For Christmas, Gareth gave me (among other things)... a dog!

Well. Technically, Kenco is not my dog. He lives in England. He belongs to the Dogs Trust. I am but his humble sponsor. But my £1.50 a week gives him food, chew toys and an old couch to sleep on. And I can get the train to Darlington and visit him any time, and even take him for a walk. He also sends me newsletters, just like those starving kids in Ethiopia.

Gareth said he chose Kenco as he was looking for the dog with the stupidest face to make me laugh. Sure enough I fell for the blank expression and slightly manic eyes. He reminded me of Harry, my former mad wee dog who provided years of Blogging Gold until he was snatched away in the Evil Landlord Saga of 2002.

I'd been pining for a furry friend since our trip back to Australia. I'd dropped by Harry's house, hoping he'd greet me at the fence with his usual acrobatics. But that's the problem when you piss off overseas then swan back a few years later, expecting your old life to be frozen in time. It isn't. Harry's house was long abandoned, the gardens overgrown and mailbox choked with catalogues. But still, I stood there in the driveway bleating pathetically, "Harry? Harry?", as the chilly September rain hammered down.

It was so tragic and romantic. Just like the end of Breakfast At Tiffany's! Except Canberra instead of New York. And Trackysuit Shauny instead of Givenchy Hepburn. And mutt dog instead of ginger cat. And Gareth and Jenny waiting in a Nissan Pulsar instead of George Peppard waiting in a yellow taxi. ALRIGHT. Not like Breakfast at Tiffany's at all. But my old dog and his new owner were gone and I had no way of finding out their fate. It was a dud finale to my wacky years of pet ownership.

So when Gareth presented me with Kenco on Christmas Day I was ecstatic and teary. He'd been a little worried I'd think it was a dorky gift and that perhaps he should have just got the perfume and Thornton's chocolates from UnimaginativeHusband.com, but I thought it was the sweetest thing ever. Owning a real dog just isn't an option when you live in a poky wee flat, so sponsoring an unfortunate English mutt was a brilliant substitute.

I carted Kenco's photo to all our Christmas gatherings and showed him off proudly. People seemed rather bemused and bewildered by Gareth's choice of gift, just as they were when he gleefully told them I'd given him (among other things) a copy of Don't Pee On My Leg And Tell Me It's Raining by Judge Judy. It was the first time I ever felt like the dreaded Smug Married (okay, Highly Defensive Married) because what seemed stupid to everyone else just made perfect bloody sense to us.

Later on Christmas Night I was browsing the Dogs Trust website and was surprised to see that My Kenco was still listed as an Available Dog. In fact, it was just the same dozen or so hounds in the gallery for everyone in the whole of Britain to choose from.

"I just realised," I announced to Gareth, "That I don't have exclusive rights to Kenco!"

"Well yes. Each dog really needs more than one more than one sponsor. It costs £9 per month for their food alone. So the sponsorship money goes towards all the dogs at the shelter. You didn't realise?"

"I'm like a part owner of a racehorse."

"Has that taken the gloss off the gift a little?"

"Oh no! Not really." I sniffed. "I'm sure that if he were to meet all his sponsors, he would love me the best."

There are many advantages of having a virtual dog. Unlike Harry, Kenco doesn't shed hair, howl at the moon, or pee on the couch when he gets nervous. And even though he's not a physical presence you can still use him as a scapegoat after hearty Christmas dinners.

"Jeeeeesus... did you fart?"

"Nooo!"

"Well somebody did."

"It was that bloody Kenco."

"KENCO! You dirty bastard."

"Get back in your basket!"

I've been on holidays for two days now, so that's two days I've been trying to write a new entry. Two days I've been watching crappy television, drinking port and generally surrendering to Slug Mode. This is my first Scottish Christmas where I have not spent all Christmas, Boxing and New Years Days working at Geriatric Rescue. So I just want to wallow in this beautiful nothingness of dark wintery days off. WALLOW, I tell you.

I resolve to tackle the backlog of writing in the new year. It is ridiculous to have so much one could write, but to have not got off ones ample arse to write it. I have a list right here. Oh yes. I will chain myself to the desk if necessary.

Merry Christmas, you lot! Tell me about your presents...

I know a man who once swam in a vat of Nutella.

His name is John and he's the partner of Mum's lovely friend Trish. I met him the night before Wedding III, when The Mothership arranged a dinner with her Schoolteacher Posse. John was one of those easygoing guys you like immediately. Gareth was especially smitten because he was into motorbikes, but when he casually mentioned the Nutella Thing no other details mattered to me but the Nutella Thing.

