BY NAME AND BY NATURE: MY DOG

I've never considered myself an animal lover. It always seemed, once I even came across it, a nonsensical, pointless tool of description. Wasn't everyone? Imagine my shock when as a small child I found out that there were actually people who chose not to have pets, not because they were animal haters (though, we all know they exist), but just because they prefer to live solely with other humans.

For me, I had animals before I had siblings. From birth till the present there has only been one four-year stretch when I was without some kind of non-human creature I considered part of my family. And for the record, those four years were as alien to me as it would be for a right-handed person to write with their left hand.

Some people think that devotion to an animal is ridiculous. I can see their point when pet owners are spending more on their pets' clothes than their own and failing to train them because they think it would be mean. Don't get me started on dog weddings. I have certainly had cause more than once over the years to utter the phrase "For goodness sake; it's only a dog/cat/budgie/[insert absurdly pampered animal here]."

But I think this attitude, when too broadly applied, misses a rather big point. So-called 'animal lovers' bond with their pets in an almost primal way. When our ancestors first domesticated the wolf and created 'man's best friend', it wasn't just because they were fed up with their human companions. If you're going after big, potentially dangerous game, you need to know that your hunting partner has got your back. It's not enough to train an animal to do as it's told; you have to make him love you enough so that he will do anything for you. And the only way to build that devotion is to build trust.

Granted, we don't need Fido to catch a deer for supper any more, but how many of us benefit from Felix's mouse-catching skills or Rover's guardianship of our home even if that wasn't the primary purpose for which we acquired him?

After that four-year absence of fur in our lives, my siblings and I were incensed that our imaginative suggestions were rejected by our Mum for her own choice of name for our new dog. But as his life draws rapidly to a close, our Norfolk terrier/Jack Russell cross Pal, has proved by his nature that Mum was spot on.

That little dog is barely as tall as my shins but he's fought dogs twice his size and strength when they've tried to attack one of us. And that's because from the age of three when we adopted him, he has always had our love, our roof over his head, our garden to run around and food in a bowl, and he has been walked at the very least twice daily for the twelve years since he joined our family.

I'LL HAVE TO PRACTICE BEFORE I START ON THE FRESCOES

Yesterday, my first day home alone without Paul since September last year, I decided to paint the living room. And it has become apparent that I am not a natural decorator.

My sister, who knows about these things, says that my only problem is lack of experience and skill will come with time. To be fair, I wasn't bad when taking instruction from my Mum in the way of DIY as a youngling. And Kathleen may only know about these things because she redecorates more often than I drink alcohol. 

With any luck, one day I'll be like Da Vinci in more than being able to write backwards....

Free-from cooking

I was twenty-two when the GP at university said cheese butties were giving me asthma. I'll be honest: that's rather a loose paraphrase of what she really said but you have my condition there in a nutshell. Cow dairy products (but not lactose) and wheat (but not gluten) take my breath away in the non-Top-Gun, not-even-a-little-bit-romantic way.

I also learnt recently that it's been pepper all these years making my throat swell up periodically.

The asthma seemed to settle down a few years back, and I was able to risk a pizza or two, but a month ago, after a sudden resurgence I was told by another GP that if I want a birthday cake at this year's looming thirtieth, it's going to have to come from the special section at Tesco.

And there is the point of my blog. Those of you out there who suffer intolerances or allergies to certain foods presumably feel the same: the prices of safe food are actually intolerable. 

Fair enough, things have got better. When I was first warned off the Warburton's in 2006 my only alternative was the not-too-expensive rye bread (seriously, do not try this at home, folks) or the far tastier potato/rice-flour alternatives the health food shops peddled for about a fiver. 

Now the price has dropped to £3 and it's all available in supermarkets so we can get points! But £3 for a loaf is still galling when this staple can go for as little as 50p (in some shops) for the rest of Britain. 

So, with renewed vigilance, I am spending more on my weekly shop than I previously did on a fortnightly one, and trying to make my own stuff. 

Tonight it was home-made allergen-free shortbread. 

And having tasted some, somehow I don't think £2 for a packet of Freefrom Bakewells from Tesco is that expensive after all....

FILM REVIEW: Gravity (Contains Spoilers)

This film recently won Oscars. I can only assume that in order to win an Oscar all you need is to pay your visual effects dude far more than anyone else on the production because the only thing this movie had going for it was its visuals and even they got irritating after a while. As anyone who has ever ridden on the waltzers (or the teacups kiddies' version) at a fairground will know, there's only so much spinning about a person can take. God help us if Warner Brothers decide to turn this into a ride some day.

The plot was, in a nutshell, Sandra Bullock panics whilst everything goes wrong in space. Everyone but Sandra snuffed it. Not that there were many cast members. Some of them had even snuffed it already before they got to appear onscreen. Though both Bullock and Clooney are normally amongst my favourite actors, there wasn't really much they could do with this script except smile and cry in the right places.  

