Old Wives Tales

'Quick give me some numbers for the lottery,' my mum-in-law shouted at my son as he fell UP the stairs.

'What?' my son said, rubbing his shin, where two purple bruises were fast appearing.

'It's lucky to fall up the stairs,' mum-in-law explained. 'Give me some numbers and I'll pop in to the co-op on my way home and get a ticket.'

My son shook his head and reeled off a string of random numbers.

'You'll be a millionaire tonight,' mum-in-law said confidently.

Needless to say -- he wasn't.

But it set me thinking about old wives tales and, to be honest, I think I must have spent the first years of my life totally believing most of them because they spilled out of my nana's mouth like a verbal waterfall and were spoken with absolute conviction.

When I was about thirteen or fourteen I was seriously teased at school because of my hairy arms. Let me say I am by no means a hairy person. I've hardly ever needed to shave under my arms or my legs because God thought it would be fun to put the entire lot on my forearms. Fortunately, they were white blonde hairs, but that didn't stop the kids at my school mercilessly teasing me about them.

However, this didn't faze me because as I walked away from the bullies and their taunts of 'gorilla arms' echoing in my wake I knew one thing was for sure. My nana had told me that if you had hairy arms it meant you were going to be rich. I was utterly convinced that I was going to be fabulously wealthy. I was also utterly convinced I would lead a very long life because she also told me people with long ear lobes lived longer that people with short ones.

As a youngster, I actually used to feel sorry for people with little ear lobes because I thought they weren't going to last long!

Well, I'm still waiting to be fabulously wealthy and the jury's still out on the long life thing.

It was all porky pies. Old wive tales.

Nana also told me if you crossed on the stairs there was going to be a row. And if knives crossed on the table there would be a row, too. In fact, there were so many ways a row could be caused that, as a kid, I spent most of my time trying to avoid them happening. It was quite stressful!

My mum was no better. She told me if I ate the remnants of cake mixture in the bowl after she'd made a cake I would most certainly be inflicted with worms. I was terrified of raw cake mixture! Until one day, when I walked in the kitchen to see my mum scraping the bowl and shovelling it in her mouth.

I have eaten mountains of crusts to get the curly hair that alluded me. Lamented over the mirror I broke because my nana said it meant I was to experience seven years of bad luck. And if I ever went to open an umbrella indoors she would screech at me to stop because apparently that would give me a huge dollop of bad luck, too. If I pulled a face, she would say if the wind changed my face would be stuck that way. And the times I saw her chuck salt over her left shoulder after she's spilt a bit on the table.

Of course some old wives tales have been proven to have a grain of truth in them. For example, drinking warm milk makes you sleepy. An apple a day keeps the doctor away and chicken soup is good for a cold. And even carrots being good for your eyes. They don't actually make you see in the dark which was the reason I consumed fields of carrots as a kid, but they do reduce the risk of getting macular degeneration when you are older which I guess makes up for the disappointment of not having eyes with super powers.

But the thing I'm most peeved about is not so much an old wives tale as a myth. The myth that denied me years of selection boxes -- the ones my auntie would buy me at Christmas.

'Nooooo! You can't eat those,' nana would squeal as she snatched the box out of my hand while simultaneously slipping in her false teeth.

'Why not?

'Don't you know chocolate gives you spots? You eat all that chocolate and you'd be riddled with acne.'

'I will?'

'Riddled!' Nana said emphatically. 'You'll look like Job in the bible when he had all those boils and stuff. You'll never get a boyfriend.'

'I will! I won't!' I said, recoiling in horror at the brightly coloured box. 'Well, what shall do with them?'

'Leave them with me,' nana said reassuringly. 'I'll get rid of them.'

'Oh, thank you, Nana. I don't want to have spots.'

'Just looking out for you, dear.'

I have more than a sneaky suspicion those chocolates went the same way as the left over cake mixture -- just in a different mouth.

Were you fed any wives tales? I'd love to hear them.

Never judge a book by the rustling of its pages

I picked up the telephone and heard the voice.

'Can you come and clean my carpet? Up on the farm, it is.'

A mental picture popped into my head.

Greasy cap, well-worn jacket, green, sheep-poo splattered wellies and a jovial yet weather-beaten face.

He was nice. Chatty and friendly. We arranged to go up to his farm the following Monday.