John is an engineer for the company that makes Nutella, and one fine day the Nutella machine broke down. He had to be lowered into the big barrel o' choc-hazelnut goodness to investigate the problem. He alleged it wasn't very glamourous - the Nutella was warm and sticky and they had to haul him out afterwards and hose him down, and of course the batch of Nutella was ruined. But all I heard was, PADDLING IN A NUTELLA POOL.

If this happened to me, well, screw the repair work. I would dive deep, open my mouth wide and just wait like a shark. You know how they hover there, jaws agape, letting the hapless fish flow right down inside to their eager bellies.

I first met Nutella in the mid-80s when my Best Friend Katie brought some in for recess. It was one of those wee snack packs with the foil lid, complete with plastic digging implement. She was a rare creature whose Mum packed her delicious sweet things for lunch but rarely wanted to eat them. I, on the other hand, was hungry like the wolf but made my own lunch, and it was always some wholegrain homemade vitamin-rich crap as dictated by The Mothership. Thus much of our Best Friend conversations went like this:

"Are you not going to eat that [Spacefood Stick, KitKat, Wagon Wheel]?"

"Nah, I don't want it. Do you want it?"

"Well, only if you're sure you don't want it."

"Oh, I'm sure."

"Woohoo!"

I remember peeling back that foil and being punched in the nose by chocolate perfume. The Nutella gazed up at me, smooth and calm in its little box. It seemed a shame to disturb it. But ten minutes later I was licking away the last skerrick, wedging my tongue into the little grooves in the bottom of the tray.

I didn't encounter Nutella again for a decade. 1996 is remembered both as the year I left home and the year Ferrero brought out The Simpsons collectable Nutella glasses. I was swanning down the aisles, flushed with the freedom of grocery shopping without lamb chops, when the Homer glass sang to me from the shelf. I fully intended to stop at Homer - after all, how many glasses does a student need? But by year's end he'd been joined by Bart, Krusty and Maggie; then finally Lisa because I didn't want her thinking I thought she was some unworthy, uptight little bitch. And despite my intention to just have a wee spoonful of Nutella then scoop the rest into the bin, I'm not sure that happened very often. I'm fuzzy on the details; I fell into a sugar coma at some point.

I was clean for eight long years, before falling off last year while in Germany. I was caught in a moment of weakness, but you must understand, we'd been eating those vile little Russian sausages for weeks! So when we arrived in Berlin and found the youth hostel's bread rolls were not only not stale but they were accompanied by little foil packets of Nutella to spread upon them, I was powerless to resist.

Not long after I was staying over at Chez Gareth. We were cooking dinner when I spied a familiar jar up the back of the pantry.

"Is that Nutella?"

"Yep. Do you want some?"

"Oh no. I have a problem with Nutella."

"How can anyone have a problem with Nutella?"

"Oh trust me," I muttered darkly, "It can happen."

A few weeks later I was at Chez Gareth again and we were chatting on the couch.

"Sooo, I went to make a Nutella piece today," he began. Piece, incidentally, is a Scots word for sandwich.

"Yeah?" I searched for an innocent tone.

"Yeah. I took the Nutella jar from the shelf, and it looked like a normal jar of Nutella, three quarters full. But then I opened the lid!"

"Oh?"

"Much to my surprise the jar was near empty, except for a very thin layer of Nutella right around the edges and bottom. Like someone had very carefully excavated it, spoon by spoon, taking great pains to make it appear full from the outside, when in fact the lot had been scranned!"

"That's just ridiculous!"

"I know, can you believe it?"

"Maybe you have mice! Some very precise mice!"

"That's one theory!"

"Yeah! Well!" I bristled, "You shouldn't eat it anyway! It contains partially hydrogenated peanut oil, don't you know; and that's very bad for you. Very very bad!"

I assuaged my guilt by buying him a jar of Green and Blacks Organic Hazelnut Chocolate Spread, which is just as sugar/fat laden but unhydrogenated.

A whole month went by and he hadn't even opened it.

"Jesus!" I screamed out of the blue as we watched a movie. "How come you haven't opened that Nutella yet!?"

"Oh, I totally forgot it was there."

"How could you forget Nutella?"

"Well I dunno... I just did."

"But haven't you been thinking about it? Hasn't it been taunting you?"

"Has it been taunting you?"

