Pooh and Proust

The househusband plucks his eyebrows. There’s a confession for you. When a child not old enough to say the word ‘eyebrow’ is looking at one of those ‘That’s not my monster’ books and the mouse says “his eyebrows are too shaggy”, said child turns to his father and pokes his eyebrows, it’s time for action. Since I fear the barber trimming them with his scissors, and making the damn things grow back even more Denis Healey-like, tweezers are the only way. There are those (friends of mine, in fact, to whom I have confessed this before) who believe plucking is a step too far on the road to metrosexuality. In my defence, though, I would like to point out that if you want to question my manliness, you try it. Especially if you do your nose hairs, too. Christ, that makes your eyes water.

This wasn’t my most appalling and unpleasant act in the bathroom this weekend, though. (Anybody read that sentence and worry about where this is headed?) I spent most of Sunday afternoon with my arm halfway round the u-bend. Daughter had made a deposit which wasn’t keen to leave the building. How does someone so skinny and delicate manage to produce such vast turds? Sometimes you go in there and it’s like she’s shat one of her own legs. There doesn’t appear to be room in her body to store something of that size. Mind you, it does go some way to explaining how happy she is to be rid of it, which translates into great pride at the fact that it won’t flush away.

The oddest thing was that the process of clearing the blockage didn’t just make me sweaty and the whole room fragrant in a way none of us could have wanted, it also gave me writer envy. Because cleaning up afterwards involved a whole lot of Dettol, diluted for washing surfaces and hands with. And the simple act of dropping a capful of disinfectant into a sink, turning on the tap and inhaling transported me back at least 30 years. Proust had his madeleines, carrying him back to his aunt on Sunday mornings at Combray. I have Dettol.

Whenever I was ill in bed, and even faintly likely to throw up, my Mum would put a bucket by the bed with a Dettol solution at the bottom. It’s not a pleasant odour, really, and might even induce vomiting in those with sensitive nasal passages, but I suppose it was masked by the wafts of vapour coming off the mug of Bovril on the bedside table. Frankly, I’d rather have drunk the bucket.

Now, 24 hours later, my fingers still smell of Dettol (which is at least better than the alternative). And the only challenge left to us is to find a long-term solution to the problem of getting enough vegetables and fluids into Daughter to give her a regular bowel, rather than one that empties approximately once a week. Answers on a postcard, please…