Bank Holiday Monday.

I love Bank Holidays - I think we should have one every month. It would make us all a lot happier.

Dogs walked, sun shining, birds singing - me in the office in front of a computer screen all day.... lovely. I have a roasted pepper Pizza for lunch and possibly something with pasta for dinner, as I managed to find anchovies in Ore Village yesterday.

The papers are fairly dull, I think they are having problems filling the vacuum left by Hurricane Irene being a damp squib. The daily mail hits new depths by publishing a photograph of Steve Jobs, wearing shorts and a T Shirt - being held up by a friend as he waits for a car. The man is obviously ill, I hesitate to say dying - but he looks pretty bad. As he no loner plays any effective part in the day to day running of Apple it's reasonable to expect he deserves some privacy. It's cruel and mawkish - typically daily mail. The DM is also veering closer and closer to 'Hello' territory - almost every story uses the word 'stunning' to describe some female - and takes up a lot of space describing their 'stunning' dress, 'stunning' hair and 'stunning' shoes. Most of these women look like hookers and appear to have their dresses stapled to their busts and hair glued to their heads. All the papers are buzzing with the news that Beyonce ( a stupid fucking name ) is having a baby. She's the first woman ever to get pregnant - will have the worlds most beautiful baby, the most serene birth and will be 'blessed' in so many ways that us mere mortals can only dream of. Bored with that one already.

Woman on the radio is trying to defend electricity pylons against some dreary middle class type who thinks they are ugly. In all honesty - I don't mind them, and I quite like the lights coming on when I flick a switch. It's 12-17 times more expensive to put cables underground - and in this country, every time you dig a hole in the ground someone starts a campaign to preserve 'their' countryside. The posh woman has played the 'health' card... it's only a matter of time before she mutters 'autism' under her breath. I'm sure we'd love to see all the pylons gone and cables under ground - but it's not going to happen - it's too expensive and people would get in the way.

In other news - I have had this odd rash ( bear with me on this one ) that I've not been able to identify and comes and goes - only on my legs. I've struggled to find a reason for it, even descending into a state of paranoia after reading a newspaper article about bed bugs ( it isn't - honest ) - yesterday I had a revelation on the dog walk when I remembered that this had happened once before, years ago when I changed washing powder - and I'm 99% of the way through a bog box of Persil Non-Bio that was a bulk purchase a few weeks ago - also, the rash seems to correspond to times when I'm cycling and wearing jeans. I made the mistake of doing some research online - and all roads lead to 'mumsnet' - something I've been aware of but have never paid any attention to... not being a mum, or a girl, or a net.

Mumsnet seems to be a portal for all the worlds self loathing, one up-manship, competitive grief and Munchausens sufferers. Are women really addicted to misery? Perhaps I caught it on a bad day bit women were clamouring to find new depths of horror and despair, each post ( we are talking 'slight rashes that might be caused by Persil Washing powder' ) tried to outdo the previous - I had to stop before I ended up in tears - it was getting to the stage where the next post would be -

" I used Persil once on the advice of my DOCTOR and little Tabitha's skin peeled off in bloody strips and she shriveled into a bloody, screaming, gurgling pool of steaming gore before I'd even opened the box... do you think I should call NHS direct?... and should she give pony club a miss this week."

I'm sure that a lot of people get a great deal of support from sites like Mumsnet, but it did remind me of a bad experience I had once, listening to a group of perfectly nice women sitting around a table waiting for a friend - starting their conversation friendly enough and eventually descending into the complete and total character destruction of their late friend - tearing her to pieces and mocking her appearance, hair, job, shoes, house, private life... everything... until a perfectly nice, attractive and rather modest girl turned up - and they were all over her - telling her how wonderful she was. People can't help egging each other on - it was like Lord of the Flies in tea dresses.