Home alone

MY wife has left me. It's all right, really, it's not as dramatic as it may appear.

It's that time of year when the school journey comes around and duty calls.

So while she tramps across the wilds of Northumberland I have to put up with life home alone.

Not quite alone - there's always Nipper the cat, but it takes her days to actually realise that it is me providing her with the appropriate portions of Grub-o-Cat.

And even an exercise such as that is a test in itself.

As Nipper believes she is a rather superior cat, her diet has to be, well, controlled.

There has to be a certain variety.

It's a mistake - and I know this from experience during recent days - to prepare a meal of, say, chicken (I mean open a packet that says chicken) when chicken has been served for the previous meal.

Somehow this is not playing the game.

If it was chicken yesterday then today it has to be liver or duck or beef, or to be more adventurous, beef and duck, or duck and liver, or liver and beef.

And it's more confusing because all the packets look the same.

And talking about packets looking the same.

Well, we adults (or is it just me?) have the same problem with those meal-for-one dishes.

Now at this time of year these are left for me and all I have to do is place the contents into the microwave. There's none of that celebrity chef lark when it comes to cooking.

The trouble is the picture on the cover of these packets shows that the Indian meal looks almost identical to the Chinese meal. And liver and bacon and mash could be, well, almost anything.

It makes the actual eating a real surprise.

There is, however, an advantage to being home alone. It means that just one plate is used and then washed.

That saves all the trials and tribulations of going through the process of loading the dish-washer.

And we have one of those dish-washers in which a knowledge of Harry Potter wizardry is needed.

Our machine really is more imposing than Dr Who's Tardis - and, I guess, more complicated to work.

I will not even mention the washing machine.

But there is one advantage to being home alone. At least no-one is taking control of the remote.

That is unless Nipper comes along and decides to paw the thing and suddenly we're thrust without warning into that strange world of television shopping.