Accidentalis Pulchritudo

Brilliant writer Elisabeth from Sixth in line has been discussing a professional family portrait that she's been given as part of a recent birthday present.

Despite being apprehensive about it, she explains the concepts of 'punctum' as it relates to photography. I won't pretend to be familiar with Roland Barthe or his 1980 work 'Camera Lucida' but, as my grey matter understands it, 'punctum' describes the unplanned associations one makes with a photograph.

Usually, in my own experience, 'punctum' pops up in photographs that aren't formally posed. Either the subjects depicted are unaware of being snapped or there's been timing flukey or lucky enough to catch a unique situation.

Seeing as it's still Sunday, I'm going to give a nod to River's Sunday Selections tradition and plunk down some photos whose 'punctum' productions particularly grab me.

Firstly, our ex-rabbit, Skipper.  We caught up with him during our recent visit home to Oz and found that he's just gained a new friend, Gus the kitten. Gus likes to regularly leap on top of Skipper's back. Bunny boy is rather tolerant, but, after the sixth ambush, he kicked out his back leg and Gus found himself off the couch and sprawled on the floor.

Eventually, even 13 week-olds get tired, and this is what Sapphire found when she lifted up the blanket.

In Adelaide, a 43C day was made a lot more fun by using Kent's underwater camera.  Regular readers will know that my husband, Love Chunks, is a softly-spoken, quiet achiever kind of bloke, but during the photo session in the pool he did all manner of duck dives, bombs, swim pasts and chop sueys for attention. I'm thinking of having this one enlarged and framed.

Could this be any more Australian? Our mate Kent, mid-jump, on a plastic thong coloured in the national flag directly into the pool.

Earlier times, circa 2007.  Our underwater rain water tanks had been buried, the under-grass drip watering system was about to be laid and then some turf finally rolled over the top.  The chickens - Hermoine, Luna and Ginny - were happily settling in and Sapphire was busy bustin' her moves on the trampoline, unaware that I was nearby.

Even earlier, around 2003.  Our intense young artist was busily painting in her pen drawing of Ursula from 'The Little Mermaid', wearing one of LC's old shirts.  She spent many many hours at the bright yellow table that my father had made for her; specifically on projects involving empty boxes, sticky tape, play dough, paints, chalk and pipe cleaners.

Artists do get tired though. This one had recently been diagnosed with Asthma, and was told that Elmo was too furry to sleep with. To deal with this upsetting news, she was allowed to pick something/someone less hirsute.  Jesse the Cowgirl was a regular night time companion for several years.

A portrait of my god son (Will, in yellow on matching space-hopper), his two older siblings and my child.  Sapphire clearly had a few unrealised romantic feelings for young Mr P and took the opportunity to steal a quick embrace before the word 'cheese' had ended.

Despite being on the far end of Daggy slash Tomboy slash Unkempt, for a couple of years I made a lot of jewellery to help the school fundraising efforts. Sapphire was very keen to show off the bracelet she'd made (which was subsequently sold, a few weeks later, to a rather sophisticated older adult). What turned out was a slightly out of focus piece of jewellery but a lovely portrait of her happy little face.

Not so happy here at the start of 2009 though, despite my urgings to smile.  Leaving the only home she'd ever remembered to go and move to Melbourne was a time of uncertainty for Sapphire. Seeing some of those friends a month ago put a huge smile back on her face.

My mother has a beautiful singing voice, and I've reminisced in the past about her sterling efforts in many a musical production. Why not duet with your granddaughter to ABBA?

Holding a book in a damp bathroom whilst cleaning your teeth might not be the best idea, but who was I to tell her off for reading?  Multi-tasking at its finest.

Tasmania, January 2010. The first stirrings of tweenage angst from Sapphire.  And yet, then as now, my heart surges when I see her and LC together. They're more alike than they realise.

Geneva, 2012. An impromptu greeting from Milly that is received with thanks.


















Martigny, Switzerland, is home to the St Bernard Museum.  Worth a visit because the town also contains some impressive Roman ruins and a museum that regularly snaffles art masterpieces such as Van Gogh, Monet and Picasso to have a look at.  

Back to the dogs. This fella was in the very first steps of slurping me entirely across the face, leaving me covered in a clear-but-thick saliva jelly substance that smelled of St Bernard's bum hole. Still worth it.

