Posh puss

I'm not ashamed to admit I like the finer things in life. The occasional morsel of smoked salmon, olives stuffed with feta cheese, a nicely tailored Calvin Klein suit. This doesn't mean I can always afford to indulge my tastes, but occasionally, as a treat, well, why not?

And we do occasionally spoil Monty Cat. I suppose that's what pets are for.

We are Sainsbury's shoppers, and our basket usually contains far more of the "Essentials" range than the "Taste the Difference" items. This is OK, because when we splash out, we probably appreciate it more.

Years back, I shopped at Tesco, who have a "Value" range and a "Finest" range. But now it's Sainsbury's all the way.

And we decided to treat Monty Cat to some super-duper special cat litter. Sainsbury's equivalent of the Tesco "Finest" range. It was at this point I wondered:

Do Sainsbury's make a "Taste the Difference" cat litter?

Soul searching

Ploggers, I think it's time for an update on your search terms, don't you? OK, so the top keywords that people have been finding this site by (other than the obvious) in the last month are...

(Drum roll...)

1. Laurasplog plumber
2. Madam Tamar spanking
3. Erica's Wanking Club
4. Tamsin Greig naked
5. Dog fucked her
6. I have an IQ of 95
7. BMW Mini air conditioning smells of Dettol
8. Up the arse
9. Happy ending massage Luton
10. Julia Sawalha what happened to her arm
11. Teacher thicky sex
12. Incest Coalville
13. Swap shops Coalville
14. Rupert you're a wonderful bear
15. Unclothed things

So, essentially, my readership comprises celebrity-obsessed perverts with a lower than average intellegence. Nothing we didn't already know, eh?

Substitute cleaner

Katrina the Cleaner is on holiday. So instead we have Not-Katrina the Cleaner, but she still cleans, and she still accepts a cheque in Katrina the Cleaner's name. All is well.

Except once TheBloke (TM) came home early and Not-Katrina the Cleaner jumped up a bit guiltily from the sofa, where she was watching TV and started dusting a book. It doesn't really bother me if she chooses to spend her time watching TV, so long as the cleaning is done.

And today when we got home from work and Not-Katrina the Cleaner had been, we put the TV on to watch one of our favourite programmes (The Life and Times of Tim if you're interested, and why wouldn't you be?), which we'd recorded on Sky+. We were confused at first, as when we pressed play, it said "End of Recorded Programme". Then we realised. Not-Katrina the Cleaner had been watching our stored programmes on Sky+, and had got to the end of this particular show. The sneaky little cleaner.

Stil, at least she avoided watching the hardcore pornography that my parents keep Sky Plussing whenever they visit.

Reading the future

Ploggers, I have a task for you.

Go to http://www.magic8ball.midnightfun.co.uk/ and ask the magic 8 ball a question.

For the uninitiated, a magic 8 ball is a curious American toy, which is a large ball filled with water... and actually it's too hard to describe. But the basic idea is that it's a kind of fortune telling ball; you're supposed to ask it a question that can be answered with yes or no. And it will reply, usually with vague answers like "Reply hazy, try again" or "As I see it, no".

So, someone's made an online version. See above. Go and ask it a question. Done it? No? Go off and do it then.

Done it now?

OK, read on.

Brilliantly, BRILLIANTLY, this website also allows the casual reader to view the last few hundred questions the magic 8 ball has been asked. So your super-private questions are now viewable by the entire human race. So sorry, Ploggers, if you've just entered "Will my genital warts clear up before Christmas" or "Does Sandra Smith know I'm cheating on her with her sister Denise?". Busted.

(Don't worry, they disappear after a day or so.)

So, my favourite questions that others have asked the ball so far:

- Is James Stratford my best friend? ("As I see it, yes")

- Is James Stratford going to rape me? ("Outlook not so good")

- Does God like my songs? ("You may rely on it")

- Is my penis big? ("Don't count on it")

- Am I a fat ugly cow? ("It is decidedly so")

- Has Marie Starbuck got swine flu? ("It is certain")

- Am I going to get beaten up tomorrow? ("It is certain")

- Is Siobhan a tramp? ("Reply hazy, try again")

- Can you smell gasoline? ("My reply is no")

Finally - and most distressingly of all:

- Have I got cancer? ("Cannot predict now")

Perhaps a GP might be a better starting place than an animated random answer generator?

Best thing is, now that you've all gone and asked the ball your questions, I can now spy on all my Ploggers' deepest darkest secrets. Funny, the most recent all seem to be, "Is Laura a bitch?" ("It is decidedly so").