Monday came. You know Mondays? They are horrible. Mondays should be banned. No one wants to make an effort on a Monday. I rolled out of bed and stared at my greasy locks in the bathroom mirror. I should have washed it over the weekend. Oh well, it was only a farmer. What did it matter? Should I wear make-up? Nah. Couldn't be bothered. Contact lenses? Couldn't be bothered with them, either. I plopped on my old specs. They would do. Who's going to see me?

We drove up a winding, narrow lane to the farm. See? Just as I thought. A little old farmer. He wouldn't mind if I looked a tad scruffy today. It was Monday, after all.

The farm was old and rambling. I climbed out of the van, walked up to the door and rang the bell. The door opened and my jaw hit the floor and bounced back up again.

Oh,****!

'Hello,' I said in a strangled voice as my hands, instinctively, tried to smooth my greasy, uncombed hair. 'Er...we've come to clean your carpet.'

'Hello,' he beamed.

Let me tell you, he was definitely not a little old farmer in a greasy cap and well-worn jacket.

Mid 40s? Very smartly dressed. And that wasn't the smell of sheep-poo wafting over me, it was cologne. Expensive cologne. And if that wasn't bad enough he was then joined by his equally smart brother.

And then I looked at his shoes and my heart sank.

No green wellies. Smart shoes. Really nice, smart shoes. The kind of shoes men in the city wear with their equally smart suits.

Look at your feet, dear readers. What do you see? Shoes tell people everything about you.

I looked at my feet. Scuffed trainers with a spot of bleach on each toe.

'Come in and see the carpet,' he said.

'Um. I'll just fetch my husband first,' I mumbled as I fled.

Husband was propping up the van, reading the back page of the newspaper. He looked no better. His baggy, old combat trousers bore a few patches his mum had sewn on. He hadn't shaved and he was wearing his P.C. Plod shoes. They have a bit of a bump on each toe. He got them off eBay, says policemen wear them and they're very comfy (They look a bit like clown shoes but I haven't the heart to tell him.)

I knocked him out of the way, swung open the van door and dived into my bag, hoping in vain there was an old forgotten mascara lurking in the bottom or at the very least -- a comb.

There was nothing.

And even if there was. What was I going to do? Slap a load of make-up on my face. What would the farmer have thought? (actually he wouldn't have thought anything because it turned out he danced at the other end of the ballroom but I wasn't to know that at the time, was I?)

'What are you doing?' husband said, annoyed, as he picked his paper off the floor.

'Why did you let me leave the house looking like this?' I snapped.

'What? You look all right?'

'Well, you would say that, wouldn't you?'

I peered in the wing mirror. Errwww. I looked a sight. Licked my fingertips and ran them over my eyebrows, as if that was going to make a difference!

Now you, dear readers, probably look lovely without make-up. All fresh and clear-skinned.

But me?

How do I describe myself?

Okay, well maybe I'm not this bad and I do have hair.










Actually, as for my hair? I'd give a Heron's nest a run for its money, anyday. In fact once, a few years back, I was sitting in the garden and a sparrow landed on my head. Several rather rude people, who shall not be named, said it probably mistook my hair for it's nest and if I stayed still long enough I might get a few eggs laid on it.


I decided to hide as much as possible. Let the husband be the scruffy focal point. He wouldn't care. He has a cardigan with holes the size of the Grand Canyon in the elbows. He says he's waiting for me to 'darn' them. Darn? What is 'darn'? Does anyone 'darn' these days??

So I hid in the farmers outhouse where my husband had sent me to fill buckets of water for his carpet cleaning machine.

'Well, aren't you going to help?' husband whined when he noticed me loitering in the outhouse.

I looked both ways. Coast was clear.

'It's all right for you,' I retorted. 'You'd turn up to meet the Queen in those trousers. I've got pride, y'know? That man must think we're a right pair of scruffs!'

Husband rolled his eyes and stalked off into the house.

'Coffee?' the farmer called out.

My shoulders slumped.

'Chocolate biscuits?'

'Lovely. Very kind of you,' I mumbled, avoiding eye contact. I swear he must have thought I was a bit simple. Probably thought my husband brought me along because my carer was having a day off.

We did the job and to say he was charming was an understatement. He was absolutely lovely and so was his brother. And by far the best dressed Welsh farmer I have ever seen.

On the way home, I stared at my husband's stubbly chin and sighed.