When my parents arrived, I insisted that they pose in front of the UN, which has become a tradition for all of our house guests. We discovered that none of the flags were up - something I'd never seen before. Just after taking this photo, a gaggle of kids walked by.

Is your dog friendly? Can we pat him?

"Of course, but 'he' is a 'she.'" Milly was surrounded by admirers....

......who insisted that I take their photo, too.

Eventually, their mother and Auntie persuaded them to keep on walking and I decided to take another photo of my parents, Sapphire and Milly, "just in case the first one doesn't work out."

Before we knew it ....

.....this cheeky little guy dashed in, posed as the extra family member, and dashed out again!

This is the photograph I was referring to when commenting on Elisabeth's blog post: 'When LC and I married a millennia ago, we did the usual thing and hired a professional photographer. I hated the awkward poses, wearing too much make up and having all eyes on me (plus a brain tumour that, undiagnosed at the time, made me feel rather ill) and the photos all reflected that. A wedding guest friend, however, gave me some snaps he took on his old kodak and one immediately grabbed me. We're slightly out of focus, but LC and I are both not looking at the camera, but at something else that has made us laugh. It's the only one I had framed and is still on our bookshelf.' 

And, finally this one.  This is the one that I will get enlarged:

I love you, darling Sapphire.

Domestic Deaths


This month has seen a variety of deaths in the Lockett Lodge.

To be fair, after sixteen years of togetherness, it's to be expected that appliances wear out. We've been through three irons, several kettles, two vacuum cleaners, two 1970s cars and farewelled Love Chunks' 1969-model Kelvinator 'Foodarama' fridge for a Fischer and Paykel, but it seems right now as though everything my index finger even thinks about touching instantly dies.

A couple of weekends ago, LC decided that it was time to have a wood fire in our lounge-room fireplace. We'd had one a few times earlier this winter and it heated up our little weatherboard box so well we wore shorts and leavened some bread.

This time, unfortunately, the electrical paraphernalia that powers the pump device that pushes pesky smoke up the chimney and heat into the house conked out (two of my favourite words are in that sentence: paraphernalia and conked). The nose-hair singeing smell of burnt plastic rapidly combined with a churlish chimney to fill the house up with black smoke, swirling soot and four screaming alarms.

Several minutes later as we assured our frightened neighbours whilst staggering around with bleeding earholes and broomsticks that everything was OK, the house was silent but reminiscent of Pompeii as ash was strewn everywhere. With grey flakes fluttering from his lashes, LC gave a sigh and said, "Right, so we might be looking at a jetmaster gas heater next year then."


Then his beloved Gaggia coffee machine stopped frothing. That was okay, we could live without the froth on top, but when the element stopped heating it made sitting there with a tepid cup of brown a little bit more un-fun. Surprisingly, Love Chunks' farewell to Lady Gaggia was brief and unemotional. Little did I know that he'd already spied her replacement, Mrs Krups.
















Like all good Germans Mrs K was big, efficient and fairly quiet. She also ground up the beans which saved us having to do it and sprinkle the counter and floor in dirty brown crumbs. Unlike all quiet Germans, she fluffs up a treat which might - just might - justify what she cost us.

It was also time to get a new computer. I'd written earlier about my laptop no longer having the KNIHL keys visible but that was bearable. Now though, it was labouring so hard that the fan would go into overdrive before giving up, shutting down and vengefully freezing my documents and web pages more effectively than Walt Disney's cryogenic chamber.












Love Chunks researched, found and bought us a desktop computer while Sapphire and I were at my folks' place and we came home to a massive screen, thumping black modem, connected iPod docking station speaker thingumajiggies and wireless keyboard, mouse and remote controls. It is very impressive but still needs a folded up tablecloth under the keyboard so that it doesn't rock and roll over our $19 plastic camping table that we call a desk....

Sapphire's electric toothbrush decided that the 'electric' bit was too tiresome to continue with; my mobile phone needs a dozen strong indentations of my thumbnail (and a fair bit of swearing) before it deigns to turn itself back on (and even then presents me with a thick black line through the middle of the screen) and evilly rearranges my settings; the shower screams like it's having its toenails ripped out whenever the hot tap is turned on and the MP3 player no longer, well, plays. Alternatively, when the stupid device does play it's at 3am when it's sitting in the clock radio slot and suddenly turns on, making me glad I've just been for my nightime wee trip.

