The squeezed middle

Mr and Mrs Nunn come to stay fairly regularly. They pretend it's because they want to see me, but they don't. They couldn't give the tinest rat's arse about whether or not I'm even in the house, so long as the baby is there.

This is fine. It's nice to see them. And Mrs Nunn takes on nappy duties quite regularly. (Although every third nappy is oddly, and somewhat unusually a "stupid nappy, I think there's something wrong with it". It's usually upside down.)

However, there is an unsolved mystery when Mr and Mrs Nunn come to stay. It's to do with toothpaste. Now, here I think I ought to explain my own foibles a little more closely.

I am not a tidy person. I have never been. I would like to be. But I'm not. However, there is one thing which I am entirely anally retentive about; toothpaste.

Toothpaste should always, always be squeezed from the bottom of the tube. There is no room for negotiation on this one.

To you middle-squeezers, I say this - why? Why would you do that? What is the benefit? Is it particularly exciting to squeeze the toothpaste from the middle of the tube? Is it? Is it? No. Well, if it isn't exciting then, why do it? You're just storing up trouble for yourself about a month from now when you get to the end of the toothpaste, and suddenly all the toothpaste is trapped at the bottom of the tube. And then you have to spend valuable seconds squeezing it all back up again! All this ridiculousness could have been avoided simply by squeezing from the bottom in the first place. Morons!

I care about this so much, that (and this is desperately true) when I did online dating, years ago, squeezing from the bottom of the tube was actually one of the criteria I stipulated in my ideal partner. It might have sounded quirky and amusing but I WAS NOT JOKING.

Anyway, whenever Mr and Mrs Nunn come to stay, although they swear blind that they bring their own toothpaste, when I go to brush my teeth, my lovely tube of toothpaste has a kink right in the middle. This makes me angry.

What is worse is that neither of them will take responsibility. The last time I rounded in on Mr Nunn; sharing my levels of natural tidiness, he was the likeliest culprit.

"No!" he said. "I have this row with your mum all the time. She's the one who squeezes from the middle of the tube. It drives me mad!"

Mrs Nunn came to stay earlier in the week. I raised the toothpaste issue with her. "It's not me!" she said. "It's Dad who squeezes from the middle! Does Dad seem to you to be the sort of person who would squeeze from the bottom of the tube?"

This is a tough one, you see. Mr Nunn is more logical (hence a potential bottom-squeezer - so to speak), but Mrs Nunn is naturally tidier.

All we know for sure is that one of my parents is a big fat liar.

And in the meantime, until they sort it out and 'fess up, I'm withholding grandchild privileges.