Let your girls play with worms

[smokingboot]

Dinner with Can Do Anything was very mellow and pleasant, and this morning, I woke to a phone call from Bridiegirl, who is bloody determined to force me into the ultimate fairy costume for a do later this winter. Trouble with this costume is that it grows greater in concept (and, I just know it, in cost) every time it gets mentioned. Trying to keep her imagination within the bounds of my budget is killing me.

Splendid Sekhmet phoned up immediately afterwards, and we had a fab conversation. It got a bit bizarre when I told her my fantastic idea for a present for Littlebro. It's in the WSPA catalogue, and it looks funky. It's a wormery, a compost maker in which the compost is created by red worms and tiger worms munching their way through kitchen waste. The result is real quality compost and liquid feed for the garden. I heard years ago that Surrey council were trying to use these worms. Apparently, they're indigenous, ecologically sound and it was all very successful.

Beloved Bear thinks that £50 on a present for anybody is beyond us this year, and just looks at me funny when I mention it. And Splendid Sekhmet?

'Ooh,' She shudders, 'Worms! In the house! How horrible!'

'Don't be dim,' says Smokingboot, 'You don't keep a compost maker in the house. You put it out by the back door. And it's ecologically sound!'

'Still,' continues Splendid Sekhmet, 'Worms! Perhaps if you had some little boys who you wanted to get interested in the environment...'

'Suppose you have little girls who want to get interested in the environment?' Smokingboot shouldn't have asked.

'Oh, little girls don't like worms. You know the old rhyme, 'Frogs and snails, sugar and spice.'

A nursery rhyme from an era when the female orgasm was rarer than the kraken, and viewed with equal revulsion. Marvellous.

'Little girls like to look pretty and play with pretty things,' tootles Mrs Motherhood 1959, who then outlined her plans to dress her future girls as fairy princesses and little gothic witches. She dreads having boys because of course, little boys don't get dressed up. Worms are OK for them.

A grossed out Smokingboot then outlined a family future in which little girls,forced to be cute against their will,turn into steroid chewing dungareed bulldykes wielding aka 47's against the candy-brained society that denies them worms, the splayed legs of despised dolls being used as machine gun tripods. Little boys, forced out of colours and costumes, wither into chat show hosts, ticket inspectors and psychiatrists. We never hear of them again.

Hear that, oh future generations? Don't say I didn't try to save you...