So was it any surprise that our kitchen floor boards started lifting, presenting us with a lacquered representation of a Toblerone block, right at the join in front of the dishwasher? I only noticed it when my ugg boot snagged on it, causing me to trip forward and dong my noggin on the fridge door (I'm sure the biscuits I had in my hand are still hiding under it somewhere).

Love Chunks suspected that the dishwasher was leaking and promptly called out a dishwasher um, detective, to figure it out. "Don't you DARE talk to him or offer him a coffee," he hissed down the phone at me during his lunch hour. "This bloke costs $150 per hour, so get him in, get him working and get him out."

Detective Zorran looked like the dark-eyed love-child of Jon English and Stevie Nicks. Despite his bohemian parentage he arrived on time, and with my mental clock - and bank balance - ticking, I ushered him into our kitchen so fast he banged his tool box on the front door but didn't rub his elbow until he was by the back one. "Yep, your motor's gone. It'll cost you $500 to replace plus installation and seeing as they've put in a fourteen year old dishwasher into a new kitchen you're better off buying a new one. It'll be quieter and save you water and all that."

I couldn't help it; I had to talk. "Um, at your hourly rate I guess you could choose between prostitution or mechanics?"

"Umph," his head was underneath the sink. He'd clearly heard that line before.

But I couldn't help it; I had to keep on blathering. "But I guess in both roles you'd be spending a lot of time on your knees, heh heh."

That did cause him to pop his head up and his look of shock actually made me blush and apologise. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to offend you."

"Ah no worries love - I was just going to tell you that the tool who installed this before stuck it to the wrong pipe."

Oh.

And so, as the grand final loomed and the carparks were packed with frantic footy folk looking to buy dips, chips, sausages and sauce we found ourselves at the local Good-Harvey-Warehouse-Crazy-Norman-Guy-John-Homemaker Centre dully looking at expensive silver and white boxes, wishing we'd had the foresight to bring in a sample dinner plate and wineglass to check if they'd fit in or not.

At first bounce the dishwasher arrived because the delivery guy was a staunch soccer fan who was quite happy to miss the game. It fit through our Gates of Hell with ease and was wheeled around the back to reside by Skipper's townhouse until we found a plumber to instal it.

It was then that I noticed, whilst bending down to rub at the rabbit's nose, that the little bugger has nearly eaten through the bottom of both doors and his inner stairwell was hanging together mostly by a fortuitous mixture of compressed turds, wet hay and newspaper scraps. How come they don't make these things out of titanium alloy or kryptonite; he's only had the joint for five months for creditcardssakes.......

Lizzie's Long Weekend
























Despite a Pommy monarch literally living half a world away who actually had her real birthday in April and most of us wanting a Republic, we Aussies are still never going to knock back a day off.

Our three days were spent doing activities that avoided the rain but still:

• Allowed us to clean up the litter in our street, respond to some lip given by loitering teenagers (yes, to one boy - at least I think it was a boy - I actually curled my lip and said, "Pull UP your pants, fool") and give Milly the dog some nice walkies at the same time ("That's right sweetie, you can chase those friendly kids away, that's right....")
• Taught us that Footscray Markets are to avoided at all costs if such issues as the odouriferous fug of fermenting fruit, pre-WW2 prawn heads, overly-elastic hygiene guidelines and the beauty of decaying Soviet-era concrete design are of concern
• Showed that home-made pasta is fiddly and time-consuming but very delicious. Especially if done by Love Chunks and Sapphire whilst I am reading the paper and patting the rabbit.
• Proved to me that blowing on cooked and freshly served food is essential before greedily inhaling. Hot caramel sauce studded with chunks of banana with lava-like tendencies will steadfastly stick to the roof of my mouth and create a painful blister that protests against any food hotter than refrigerated chocolate for days afterwards if I don't blow.
• Allowed us to witness the Crows defeat Essendon in Melbourne. One Bombers bloke in a newsboy's cap saw my wild clapping further along his row and, in frustration, he yelled something about my having a 'Far Cough'. I feigned indifference and added to the maturity level of our shouted discussion by poking my tongue out and showing him my grandmother's gold ring on my middle finger. Sapphire was shocked, LC resigned.
  

However, in amongst our various activities, I was subtlely trying to get a photo of the three of us together; looking casual: an informal portrait, having fun, just being a contented family enjoying each others' company. I'd noticed that our photos tend to feature only one or two of us in them and a Lockett Triple was becoming rarer than a happy marriage in Hollywood.