'Y'know we really should make a bit more of an effort,' I said.

Husband shrugged nonchalantly.

'And those trousers are going in the bin for starters,' I added.

I've given myself a big slap on the wrist. Even if our customer had turned out to be a wizzened old farmer with a tweed jacket and milk-bottle glasses, it wouldn't have made a difference, only our best is good enough, whether it's our work or our appearence.

And as for me - I am NEVER leaving the house without my makeup on! You never know who you're going to meet. I mean, it could have been Jose Mourinho. Mmm. Up a Welsh mountain - maybe not.

Cat Wars

Well, I was more than a little depressive in my last blog so today I'm writing about something entirely different.

We are at War. With our neighbours cats.

When we moved into our house it had a rather large garden and, to be honest, I ain't big on gardening. I can barely tell a plant from a weed. So there was never going to be neat little rows of bedding plants or luscious bushes with latin names.

What we did want though was a garden where all wildlife would be welcome. So while we kept the grass cut and the garden relatively weed free, we did allow a few patches of nettles for the butterflies and a rotting log pile for anything that fancied taking up residence. And for our effort (or lack of effort, I should say) we were truly blessed. We saw hedgehogs scuttling by in the evening. Squirrels pinching nuts from the nut feeder, the odd heron landing near our pond. A pond in which newts and frogs thrived. But most all we attracted birds. We even got a family of Hawfinch, which here in Britain are on the decline. We loved doing the RSPB big bird watch thing because we could proudly list all the birds we had atttracted to our garden.

One day I counted 17 yellowhammers sitting in our tree. The tree looked like it was in flower. Hours and hours we spent watching the wild birds. We did everything we could to help them survive the hard winters and they rewarded us by bringing their chicks to feed at our bird table.

And then...

Our neighbours acquired SIX cats between them.

Two of the cats were quite clearly natural born killers.

This is one of them. She's called Sharpay. We call her Shar-killer.

These two cats flung themselves at our bird table, snatching birds in front of our very eyes. They were so fast and so agile.

'This is war,' my husband said, rolling chicken wire around the bottom of the bird table. 'Trying getting up that!' he added, smugly.

'No problem,' came the retort ten minutes later when we saw Sharpay flying through the air like Jet-Li. She knocked a bird off the table, grabbed it in her mouth and took off down the garden.

'I don't believe it!' Husband said, horrified. 'Did you see that?'

Plastic cat proof spiky things were nailed onto the bird table.

'Put your paws on that!' husband said. 'You won't be in such a hurry to jump up next time will you?'

'What was that you said?' asked the other killer, a black and white cat (don't know its name), as it snatched a chaffinch and belted across our deck.

More rolls of chicken wire were rolled around the garden (this is all based on the googled fact that cats don't like chicken wire, I add)

'Trying getting in now, you little blighters.'

A few minutes later Sharpay strolled across our lawn as if to say 'you have got to be joking.'

'I'm not giving up,' husband said with gusty determination.

More spiky things were nailed to the tops of all fences.

Did it stop them getting in? No!

We have two little dogs. One of whom knows the word 'cat' very well and takes off at great speed down the garden if we say it out loud. He even did two laps round the pond with the black & white cat before it scurried up a tree.

Did he scare the cats off?

No. The cats take great delight in teasing him from a safe distance.

'I'll buy some lemon balm and plant it near the bird table,' I suggested. 'Apparently birds can't stand the stuff.'

'Don't bother,' my mum-in-law said dryly. 'Lady at church planted it all over her garden. The cats sleep on it.'

'There's nothing for it,' I said. 'We'll just have to stop feeding the birds. Putting food out is like luring them onto a sacrificial alter.'

'I'm not letting those cats win,' Husband said emphatically. 'We'll all have to take turns.'

'For what?'

'Sentry duty.'

'You do mornings. I'll do tea-time,' he instructed.

So now if we put out any bird food, one of us has to stand guard.

And while I've never pined for the type of garden that would have featured in Homes & Gardens, I also didn't want one that resembled a barricaded compound.

The only ones that can't move around the garden are us! Trying to reach the washing line is like partaking in an army assault course.

And worse, we have noticed lately that the two killers have started working together - like a couple of highly trained assassins.

Fortunately, the two youngest cats haven't quite got the hang of killing yet - thank goodness. They are still at the Shrek's Puss in Boots stage. If you catch them in the garden they just look at you all adorable.

