Bernadette Strachan

THINGS NOT TO SAY TO AN AUTHOR  (2) Should I have heard of you? (How in the name of God can anybody answer that? “Yes! I am extremely famous. You should be ashamed that you don't fall asleep every night with my name on your lips,” or “No! I am so unknown that I have to re-introduce myself to my Mother every Christmas”.)

IRISHISMS "I'd eat a child's arse through a chair."
 
Not particularly polite, but colourful and gets the message across. If you turn up at a friend's house, faint with weakness for want of a Hob Nob, and they ask politely if you are hungry you can say, with feeling, 'I'd eat a child's arse through a chair' i.e. I am beyond hungry and if you don't feed me soon I can't answer for the consequences.

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MAVIS  Mavis doesn't like to boast but she and the rest of her breed have special rights enshrined in law. Oh yes. Cavalier King Charles Spaniels so entranced Charles II that he passed a law allowing them access to anywhere in the land. Mavis can go anywhere. You can't, and nor can I, but Mavis can. She can saunter in to Buckingham Palace, she can waddle through Parliament, she can fart and grumble her way up and down the corridors of number ten. She won't, though, because she can't be bothered.

GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS I used to find it distracting when certain newspapers insisted on listing the value of the houses owned by people in the news. You know the sort of thing – 'the murdered woman lived in a three hundred and fifty thousand pound bungalow'/'the shamed actress is hiding out in her two and quarter million pound villa high in the Hollywood hills'/'neighbours on the street where the fraudster lived in a nine hundred thousand pound executive home were shocked last night'. Now the press obsesses about weight. They know everybody's weight. Shout random names at a journalist and see what happens: 'Peaches Geldof!' 'Seven stone thirteen!' 'Her Majesty the Queen!' 'Twelve stone two!' Never mind phone hacking, the Daily Mail has hacked every cast member of Hollyoaks' bathroom scales.

A WOMAN'S WORK IS NEVER DONE  I'm clearing out the cellar. No, more precisely,  I'm rearranging the cellar. It's a Rubiks Cube of tat down there. I move the steamer I never use to make space for the platter with a crack in it I never use, but then I have to move the steamer back in order to  move the chocolate fountain I never use. Meanwhile, Mr Henry the hoover keeps nipping behind me and tripping me up. Christmas decorations wink at me, covered in dust, and the boiler lurks in the corner like a heavy-set woman I've invited to a party and neglected to introduce to anyone. There's a box of broken china in one corner: I hang on to broken china because I've always had an ambition to build a mosaic-y garden feature. I have enough broken china to build a Great Wall of Broken China but still I collect it and still I don't make a start. There are dolls' faces down there, busted zips, ink cartridges that don't fit our printer and a wok I particularly hate. But I must keep going, I must clear the cellar. To make room for more tat.

FUDE  Picture the scene. You are alone in a kitchen. The phone rings. 'Honey,' says your husband, 'I'm bringing the boss home for dinner. Make something REALLY IMPRESSIVE. Oh, and he has a sweet tooth.' OK, this isn't going to happen: you're not in a 1960s US sit-com and you would garotte your husband if he spoke to you like that. But here is a recipe for something yummy that sweet toothed people will swoon over. Really. You could turn them in to sex slaves afterwards if you wanted to. And it's uber-easy. It's vanilla ice cream that you don't need to put in an ice cream maker or whisk after its frozen. It just sits there in your freezer waiting for surprise guests whereupon you say casually, 'Oh, would you like some home made vanilla ice cream?' and they reassess you rapidly. Here's what you do. You throw 600ml of double cream and ½ can of condensed milk in to a big bowl. Dribble in about a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Whisk them together (use the electric whisk – there are no brownie points for martyring yourself) until it looks like clotted cream i.e. a little clunched and uptight. Pour it in to a freeezable container (I use an old fashioned metal loaf tin because it looks pretty when you're serving it) and freeze. That's it! An idiot could do it; Mavis could do it. Remember, won't you, to take it out half an hour before you need it, so it softens and yields creamily to your scoop.