I had been asked to submit a good quality, high-res picture for a magazine article I'd been interviewed for, but trying to take a photo in the evenings when we were all together meant that the flash and automatic timer thingy made me look whiter than usual, LC more tired and Sapphire more recalcitrant.

In addition, like the badly-timed and later-regretted re-telling of jokes at dinner parties, we three tend to be folk who are best viewed 'live', as in "You had to be there." The camera doesn't seem to flatter us much, let alone cast us in an optimistic light.

No, I'm not being overly harsh. These photos below were taken at the footy by a kind bloke who sat directly in front of me and even offered his M magazine (containing the essential TV guide for the week) to help me mop up the Diet Coke that I'd dropped and then opened only to have it fizz directly down the neck of his parka. They clearly illustrate how difficult it is to get the three of us photogenically acceptable:



I tend to resemble an elderly potato, Love Chunks is obviously sitting on something excruciating (or just did something excruciating) and Sapphire is at that oh-so-helpful 'let's make a funny face' stage. *Sigh*

I didn't feel like asking my soggy Diet Coke victim to take a seventh picture, especially when his three mates were standing impatiently nearby rocking on their heels kicking at crumpled beer tumblers and muttering, "Come on Trevor, this is our last bloody night before we fly back to Adelaide and our wives."

But how was I going to obtain a recent family portrait that exemplified the ideals of work/life balance and not the less attractive ideals of facial tics, self-abuse, uncomfortable stadium seating, disrespect and too much sugar?

Perhaps the Star Wars exhibit at Scienceworks would help?




















Hmmm. At least posing with a gender-reassigned Senator Palpatine and Luke 'This is my Warwick Capper hair' Skywalker made me feel a bit better about myself. There was a Princess Leia in her Planet Hoth (the icy place) outfit that made me wonder if she'd enjoyed too many hot toddies at the rebel base, an Obi Wan Kenobi who was channelling Marlon Brando rather than Sir Alec Guinness and the less said about Darth Vader and Leia as the bikini-clad slave the better...

A smaller and slimmer Darth was found in the gift shop, slumped forlornly against the wall. After an hour of queing to get into the musuem followed by another half hour queue at the cafe for lunch before the final half hour queue to get into the Star Wars exhibition, he was feeling as tired and emotional as I was.




















So the fabulous family foto will just have to wait for another day. A day of soft lighting, forgiving camera work, a malleable child and comfortable husband, a tan for me and a graduation course in Photoshop and Picasa. Cross your fingers and hope that the force will one day be with us.

It won't heppen overnight but it wull heppen.

Multi-tasking whilst starkers can be a bit of a challenge and a rather thrilling (yet private) way to 'live life on the edge' when such a thing is needed. And thrills of any kind are definitely needed when trying to sell a house that you still live in.

Take this morning for instance. Waiting for the conditioner to work its magic, I grabbed the scourer and bent down to have a good clean of the shower's floor tiles, hoping that no stray Jif was going to find its way up my party pooper or towards the still-oozing injury under my left boob.

As Seinfeld once noted, no-one looks good crouching in the nude and judging from the reflection in our now always-clear glass shower screen, no-one looks good bent over vigorously scrubbing either. I saw moore jiggling and swaying than all the navy sailors' hammocks on the good ship Trafalgar.

Even clothed, the multi-tasking continues to an almost obsessive compulsive level. Holding the electric toothbrush firmly in my cakehole with my left hand the right is carefully wiping down the stray gobs of paste and spit that dot the mirrors and re-aligning the towels on the chrome rack to make sure they're all at right angles.

All dirty clothes are immediately placed into the washing machine or hidden, neatly folded, at the bottom of the wardrobe and the every day flotsam and jetsam of bills, car keys, partially-useful junk mail, rubber bands and two dollar coins are placed inside one of three small cane baskets shaped like ducks.

The bed is made with hospital corners and the quilt cover is more tightly pulled than Madonna - all ready and waiting for that much-dreamed of impromptu inspection by a buyer with long arms, short pockets and an ability to fall in love with a home whose toilet directly looks out towards the front door.

Even my beloved laptop is now closed down instead of merely on 'hibernate' and folded up underneath the desktop; out of sight and with no suggestion of needless clutter. Milly's bed is carelessly flung into the shed despite her puzzled, limpid-eyed appeals and the rabbit's hutch is taken from under the pergola (too many stray 'bunny beans' to sweep up) and artfully placed under the bottle brush tree with additional shade provided by an old golf umbrella.