I love cats. I just don't love them when they kill. There is one next door called Ryan and he is a lovely. He can't be bothered to chase after birds. He's more interested in exploring our house. I found him sitting in our bath one night and my son says there has been conspicuous cat hairs on a warm patch on his bed and the sighting of a fluffy tail leaving through the bedroom window.

But as for the other two. We despair.

Apparently in order to thwart a cat you have to think like one. So that's the next plan. So for now.

Meow!

Ratko Mladic

So the long arm of the law has finally caught up with Ratko Mladic, the evil creature (I won't dignify him by calling him a man) who is accused of genocide.

When I saw the frail sixty-eight-year-old being led away I didn't feel jubilant that they'd caught him at last, my mind was too preoccupied with thoughts of the people he'd mercilessly ordered to be killed. Devoid of any conscious without pity or compassion he sent thousands to their graves. One of the ruthless killers who brought horrific ethnic cleansing back to Europe less than half a century after Hitler tried to wipe out the Jews.

I read an article by Phillip Sherwell (Daily Telegraph) who wrote about Mladic and how his campaign to kill Muslims reached its climax in the summer of 1995 when Bosnian Serb forces led 7,000 men and boys into fields where they were executed and buried in mass graves.

I tried to imagine the fear that went through those poor people being led to their deaths and the mothers, wives, sisters who watched helplessly.

I thought about the moments in my life when I had felt true fear. The day at the seaside when my little boy went missing (thankfully he was found). The doctor telling me I had cancer. The moment I realised my mum was dying.

That fear was unlike anything I had ever experienced before. A cold terror that ran up my spine and enveloped me. The most terrible, all-consuming dread of what was about to happen. We all get scared sometimes but true fear is indescribable.

Imagine for a moment what those people, and millions more in history like them, went through. The reality of what Mladic is accused of comes crashing home and we should never forget victims of such atrocities.

It doesn't matter what happens to Mladic if he is convicted he will never pay for what he has done. Nothing comes close to punishing such people and there have been many throughout history. Without giving it too much thought I can think of the obvious ones such as Stalin and Hitler. Bin Laden and Pol Pot. Idi Amin. Not to mention serial killers such as Ian Brady, Ted Bundy, The Countess Bathory and many, many more.

If I had just one wish it would be that those people would be able to feel the fear they inflicted on their victims. A magic drug whereby they could walk in the shoes of those that suffered at their hands. But they never will feel that fear and the world will never learn. There will be another Mladic. Somewhere. Someday.

And while I am feeling so sad. I'd like to point out something fleet street fox said in her blog the other day. While we have been preoccupied with celebrity news. The super-injuction saga and now Cheryl Cole getting kicked off the X-Factor. Fleet street fox points out that buried in the back of the newspaper this week was the news that 1,000 women, girls and boys have been raped in Misrata, Libya on orders of the officers of Gaddaffi's regime.

Sorry to be so maudlin but just for a moment, I think we should all spare a thought - and a prayer - for the victims of these evil beasts.

Maria Shriver join the club...

She's not the first and she certainly won't be the last and right now having a massively healthy bank balance will be of little comfort, but we all can sympathise with Maria Shriver.

Finding out your husband (or wife) is a Grade-A love rat is devastating no matter who you are. It must be a million times worse when it is done on the public stage.

I don't know Maria Shriver. I don't know Arnold Schwarzenegger. But he certainly appears to be a man who thinks monogamy is a type of wood. And twenty-five-years is a long time to be married to someone and then find out he's fathered a child by a long-standing member of your household staff.

Accordingly to a British newspaper, Maria confronted the 'member of staff' in question and asked if her child had been fathered by Arnie and then confronted Arnie. I would have liked to have been a fly on those walls!

I've read all the press. Seen the photographs. I've heard that Maria and the 'other woman' gave birth within days of each other. That Arnie poured money on his mistress, presumably to keep her happily schtum. The picture of the house (double garage, swimming pool) that he bought her, which is considered 'modest' Maybe by American standards it is but by our standards, here in Britain, it's pretty palatial! And I've seen photos of the 'other woman'and compared to elegant Ms Shriver she looks well...not pretty. Although maybe ten years ago she may have been a HPOA (I have to admit I had to look that acronym up!)