Working it out

Have you ever wondered what Fat Gladys in Accounts looks like naked? What about Ugly Sheila? Can you imagine what her wobbly flesh looks like without the benefit of that purple polyester trouser suit covering up her nasties? What about Stinky Nigel from Occupational Health? Would you like to see Stinky Nigel clad in Lycra and dripping rancid sweat?

If the answer to all these questions is, "Yes, of course!" then why not join your office gym?

The powers that be have decided that large corporate organisations need to have a gym onsite to keep their staff physically fit, motivated and in tip-top condition. Or, in my case, barely able to breathe, limping significantly and vaguely nauseous at the sight of Fat Gladys getting out the shower and talcum powdering her privates right in front of me.

The exercise programme is not going brilliantly. My trainer set me some tasks to be peformed three times a week:

• 10 mins run at 9.5 km per hour (dropping to 6km per hour every two minutes for 30 seconds before ramping the speed up again)
• 5 mins on the rower on setting number 8 (whatever that means)
• Various weights, none of them heavier than 15 kg.

Laura's Day 1 in the gym:

• Ran 4 minutes on that stupid fucking treadmill and nearly fucking died
• Did two minutes on the rower and realised I was quite literally getting nowhere
• Did some hurty weights
• Was grossed out by naked colleagues wandering round the changing room, powdering themselves fruitfully. Does this count as sexual harrassment?

Laura's Day 2 in the gym:

• Ooh, I'm a bit busy at work today, I can't really spare the time

Laura's Day 3 in the gym:

• Ooh, I put my tracksuit bottoms in the wash and they're not quite dry yet.

Laura's Day 4 in the gym:

• Ooh, I'm feeling a bit peaky. Better not.

It's going well. If they could just stop the nakedness...

House white

"I hate this," the vendor told us. "I'm sick of having people poke round my 'ouse."

"Yes, it must be an intrusion," we sympathised.

"Worst fing is," he continued, "she," he said, pointing at his wife, "won't let me 'av a curry cos it stinks the place out."

Such were the words of the vendor of - actually - one of the better properties we've seen so far. Yes, house hunting has started in earnest. (Earnest, for non-Londoners, is a small suburb just next door to Newbury Park.) Ha ha ha. I am so funny.

So today we trotted off to Plaistow, which, for non-Londoners, is pronounced Plar-stow. That one's true. We looked at two houses on the same street. The first one was owned by a Vietnamese chap. He showed us into his house. We looked round. It looked lovely inside. Very much like an upmarket Chinese restaurant. Complete with china swans and dragons and a bathroom that was in need of some attention. We moved on.

The second one was bigger and downstairs was lovely. Upstairs looked a bit like a museum to the 70s, 80s and 90s respectively. A 70s bathroom, two 80s bedrooms, and one which was littered with Take That CDs. The vendor showed us the boiler.

"Thirty-two years old," that boiler is. "People say to me, you need to modernise it, but I say, it's still working. Thirty-two years." His boiler is older than me.

"I won't lie to you," he said. "We've had a spot of trouble with the neighbours. Them next door." He pointed. "Muslims," he said. "I don't know how you feel about that. Seven kids," he continued. "Noisy buggers too. You know what them Muslims are like - popping another one out every five minutes. Dead religious. Does my head in." We weren't sure if he was more offended by the number of children, the noise, religion itself or the fact their skin colour was a bit dusky.

This pondering was quickly resolved. "I have to say," he said, "you're the first white faces I've had looking round here, and I've had the property on the market for over a year." His wife made very readable 'shut up' faces at him, but he was in his stride and paid no heed.

"Yeah, yeah, it's a nice enough area. I mean, considering it's in Newham, which - let's face it - is a hole. I mean, you do get the football hooligans on Saturdays but that's only when West Ham are playing at home, and we've only had to call the police twice, haven't we, Sheila?"

Sheila looked like she'd lost the will to live.

"I'm not moving to get away from the trouble or anything. I just want to be closer to my grandchildren out in Essex. Like I say, I've called the police only twice for the football hooligans, oh, and I had to threaten to sue the landlord next door because of the South Americans*, and I've had words with the Muslim chap, but I don't think he understood a word I said. Yeah, yeah, it's alright around here."

Sheila started crying a little bit, as she realised the chances of selling her property before her grandchildren left university were slim at best.

As we left: "Don't worry about the gate; it doesn't shut properly. This place is falling apart."

Worst. Sales. Job. Ever.

* The issue with the South Americans was left unresolved. We wondered if he fundamentally objected to their very being South American.