Doing any form of 'real' writing has been impossible when, out of the corner of my twitching eye, I can see fluff bunnies lurking by the skirting boards (but I only vacuumed yesterday), finger prints on the coffee table and a film of dust on the telly screen.

"But Kath, buyers aren't noticing that sort of thing, they're looking at the room sizes and hoping that 1976 mission brown and burnt orange isn't your internal colour scheme," is what I've heard too many times. Maybe yes and maybe no - it's also important to keep everything clean because it is the grime that they do notice that reminds them, "Oh, there's leaves everywhere: clearly this garden is hard work," or, "Hmmm, by taking out the carpets and polishing the floorboards, they now have a three inch gap under their doors that cats can limbo dance under and the wind can blow McDonald's thickshake containers through," or, perhaps even more worryingly, "Is it just their shoes under the bed or does this house smell like wet flatulent dog?"

And I'm not alone in this kind of fanatical fetish - a friend in Melbourne tells me that she hid the dry cat food bowl in the dishwasher before every Open House and another mate admitted to spraying rose toilet spray on her flowers in order to make them more authentic and cottage gardeny. We (blush blush) are using our clothes dryer because the trampoline is wedged up under our outside clothesline to hide it and not interrupt the space and lines of our lawn. As such, what isn't allowed in the dryer is pegged onto two tiny clotheshorses ferreted down the side of the house by the taps and fuse box.

Most of us know that there's no point shoving all the unattractive clutter into cupboards because the bloody buyers open them up as they walk through each room: "Oh, so that's where they've hidden the second couch and the breeding parrot aviary." Our plumber told me that he turns on every tap to see how they work and another veteran investor literally shifts stuff like shelves, bed heads and dodgy art works to check for hidden cracks.

Crikey. At least most of those are on my face and not on our walls.

Day Twenty Six - Appreciative August

Little Bonuses

















.....or should this be titled 'Little Bonii' ?

So far this month I've prattled on about the big things - you know, chocolate, dogs and the telly; and now it's time to waste some words on the little things. Life's little bonuses that, as the title suggests, you don't expect.

No, not like that weeping cold sore and cornflake eyes you got on the day of your year eleven class photograph, but nicer, simpler and less scary things.

For instance, last week I dragged out my Target Men's black coat which is the warmest thing I own and is only thisclose to walking around in an oversized blanket but for the fact it has a long snazzy silver zipper down the front. After Milly and I walked Carly to school, I put my hands in the pockets to find a twenty buck note that had obviously been hiding there since last winter. Unless it was placed there earlier that morning, with Love Chunks deciding that he needed to financially thank me for services rendered....

Also last week Good Old Genki started working again. The Genki Treadmill had inexplicably been giving me the exercise equipment's equivalent of the Middle Finger Flick Off when it would stop dead without a second's warning only to restart again after much turning off and on at the powerpoint, swearing, fiddling with the techno Engrish 'PEASE PESS PLAUSE TO MAUNAL START' keyboard clam thingy and begging it, out loud, to behave itself. It was only my stooped posture that enabled me notice exactly when the screen would quickly flash an 'EO EO EO' and switch istelf off so that I could in turn leap off the contraption saving myself a godawful face scrape or being painfully flung into the back wall of the shed via the art-n-craft table and weights bench.

Love Chunks could see that his attempts at trying to convince me that there were other exercises in the world besides running were to no avail and got out his screwdrivers, rubber soled-shoes and hammer (as a last resort, for bashing it to smithereens) to have a tinker. Whatever he did (probably with the hammer and the bashing) worked and the Genkster hasn't let me down since. A nice bonus, seeing as it was bought off the internet by a friend who then gave it to me and we've found out that not one gymnasium, sports shop or equipment repairer or importer in our entire nation has heard of the brand or wants to touch it.

Another little bonus has been the ACME beaters shown above. Jenny and Mimi gave this to us in 1995 as a joke wedding gift. We loved the Road-runner brand name, and wondered if it had the guts to cope with splitting the yoke of a single egg, let alone stick out for twelve months before the warranty expired. To our surprise, ACkers is still kicking on, through more than 13 years of transforming egg whites into merinque, churning through cheesecake fillings, creating quiches and ploughing through pudding mixes. Not bad for a bit of a larf and nine bucks ninety-nine from Cunnos Warehouse.

