A public flogging

You see, this is always what happens when you try and push the envelope.

I have suffered practically a public flogging at the hands of my ex-editor at the Erotic Review. These money men just don't understand the artistic temperament. The angst and hand-wringing and sleepless nights that go into creating one's masterpiece. T'was ever thus.

Dispiriting, though. I'd just named the handsome wolfhounds and everything. Brutus and Caesar. I had wonderful windswept walks planned for them with Mr Fisherman's Jumper and Ms Gray, amid the sand dunes and foamy winter waves of the south coast, before they repaired to his beach house with the tongue and groove work for something hot...

Well, if there's one piece of advice - sorry, takeaway - I'll be taking away from this sorry episode, it's not to cast my pearls on a public forum. If I continue with my oeuvre, and it's a big if, only when it is fully formed will I release it to the world at large.

Besides, I have other things on my mind this week. Such as Lily and where on earth she's going to go to school after this year. My heart leapt when she came home at the weekend clutching a plastic bag of folders in preparation for her exams next week. Yes, a new work ethic! Perhaps she could make it into the local grammar, I thought.

'Well done, darling, bringing back your revision!' I enthused.

'Yes,' she said perkily. 'I've got my biology, Latin and history. I brought biology because it's the first exam we've got on Monday.'

'Well done, darling.' Yes, a new maturity. Thinking ahead!

'History's easy. We've just got to do the POG.'

'What's the Pog?'

'Pilgrimage of Grace.'

Well this is marvellous, whatever the Pilgrimage of Grace may be. 'And Latin? Is that one of the first exams you've got?'

'Oh, no, I think it's the last one, at the end of the week.'

'Oh? Why did you bring back that folder then?'

'It was the only other one I could see lying around.'

Hmmm. Better not strike her off the waiting list for the local comprehensive just yet.