Confusing advertising, baths and death

4 free light bulbs for every customer, says the advert on the side of buses. Cue map of Europe, with Britain lit up green versus Europ lit up kinda yellow. A bit odd, but perhaps it's something to do with energy saving bulbs being a bit colder in colour than incandescents. It wasn't until I happened to see the ad on the television that I realised they were talking about the bulbs being 'green' because they're better for the environment.

9/10 customers... say BT; am I the only person who wants to amend the posters to say 9/11? I mean, it's not common for advertising literature to use numerals, is it? Perhaps I've missed a spot of media evolution, but i expect "Nine out of ten customers..."

Andrew complained that I hadn't reported his recent bath problem. He was bleaching some jeans or something equally Andrew. Probably to make him fit in better with the Skinhead thing, i would think. So: clothing into bath; add Domestos; leave and return once the nice cast iron bath is hideously scarred from the bleach. Cue me phoning to say hi and a spew of Andrew-flavoured hysteria. After a bit of 'check the internet you knob'-style advice from moi he comes upon a simple solution involving lemon juice (ah, those Old Wives had good tales) and voila! the bath is as good as new. Literally, since it's far cleaner than it was when he started. Way to offset suspicion!

Since he thinks he is newsworthy, I should probably mention that he recently had a somewhat more serious accident when his paramour of the moment (to be fair, he probably lasted a few hours; Andrew's idea of sexy fun these days is nothing if not protracted) decided to stop breathing for a few minutes. The moral of this story, kids: EROTIC ASPHYXIATION IS DANGEROUS, m'kay?

Continuing the Death theme, we were recently discussing the emotional trauma/lack of trauma suffered on the death of a pet. Clearly cats and dogs will leave a space on their passing, but fish, snakes, hampsters... the jury's still out. I developed a method to get through the deathdeathdeath which aquarium owners have to learn to live with. I never name my fish, or the shrimp, and when one of them dies without being munched too quickly for me to notice I flush them to a watery grave while playing 1000 Oceans by Tori Amos. A touch eccentric, but it works for me, although there have been bad periods where I find myself getting sick to death (sick to death, see what I did there? LOL.) of the song.