As some of you know, Sapphire's pester power (and extremely good behaviour) over the space of twelve months eventually got her a rabbit for her ninth birthday whom she named Skipper. I wasn't holding out a lot of hope for him making much of a positive impact on my life - even though he certainly has for Sapph - but, somehow he has. The sneaky little bugg--- I mean bonus.

Bunny beans no longer shoot out of his butt like machine gun fire as he's now secure and relaxed in his new home. He sits up to intently gaze at the TV, endures Milly's 'kisses' (licks to his head and ears), flops out under the coffee table and has a wonderful time running amok in the study whenever its raining. He patiently sits through Sapphire's recorder, guitar and ABBA singing sessions in her bedroom and been quite the socialite on her regular playdates as he's handed from giggling girl to giggling girl.

Sure, he's nibbled the spines of a few books and chomped all the handles off my eco-shopping bags, but it was 'Common Ground' by Malcolm Fraser that was the worst affected (and I never wanted to read it anyway) and I've got more bags than I know what to do with...... He's also lovely to cuddle and snuggles up on my shoulder like a cat would. He's better than a cat though because he doesn't scratch, catch native birds or bother the dog. So yes, he's a bonus.

Other happy surprises have included:

• Getting ten showbags a month early and for free in order to 'road test' them on radio - I was the coolest mother in the world when they arrived home (but didn't feel quite so wonderful a few exhausting hours into a frenetic sugar-high supervised playdate with her friend Selene later);
• Finding one kilograms' worth of peanut butter M&Ms from US army chopper pilot Scott, who felt sorry reading about my pinings for them on chocablog;
• Meeting Garry at Bracegirdles, spending a morning drinking Belgian chocolate-laced mocha and shootin' the breeze about us both chucking in teaching for chocolate worship;
• Cracking the 10 kilometre mark - for the first time in four years - on the Genki Treadie in 52 minutes and at a cost of 600 calories;
• Moving on down the scale from 79 kilos in January to 69 kilos yesterday; and
• Sitting up until 1am engrossed in a fantastic book whose only payment will be a 200 word review.
  

My final bonus is one that may initially seem rather cruel to categorise as a bonus but it was. A couple of weeks ago, Sapphire was the first in our house to get the cold/flu/chest infection/asthma/tonsilitus lurgy that has since smacked us all flat. We're still getting over it in fact.

She had to spend three days home from school, which isn't a "Yee-hah, no school!" moment for her because she loves her class, enjoys her learning, PE and music lessons and her mates and only reluctantly admitted - after her fourth lot of ventolin in one night - that she wasn't feeling too well.

Sapphire insisted on watching the Olympics, and Milly sat on the floor next to her as is her usual modus operandi when one of us is sick. I sat with them, doing the usual motherly thing of getting pillows, blankets, tissues, soft toys, drinks and books and getting to spend time with her without having to coordinate playdates, meal times, housework, writing duties or anything else.

The lurgy wasn't pleasant for Sapphire of course, but it didn't dampen her spirit, sense of humour or fascination with the sporting endeavours she witnessed and I, for the millionth time, marvelled at just how on earth I'd managed to cook this wonderful creature inside of me for forty weeks. She entertained me with her eerily accurate 'Get some nuts.....Fool!' Snickers/Mr T impression and I her with my 'They disssscovered the ssssourccccce in sssseecondsssss' Ultra tune Statesman Owner's imitation.

On the Thursday she was fine to go to school, armed with her puffer and a big box of tissues. She held my hand, hers still so very tiny and soft in mine as Milly trotted proudly in front of us; our brave dog, leading the way. "I hated being sick, Mum, but it was nice being with you."

The word 'bonus' doesn't quite cover it, does it?

Say G'day to Skipper

Never underestimate the massive strength of Pester Power by an eight year old, dear reader. Especially when it has been occurring on an hourly basis - every day - for the past year. I tried everything to dissuade our now nine-year old daughter Sapphire, telling her the usual lines like:

• We'll see
• You're probably allergic to them like you are to cats - do you want your eyes to swell shut again or your Mummy to get a 'visit' from the child protection agency?
• I need to chat about it with Dad. No not right now, but when he's at home and we have time to discuss it in detail. No, I'm not going to make a specific appointment.
• Hmm, why not find out more about them on the internet?
• Didn't you say that their teeth get really long and they bite?
• True, Milly could bite too, seeing as she's a dog. But she's a friendly one, more likely to lick than nip. Isn't she enough for you? Oh yes, true again, she seems to have chosen me as her 'Alpha' but she likes you too. What's that? *Sigh*, well yes, when you're the one feeding her she does.

