to a 'sticky shoe' situation a la Phoebe from 'Friends':

We've recently had a new pavement laid down near our flat. It looked lovely and clean, for about half a day. Then it began to get marred with dog poo, just like the old one. The local council obviously had a lightbulb moment when they stencilled the below image onto the pavement at regular intervals. Do they really envisage this having any, I mean any effect on the non-pooper-scoopers around here? It looks like a 5-year old painted it! And what's with the atrocious font choice? I'm no typographer but I'd like to hear what one of my typographery-type (?) friends has to say about it! I really can't see these poor excuses for stencils having much of a difference. In fact I'm tempted to go and paint polka dots on them one night but I'm too scared I might get arrested. Hold on, if I used chalk, which washes off, that would be ok, wouldn't it? Watch this space....

Also I'm annoyed already with the darker nights and colder weather. I feel like I've been robbed of a summer that was promised but never even arrived. I've been stood up by summer. My flip flops didn't even get a look-in. Still, look on the bright side, at least it isn't raining. Much.

However, even I have got something to be thankful for. Whilst out with a friend for dinner the other week, we toasted those commuters who have the daily grind to work on over-packed trains and tubes, allowing us lucky few to work at home, only having to bear the grunting, sweating masses on rare occasions when a meeting calls us into central London.

We were surprised by the long queues stretching out of restaurants in London. On a Wednesday of all days! No sign of the credit crunch in the dining industry then, lucky things. Shortly after that I heard the great phrase 'dead cat bounce', which was first coined about 23 years ago. It basically means a small and temporary recovery in a financial market following a large fall, the idea being that even a dead cat will bounce if you drop it from a great height. Fantastic.

As my friend Tom asked me "Isn't it about time you updated your 'once-every-quarter-whether-you-need-to-or-not' blog?" Well, yes, obviously it is, since someone has actually asked.

I was going to write about my strange dream, which involved living in a mobile home at the top of the Alps, June Sarpong and a nun with a broken leg, but I can't really remember the details of that one. Instead I'll have a rant about my lovely neighbours. I'm not talking about the ones on the ground floor that play extremely loud music until 5 or 6am. Though they do at least play it loud enough that I can hear the words and sing along if I want to, and they play pop, rather than drum and bass, so that's also better than nothing I suppose, still I do draw the line at badly sung karaoke, especially at that time of the morning. Anyway, onto my 'real' rant.

It's about the neighbours below me, the ones with the small white fluffy dog that bit me and my dog when we were out a couple of weeks ago. The other night, Y and I were rudely awaken at some god-forsaken hour by the sound of crashing, banging and much shouting from the flat below. We could clearly hear such politely phrased questions as "Where's my f*@%ing money?", "Why are you touching my f*@%ing stuff?" and kind requests like "Get your hands off my f*@%ing clothes" and things being flung across the room. I was pretty close to calling the police as it sounded like a full-on bust up down there but I was too scared. Not sure what the arguement was about - Y reckons it was about drugs. If that's true, maybe I got off lightly, just being bitten by their dog.

I do like most of my neighbours really! Except the ones that wee in the lift, that's pretty gross.

Y is taking his cleaning antics outside the flat now. He wiped down the buttons in the lift with a wet-wipe, not that I minded! He also bought us a new vacuum cleaner to try to hoover up the dog hair. I arrived home to a post-it note saying

"The new hoover has arrived - yay!
Have got it out of the box, but haven't
had a chance to play with it yet.
Feel free to do some hoovering if you like."

Test 1 - Preparation
Women: To prepare for pregnancy:-

1. Put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag down the front.
2. Leave it there.
3. After 9 months remove 5% of the beans.

Men: To prepare for children:-

1. Go to a local chemist, tip the contents of your wallet onto the counter and tell the pharmacist to help himself
2. Go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.
3. Go home. Pick up the newspaper and read it for the last time.

Test 2 - Knowledge
Find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels and how they have allowed their children to run wild. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and overall behavior.

Enjoy it. It will be the last time in your life that you will have all the answers.

Test 3 - Nights
To discover how the nights will feel:
1. Walk around the living room from 5pm to 10pm carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 4 - 6kg, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly.
2. At 10pm, put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight and go to sleep.
3. Get up at 11pm and walk the bag around the living room until 1am.
4. Set the alarm for 3am.
5. As you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2am and make a cup of tea.
6. Go to bed at 2.45am.
7. Get up again at 3am when the alarm goes off.
8. Sing songs in the dark until 4am.
9. Put the alarm on for 5am. Get up when it goes off.
10. Make breakfast.

Keep this up for 5 years. LOOK CHEERFUL.

Test 4 - Dressing Small Children
1. Buy a live octopus and a string bag.
2. Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that no arms hang out.

Time Allowed: 5 minutes.

Test 5 - Cars
1. Forget the BMW. Buy a practical 5-door wagon.
2. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment.
Leave it there.
3. Get a coin. Insert it into the CD player.
4. Take a box of chocolate biscuits; mash them into the back seat.
5. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Test 6 - Going For a Walk
Wait
Go out the front door
Come back in again
Go out
Come back in again
Go out again
Walk down the front path
Walk back up it
Walk down it again
Walk very slowly down the road for five minutes.
Stop, inspect minutely and ask at least 6 questions about every piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way.
Retrace your steps
Scream that you have had as much as you can stand until the neighbours come out and stare at you.
Give up and go back into the house.

You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk.

Test 7
Repeat everything you say at least 5 times.

Test 8 - Grocery Shopping
1. Go to the local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child - a fully grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat.
2. Buy your weekly groceries without letting the goat(s) out of your sight.
3. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys.

Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Test 9 - Feeding a 1 year-old
1. Hollow out a melon
2. Make a small hole in the side
3. Suspend the melon from the ceiling and swing it side to side
4. Now get a bowl of soggy cornflakes and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon while pretending to be an aeroplane.
5. Continue until half the cornflakes are gone.
6. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the floor.

Test 10 - TV
1. Learn the names of every character from the Wiggles, Barney, Teletubbies and Disney.
2. Watch nothing else on television for at least 5 years.

Test 11 - Mess
Can you stand the mess children make? To find out:

1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains
2. Hide a fish behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
3. Stick your fingers in the flowerbeds and then rub them on clean walls. Cover the stains with crayon. How does that look?
4. Empty every drawer/cupboard/storage box in your house onto the floor & leave it there.

Test 12 - Long Trips with Toddlers
1. Make a recording of someone shouting 'Mummy' repeatedly.

Important Notes:
No more than a 4 second delay between each Mummy. Include occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet.

2. Play this tape in your car, everywhere you go for the next 4 years.

You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Test 13 - Conversations
1. Start talking to an adult of your choice.
2. Have someone else continually tug on your shirt hem or shirt sleeve while playing the Mummy tape listed above.

You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

Test 14 - Getting ready for work
1. Pick a day on which you have an important meeting.
2. Put on your finest work attire.
3. Take a cup of cream and put 1 cup of lemon juice in it
4. Stir
5. Dump half of it on your nice silk shirt
6. Saturate a towel with the other half of the mixture
7. Attempt to clean your shirt with the same saturated towel
8. Do not change (you have no time).
9. Go directly to work

You are now ready to have children. ENJOY!!