Growing up

There were lots of things I wanted to be when I was growing up. I certainly never "knew", as some people claim they do, that I was going to be a doctor, a pilot, a vet. Over the years I wanted to be:

- A psychiatrist
- A psychologist (once I found out you had to be a fully-fledged doctor before becoming a psychiatrist... and that involved A-level Chemistry)
- A lawyer
- An actor
- An English teacher
- Artistic Director at the RSC

- An English teacher again

- A stand-up comic

- A writer

- An English teacher again

To this date, I've miserably failed on pretty much all of those. OK, I've had a couple of stabs at amateur dramatics - on the performing and the directing side, but Dame Judi Dench or Uncle Trevor Nunn I am not.

So what happened? London happened. I wanted to be in London. Being a traditional-type person, worried about security, I wanted a job in London before I moved here. I applied for a few graduate schemes whilst I was at university. Being quick off the mark, the first one that opened was RBS, and the rest is history. I am a banker.

Yes, I moved roles within RBS, eventually leaving the company (to move to another bank) last year. And in those roles I did a bit of training - call it teaching if you like. Shakespeare it wasn't. Still not really ticking the boxes though.

I resisted several sustained attempts to make me move to Edinburgh. London was my home. London is my home. London made it all worthwhile.

But now, with London itself beginning to irritate me ever so slightly with its shitty transport, the fact that it can take three hours to get from East to West London, with the twatty people that seem to push past on the tube or else stand in front of the exit gates, regarding their Oyster card like it's a wondrous piece of witchcraft (what's that, Dr Johnson? Am I tired of life?), it makes me wonder, just sometimes, "What else could I do?"

And however much you enjoy your job, no-one tells their grandma that when they grow up, they're going to be an end-to-end customer-centric service level agreement manager in the customer journey re-engineering department of a major UK bank.

A wee problem

The flat is falling apart. In the last couple of months, the boiler's broken twice, the shower is now fucked, the whole place has got to an unmanageable level of 'untidy' (though thankfully, mostly owing to Katrina the Cleaner, still clean at least), and most surfaces are at least a little bit stained by bloody cat urine. Literally bloody. Monty Cat has decided to have a relapse, mostly just to piss us off and say "I told you so" in his own smarmy feline way for choosing not to buy pet insurance. I have been to the vets more times in the last month than I have been to the doctors in the last year.

So what am I doing about this level of chaos? Yes, the boiler's been mended. Yes, I'm half-heartedly trying to get someone to fix the shower. Yes, I mostly wipe up the cat wee. But I hate tidying. This seems to me like an opportunity to move house.

And whoever I sell to can have the house, plus the furniture and, if we need to clinch the deal, we could even consider throwing in the cat.

In a fashion...

Let's be honest, you wouldn't describe me as someone with excellent fashion sense. If you were feeling generous, you might say, "She usually looks OK-ish" or if you were trying to flatter me, you might even try, "Your personal shopper did pretty well today," but let's be honest, left to my own devices, I'd probably be wearing last season's bin bag with a 1990s' bodysuit. Complete with poppers. The press-stud kind, not the party drug kind.

So a few months ago, feeling kinda trendy, I bought some leggings from Sainsbury's. For Sainsbury's, I understand, is a master of haute couture. Finally I was fashionable. Go me! As the till lady rang through my purchase, she ended my brief clothes joy with just one withering sentence: "Oh, I didn't know we still sold these."

Undeterred, I decided I needed some new sandals the other day. Of course I don't actually need some new sandals, but I wanted some. I located a pair I liked in the sale. I tried them on. They fitted. Reader, I bought them. And when I got back to my desk, I Googled them because they looked very, very cutting edge. I found out they were called Gladiator sandals. I felt a bit like Russell Crowe, but in a good way.

Then I Googled "Gladiator sandals" and found the following question on Yahoo:

"Do you think gladiator sandals will be in style for summer 2009?"

What? They've previously been in style?

Every single comment pretty much said no, with this one summing it up nicely, "nope, definitely not. 2008 was more laid back and relaxed, which is why the gladiators fit right in, for like going to the beach and whatever. 2009 is going to be VERY sophisticated and I don't think they will fit in at all." A further comment said that they were a "little too 2008".

Seriously? Seriously? When do these memos go round? I only became aware of their existence on Wednesday lunchtime, and by Wednesday afternoon they'd already been out of fashion for six months? Why does no-one tell me these things?

I pondered that question for a while, and then came up with an answer. If anyone did actually try to talk to me about this season's sandal / WAG / handbag I'd probably look at them incredulously and delete them from my mobile phone.

Still, it would have been nice to know about the sandals.