....all the way to the hardest, meanest most unfair one of the lot that I'm sure most parents will use out of sheer desperation and for an almost primal need for some respite from the pestering: "We need to see you doing more chores at home, behaving better at school and not answering back every time we ask you to do something and then maybe - just maybe - you will be ready for the responsibility of having a pet of your own."

And you know what the little so-and-so did? She completely blew my prediction out of the water. Instead of giving up the campaign for manners, tidyness and tolerance after a couple of days, she persevered.

"Mum, I'll feed the chooks for you," or "Hey Mum, I've made my bed and tidied up my desk, do you want to see?", and "My school bag is unpacked and I've taken the tissues out of my culottes before putting them in the hamper." Each day I was accosted with her bright face, her hopeful eyes and a desperation to prove herself worthy; trying so hard to keep up with her chores and even create new ones. The final stick for this camel's back was her "Have you spoken to the teacher yet? She wants to tell you about an award I'm getting for academic achievement and for being a caring leader." Poo. Bum. Bugger. Shit. Fart. Sapphire was really, genuinely, 110 percentedly doing her damnedest to earn herself a rabbit reward.

Then the magnificent Monique read my previous blog about the issue, and did absolutely nothing to strengthen my case for 'no'. Amanda Blair had recently interviewed an outstanding lady called Sally, owner/goddess/carer/marketer/nurse/rescuer/adopter and champion of all things rabbit oriented.

OK, so maybe it was worth a call.... And unfortunately, it was. It was obvious from the two conversations I had over the line with Sally that she was a passionate, kind, generous and genuine person who wanted to make sure that rabbits were treated decently and, if lost, not suited or mis-treated, be removed and given to good homes. I made an appointment for Love Chunks, Sapphire and myself to go and meet her on Sapph's birthday.

To write that my daughter was 'beside herself' is like saying that the Warner Bros Road-runner liked to get from A to B fairly quickly. Every few minutes she'd rush up and hug me, saying "Oh thank you Mum, thank you for trusting me enough to have a rabbit, I can't wait until Friday, oh thank you!" I'd have to clear my throat and blink away the surprise tears that threatened to reveal the chinks in my serious-and-sensible-and-sombre parental demeanour. I was probably as excited as she was.

And here she is, reverently holding her new bunny boy Skipper, looking for all the world like the proud mother of a newborn* baby.

She spent most of Friday holding him, patting him, stroking his ears and talking to him. Love Chunks earned The Coolest Dad Ever award by deciding that Skipper can come inside whenever Sapphire is home on the weekends or from school, and can stay in his hutch for meals and bed times.

Skipper has grown in confidence since Friday, when he blasted out bunny beans from his butt faster than a slug gun. Luckily, they seem to be just as dry and I wouldn't put it past myself - in a bleary, no-coffee-yet state, to mistake them for coffee beans and shove them into the Gaggia.

It was a huge relief to find that Milly was fascinated and not angered by the new addition to the family. She likes to lick Skipper's ears and he doesn't seem to flinch or mind in the slightest. She also seems to have developed a taste for the bunny beans she's found on the floor; so as revolting as it may seem, it's a bit of a cleaning bonus for us less-than-fully-houseproud pet owners.

It feels like I'm being attacked by the PMS Poltergeist a couple of weeks early, because it's made me all unavoidably teary. Sapphire was in her room making a video of Skipper familiarising himself with her - the tell-tale sounds of a few scattergun shots of bunny-butt beans and the scrabble of tiny claws on the floor - and Sapph's clear voiceover: "Is this a dream? Are you finally here with me? Did my Mum and Dad agree to have you? This has been the best birthday ever." Geez, there's never a tissue when I need one....

As I sit here in the spare room tapping away on the laptop, Sapphire's in the living room watching the Narnia DVD with Skipper on her lap and her head leaning on Love Chunks' shoulder whilst he is stroking Milly's warm velvet ears. It is such a beautiful scene. I'll ruin it by trying to describe it without resorting to corny cliches. Instead I think I'll stay here until the movie ends so that the damn tears don't sproing out again.

* Obviously this is not something we hope for at her age, and if Love Chunks had his way it would be never.