Bullock looked good (except in her first space suit): the scenes when she was floating about in her knickers on the Russian space station did at least give me something to aim for at the end of my current diet. And when she was telling a dead George Clooney she couldn't see to say hi to her also deceased daughter I did go "Aw." That's about it, though, for the good points. 

Even when poor old Sandra crashed onto earth she nearly drowned twice and I couldn't help but roll my eyes when in close-up she eventually felt the Gravity of the film's title try and stop her from standing up, no matter how jubilant the background music tried to make me. All in all, like the body of George Clooney's character, an hour and twenty minutes of my life have disappeared into the ether, never to be recovered. 

Don't buy the DVD. And breathe a sigh of relief that you didn't waste your money at the pictures. 

Last Acceptable Form of Discrimination?

Though there is still evidence of institutionalised prejudice in this country - for example, racism in the police - most people would accept that in general discrimination is far less publicly acceptable than it used to be, and there are more people fighting inequality than in previous decades.

Though they still exist, few successful comedians would make jokes trivialising domestic abuse and homophobic 'humour' is rare. 

But there is one minority in this country who still don't have equality and for obvious reasons can never have, in some respects. Children. 

No one with half a brain thinks children should have the vote or be allowed to apply for whatever job they want whilst they're still underage. Children should not be allowed to marry. 

But children should be entitled to respect.  They should be entitled to safety and justice. This is basic stuff that most people assume children have. 

But we live in a country where, in a BBC documentary, Tom Jones can excuse Jerry Lee Lewis's marrying a thirteen-year-old as the pious refusal to have sex with her outside of wedlock, and Cliff Richard on the same show can state that he didn't care who Lewis had married and wouldn't have missed Lewis's concert because of it. 

We live in a country where Phil Jupitus and Stephen Fry can laugh on QI about how the former's passport photo makes him look like a paedophile, when recent celebrity trials show that if one could tell a paedophile by looking at them, the public wouldn't have been so shocked by these high-profile arrests. 

In wider western society we even have a children's film (Megamind) in which a main character tells another "I'll be watching you like a dingo watches a human baby," alluding, for the 'amusement' of the adults watching the film with their children, to the tragic case of Azaria Chamberlain who was killed by a dingo but whose mother was initially blamed and jailed for the crime. 

Many will believe that my position is too drastic, leaving no room for harmless fun. But there were things in our far darker (yet recent) past that our ancestors thought harmless fun, and which we now would baulk at. And for those who use anti-child humour to allegedly poke fun at abusers or make the subject more open in society, perhaps instead of trying to find the fun in such grim situations, those in positions of influence should be lobbying for tougher sentences, making people aware that children are just as at risk as they've ever been, or raising money for charity. Someone else's pain is never funny. 

Forgive me, but...

I assume (hope) this is normal but I started dreading my thirtieth on my twenty-ninth. Oh God! This is my last birthday in my twenties! was all I could think when blowing out candles and opening presents. And I should imagine that all of you ladies who have already surpassed my scary landmark view my current feelings with the same amused disdain I do that of my fifteen-year-old self's decision to not run away from home till eighteen so that I'd be able to get Sky.

I've looked this up, just so I don't feel like a lone-ranger-lunatic. Psychologists call it a 'pre-30 crisis', according to Alina R. Co, who wrote the first article I found on a Google search entitled 'dreading thirty.' She goes on to describe what sounds an awful lot like a mid-life crisis but early, where the woman starts to think about all she has achieved and whether it's enough, and starts to panic if she feels she hasn't achieved what she wanted in her first thirty years on earth.

And it's not a sign of a genuine lack of success for a woman to feel this way either. No one is immune! I read an article some time ago about the career women who had been in the workplace and climbing the corporate ladder since leaving university but hit thirty and took unpaid internships in completely different fields, in many cases leaving incredibly well-paid jobs. I have no recollection of where I read this so I apologise for lack of reference. All I remember is a woman with beautiful hair and a smart short-trouser suit standing beside the piece, looking chuffed to be earning no money for something she loved.

So it's not just guys who go through the whole mid-life crisis thing. We girls do too, now. I read something else that said it's really since women took a more equal footing in the world of work that this phenomena started to grow. When we were only allowed to have babies and make house we couldn't really afford crises because someone's nappy always needed changing and the grates needed black-leading (I heard that term once about old-fashioned housekeeping - no idea what it entails). Now we have this world of opportunity we feel that we should be achieving everything we ever wanted, and by thirty if we don't want to be complete failures!

I am seven months from the dreaded big 3-0 and already I have a list as long as my arm of the things I was supposed to have done by now and find it hard to look at the equally long list of amazing achievements. But it is reassuring to know that I'm not the only one. And it's just as reassuring to know that ten years from now I will re-read this blog and think exactly what many of you are thinking now: either "Aw, sweet little thing!" or "Bloody hell, get a life, woman!" To be honest, I think the latter is rather the point.