But then Arnie is no oil painting is he? His chiselled face has always reminded me of a Thunderbird puppet.

And Maria looked a quite scary when she did those tourist adverts for California. The ones that tried to entice us Brits to visit California.

Come to California.

'Er...no.'

So we don't know anything about these people, only what the media tell us. No doubt if he was in Britain we wouldn't know anything at all because he would have slammed a super-injunction on the press (bet he wishes he lived here!) What we do know is that a marriage that I have always thought amazing because it has lasted so long - is now over and there are clearly some very hurt people, including children.

Maria is largely credited for helping Arnie to election as the Governor of California in 2003. She said 'I wouldn't be standing here if this man wasn't an A-plus human being...' she mentioned words like 'extraordinary. Honest. Sensitive. Sincere.' I bet she is eating those words now or did she not mean them and was just helping him get elected? Who knows?

Arnie probably needed Maria a lot more than she needed him. She's a member of America's royal family - The Kennedy's, had a successful media career and authored of several books. A respected journalist who gave up her duties at NBC news in 2004 because her job conflicted with her status as First lady of California. She has amongst other remarkable achievements, had been a life long advocate for people with intellectual disabilities and has earned herself two Emmy's for works she had produced.

And now she has joined the club of women (and men) who have been humiliated by their spouses, only in Ms Shriver's case - publicly. I hear she has retained celebrity divorce lawyer, Laura Wasser and that Arnie has put his movie career on hold. Well, if I was you Arnie, I'd get my butt back to work because I hear this divorce might cost you between $200-400 million.

Will that money make Maria feel better? Maybe not. She, like millions of us who have been cheated on, will still feel sickened. Even if she no longer loves him or hasn't been happy with him for years, she will feel hurt and denigrated. Even if she knew full well his vociferous sexual appetite had been well-documented and has maybe turned a blind eye on the odd occasion. Even if she did all these things, she will still be absolutely gutted that he fathered a child and kept it secret for years.

And if she STILL loves him, her heart will feel as if he has cut it out of her chest with a rusty bread knife, thrown it on the floor and stamped on it.

Irrespective of whatever Ms Shriver might be like in real life she has been disrespected by her husband and treated as if she is of no consquence.

I have been there and I clearly remember how demeaning it was and how my self-confidence was shattered. I used to lay in bed at night planning my revenge on the man that had up sticks and moved in with a woman younger than his socks. I mentally pictured writing the word RAT in petrol on the lawn of the house and setting it alight so it was branded into the grass for all his neighbours to see. I wanted to fill a bag full of dog dirt and put it behind one of the radiators in his house. Cut up all his clothes and post dead fish through his letterbox (I clearly have a revengful side)

But I didn't do any of those thing.

What I did do was lose weight, buy myself the best suit I could afford and a pair of killer heels, get my hair and make up done and walk into the divorce court with my head held high. And then I got on with my life. Which as it happened meant that I eventually met a fantastic man who has been by soul-mate for the past twenty-one years and a brilliant step-dad to my kids. And I suspect Ms Shriver will do the same.

P.S.

What goes around. Comes around. My ex-husband is now on his third marriage.

Botox for kids?

Eight-year-old Britney Campbell says she checks every night for wrinkles and when she sees some she wants more botox injections.

Yes, this is the story of the little girl from San Francisco whose mother has been regularly injecting her with botox. In an interview with a U.K newspaper Britney says she also wants a breast and nose job soon so she can "be a star"

Can someone please tell me what wrinkles an eight-year-old has??? Britney's mother, and I used that term loosely, is clearly as mad as a hatter if she thinks her daughter has lines on her face.

Or is she? Is this a game to get famous?

Could it be that Britneys mother, Kerry Campbell, has staged this whole thing to get fame for herself? We hear she is a reality-programme-obsessed woman who apparently wants to be famous herself. She allegedly said she was injecting her daughter for beauty pageants, but authorities can find no evidence that Britney has ever been in one. And it appears Ms Campbell also has several alias's - so the plot thickens, as they say.

Or is this another parent trying to live through their child?

But either way if she has been injecting her daughter with botox, the message that is being sent to this young girl by her stupid mother is 'you are not good enough'

The only way a child should receive botox is on medical grounds to put right a squint or facial problem. Never for cosmetic reasons.

