Laura's come down with Swine Flu

best wishes laura, get well soon love.

 

HUgs from all the monkeys Laura

Get well soon Laura but make yer dad run all over for you first. R.Tiv says would you like to borrow Simon Davey's shoelace as it was a great comfort to him during his recent episode of depression.

 

Sorry to hear that

Get well soon Laura.

 

Get well soon Laura

...and in the mean time milk it for all it's worth

 

Well let someone else have a go for a change



....and in the meantime you may want to consider using this arguement posted this morning funnily enough on our messageboard. This may sound a tad familiar lol



Margret, had gone out. (It doesn't really matter where as, irrespective of her stated destination, she'll come back carrying another bloody plant.) As she'd left, she'd seen that I was sitting in front of the computer. If Margret is leaving the house and, as she's doing so, she sees me sitting in front of the computer, she will say, 'Do the hoovering.' - there's no way she can stop herself: it's Pavlovian.

Her 'Do the hoovering' had been followed by the clunk of the front door, the soft rumble of the car pulling away and then nothing but a silence in which I sat, pensive.

I glanced around. OK, the carpets weren't immaculate, that was true. They were hardly in such a condition as to demand a hoovering, though. There's a clear point at which a carpet is ready for hoovering, in my opinion, and that point is "when it's crunchy". Even then, it's not what you'd call vital. In lots of the places I've lived, especially as a student, we never had a hoover at all. Sometimes, yes, walking across the landing required snow shoes - but no one ever died or anything. I glanced around some more.

A few hours later, Margret returns.

After unloading around seventy-five new plants from the car, she hunts me down; finding me, by a fluke, sitting in front of the computer.

'Have you hoovered?' she asks, her tone swaying unsurely between conversational and murderous.

'What do you think?' I reply. (Cleverly, here, I'm indignant yet inscrutable - only my disdain for the question is clear; I provide no clue at all of the answer to it.)

'Have you? Or not?'

'Well, what does it look like?'

'Just tell me whether you've hoovered.'

'No. That's not the point.'

'What? It's completely the point.'

'No, it isn't. You thought the house needed hoovering. If you think it looks OK now, then you're happy, right? Whether I've hoovered or not.'

'And what if I don't think it looks OK?' She pauses for a moment, then adds, 'Or if I smash your laptop to pieces with a tyre jack?'

'If I've hoovered, and you still think it doesn't look hoovered... then there's no point my hoovering, is there? Ever again.'

There's a degree of glaring goes on here, but I hold my nerve and continue. 'The only other possibility, as far as I can see, is that you simply can't tell whether I've hoovered or not. And, if you can't tell, then it doesn't matter - in any real sense - whether I've done it or not, does it?'

I've one more card to play, but it's a great one. 'That is, not unless the thing that concerns you isn't whether the house has been hoovered, but only whether I've been sitting here enjoying myself all this time rather than slogging around with a vacuum cleaner. But I'm sure that's not it. I mean, you'd be happy for me to sit here idle for as long as I want, wouldn't you, if there's no need for me not to? It's about the hoovering, not about my sitting here idle, isn't it?'

Margret just stares at me.

I am triumphant. A choir sings. Cherubs circle my head, scattering petals. Shafts of golden light fan out from behind me. It's an intoxicating three seconds.

'Clean out the fridge,' says Margret.