"I'm just amazed that it's unopened. Don't you just crave it?"

"Well I tend to crave chips or cheese. I'm more a savoury tooth than a sweet tooth; that's your thing."

"Oh I have a sweet tooth and a savoury tooth. I have many teeth."

In the end I cracked, opening the jar myself and landing spoon first. But I managed to stop after one or two bites, then put the rest inside a double-batch of banana muffins as a delicious chocolately surprise, distributing the lot to friends and colleagues.

There was no mention of Nutella for a long while then one afternoon I dropped by Chez Gareth. I went into the kitchen to make the tea as per standard procedure.

"Oh, I don't want any tea," said Gareth.

"You don't?"

"What I really fancy," he grinned, "Is a Nutella piece."

"You want me to make you a sandwich?"

"Please?"

"Fine. Demanding bastard."

He just grinned some more.

I opened the cupboard and reached for the jar. And this is what I found.

"OH! Very funny." I sulked.

"Hee hee!" Gareth punched the air triumphantly.

"Your kangaroo is rubbish, by the way."

"It's my first one! Cut me some slack."

As soon as I have finished looking at every single picture on HEL LOOKS I will post something new. This entry is just so that the one about shagging isn't at the top of the page. Hee!

We saw a couple of most rockin bands on Friday night. The smoky little room above the pub was crammed with drinking dancing bodies, and Gareth seemed to know about 90% of them. How can one person have so many bloody acquaintances? Maybe it just seems a lot compared to the measly three or four people I know in Scotland.

The thing about knowing so many people is that you don't always get to catch up that often, so they're not always up to speed on what you've been up to. Like getting married and stuff.

We were just squeezing past the masses on our way out when an old mate of Gareth's appeared and gave a drunken grin of recognition.

"Gareth! You handsome bastard! How the hell are you?"

Slurred pleasantries were exchanged, then he noticed me attached to the end of Gareth's hand. His grin got bigger.

"Wah-hey!" he crowed, "Gaun yersel big man. I'll leave you to it. You have a GOOD NIGHT!" He gave him a congratulatory slap on the shoulder.

"You take this man home!" he shouted after me as we headed down the stairs, "And you shag him good. He deserves it. Oh yeah. SHAG HIM GOOD!"

Well, I've been a moody little shit this week. The Darkness is getting to me again. Going to work in the dark, getting home in the dark. Etcetera, etcetera. Then I got into a huff at work this morning because I had to put up the Christmas decorations, and they were in the same jingle jangle tangled state I'd left them in last Christmas, when I'd once again stuffed them into the box in a huff because I'd been convinced Gareth wouldn't propose and I'd be deported from the UK and definitely not be around the next Christmas and some other Antipodean temp would have to deal with them. Ha!

Putting up the decs at work contains none of the joy of putting up the decs at home. There's no nostalgic crowing over heirloom ornaments or fighting over who gets to put the star on top of the tree. There's not even anyone to fight with, because you have sole decorating duties. And there's no tree, unless you count the plastic plants. There's just a pile of tinsel bought at Safeway ten years ago, choked with ancient lumps of cellotape.

After I halfheartedly threw Christmas cheer over all the cubicles I asked one of the managers could I take the afternoon off.

"Why?" he asked. "Is it because you're cranky?"

"Yes!"

"On you go then."

I really love the guys I work with. They are gems.

So I stomped off at lunch time, stopping at the gym to do a Body Pump class in the hope of producing some happy chemicals. Then I came home, did the dishes, then decided to go back out and take a photo of the wintery landscape for you, in order to illustrate my shitty mood. By the time I got beanied and gloved up it was too dark to get a decent shot. Instead I am going to post a mediocre blog entry, and by the time it's finished I will have snapped out of my sulk and be sane again, so I'll scurry off to watch Ready Steady Cook.

During my first Scottish winter I began to notice all these lost gloves in the streets of Edinburgh. Some on footpaths, some on stone walls, some impaled on fence posts, some stuck up trees, some floating down the canal, some caked with spew. I don't know how so many people come to lose just one glove. I started taking photos of them and had this brilliant idea that I would create a photo gallery called Abandoned Gloves of Scotland and put it on the internet. But once it got to the next winter I realised what a crap idea it was, because 95% of the gloves are black and 95% of them are found upon grey backgrounds (pavement, road, cobblestones) which makes for really shithouse photos. Och well.

Dunvegan, Isle of Skye, April 2004.
The only non-black glove with a non-grey backdrop. But still crap!