Eish!

I suspect I’m a little colour blind.

They say that, in life, there are two kinds of people: those who believe the world can be divided into two kinds of people and those who don’t.

The latest meme to hit our follicles in the endless quest to dissect humanity into its constituent parts is the colour[1] coding of menial tasks. Pink jobs for girls and blue jobs for boys. Say that last one fast ten times and you’ll see why I’m not feigning my interest in this dialogue[2].

A Blue Job is supposed to be something that boys are good at: mowing lawns, changing light bulbs, lying about Ukrainian strippers, opening jam jars and keeping remote control buttons from siezing.

A Pink Job is supposed to be something that girls are good at: erm, cooking? cleaning? bending credit-cards? running out of motor oil? Why am I drawing blank on this one?

I confess I am judging this by the calibre of my ex-girlfriends, all master-chefs and/or fastidious house-cleaners (with the exception of one who claimed she was the 3rd member of a touring girl-band. I did her laundry.)  No, I am not trying to marry my mother.

The Nice Dog Lady, however, is not so easy to break down into constituent parts in any way. If you did manage it, you would probably find two parts gin and one part vermouth. I’ve seen her mow the lawn, mount an outside light, open jars and use a remote. I’m just waiting for her to lie about Ukrainian strippers and then I’m going to dig into her past to see if she wasn’t at one stage, indeed, the Nice Dog Lad.

Disclaimer: I fell deeply in love with the Nice Dog Lady when I went over to visit one Sunday and found her in the back yard wearing leather gloves and feeding branches into her own personal wood-chipper. It is an image that shall stay with me always.

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[1] for our American audience, that’s color with a ewe

[2] gosh, all these ewes, what will the Republicans think?

The other day I considered dog nipples.

I took the Nice Dog Lady out of quarantine, introduced her to my friends in good faith that she was ready and she decided that after dinner was the perfect time to mention that she had felt dog nipples. I’m wondering if it’s an English tradition that I’ve missed.

That being said, after the blank stares were replaced by nervous coughing and offers to make tea, I thought about some of the things that I’ve felt in my time. The list extended to the inside of an impala, a soggy bread-roll in my trouser pocket and a sheep aorta wrapped around my index finger as a kind of organic ringlet.

Pretty standard really.

There was also the snot streak from a six year Madagascan boy that flung itself in a wide arc across my forearm. That was special too. I’ve also stood barefoot in more poo than I can care to mention. Can you spell suppository? I am not proud.

So why should the thought of touching dog nipples arise a sedimentary response in different people. According to Python [1], wolf-nipple chips were a Roman delicacy. Dog-breeders alike often have to rub the milk clots out of canine-cans so that the puppies don’t choke.

You don’t have to like it but you do have to try it. At least once.

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[1] that bastion of historical accuracy

Occasionally I am right.

Especially when it comes to the hard questions like butter vs margarine.

The one gives you cancer, the other clogs your arteries. The one tortures flowers, the other gives cows something to moo about. The one makes you fat, the other makes you dance on the beach with your family, your dog and the Heart Foundation.

Ultimately, though, the one is yellow and the other is only yellow because the marketing people wisely considered not selling margarine as a tub of black, soggy soot. This is only one of the benefits that a first-class education has bestowed on the world.

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