If you're an adult and you want to inject yourself with a toxin from a bacteria that is so dangerous it could actually kill you then that's up to you. Personally I would rather have a face like a Rhino's backside than have someone stick toxin-laden pins in my skin. And don't go telling me I'd feel different if I was older. I Am older.

But if, as alleged, this woman has given botox to her daughter she should be thrown in the stocks and pelted with rotten tomatoes! What a terrible thing to do to the lovely firm skin of a pretty little girl. This child is going to grow up thinking she is imperfect and has to have all these awful treatments to make herself pretty.

Little girls are growing up way too fast as it is. What has happened to childhood? When I was not much older than Britney I was playing in the field behind my house with my best friend, Shirley Goddard. We'd drag a whole bunch of dolls and pots and pans and goodness know what and set up in the farmers field and pretend we were next door neighbours. I can't remember caring two hoots what I wore or how my face looked. I was way too busy having fun.

Now we've got kids under ten wanting boob jobs so they can be a celebrity when they grow up or worse - marry a zillionaire footballer. And there is all the controversy over stores going out of their way to sexualize clothing for little girls. What are we doing to our kids?

It's crazy. Those precious few years of childhood, when you shouldn't have a care in the world, are being snatched away by stupid parents like Kerry Campbell who are already planning for their daughters to be celebrities.

There is a columnist who is suggesting it is probably wrong to take Britney away from her mum just because her mum's stupid. He says if we start doing things like that we might as well take peoples kids away because they drink sugar-laced soda drinks. Are you mad? there is a hell of a lot of difference between giving your kid a can of Coke and telling her we've got to prick her face with needles because she isn't pretty enough.

I'm getting a super injunction!

Oh my word! Super injunctions are hot news and I'm lovin' the person who is spilling the beans big time on twitter. But Jeremy Clarkson and Jemima Khan? No, that can't possibly be true. In Clarkson's dreams, maybe.

I plan to take out a super injunction next August. A gagging order on 'football' in my house. No one will be able to discuss it, watch it on television or even mention the word. I might even take out a few more. No one will be allowed to talk about or report to others on my cooking, driving skills or weight.

Unless you've been living on Pluto, you will all know that a super injunction is a gagging order in which the press is prohibited from reporting even the existence of an injunction.

It's a way the rich and famous can gag anyone from blabbing about their salacious affairs by preventing the media from reporting on them.

They say it's because they want to protect their privacy. Huh. Who are they kidding?

They don't give two hoots about their privacy when it makes them look good or earns them a few squillion. I don't see many of them slamming a super injunction on the press for reporting on them when they are caught shopping in Bond street or baring their bronzed chests on the beaches of Dubai.

No. Let's be real. All they care about is their image.

Thing is. Most of us don't give a flying fig about their image. And the rich and famous flatter themselves if they think we do. Our opinion of most of them won't be affected if we find out they are carrying on with someone other than their wife/husband/partner because most of us think they are talentless big-heads with egos the size of the Grand Canyon, anyway.

Personally, as far as footballers are concerned, finding out one of them is having a torrid affair will not change how I personally view them. They will always remain, in my opinion, over paid, egotistical wusses who drop to the floor and writhe in agony if so much as a feather brushes past them.

And they are ALL at. Andrew Marr, who has a face only a mother could love, took out a super injunction against The Independent newspaper for reporting on an extra-marital affair with a female journalist.

Here's a thought. If you don't want the press to report about your little affairs. Then DON'T have them. Do something different - be faithfull.

What kind of world do we live in when a person can go to jail for uttering the name of a super-injunction-protected-celebrity, yet a reckless driver who kills someone doesn't?

What would happen if an entire football stadium of people started chanting the celebrity's name? Would they all get arrested?

But seriously for a minute. Super injunctions have a far more sinister side to them. Sometimes the press are prevented from reporting on things that really matter. In 2009 the oil trader Trafigura prohibited the reporting of an internal report into the 2006 Cote D'Ivoire toxic waste dump scandal and that's something the public SHOULD have been told about.

Injunctions were not invented for celebrities by lawyers and judges. They were created by the Attorney General on behalf of the government to protect notorious criminals such as Mary Bell and the killers of James Bulger, whose crimes were so terrible that, if they were released, their safety could be in peril.

I understand an injuction when it's say for example, to prevent the press from reporting that Prince Harry is serving in Afghanistan. But to protect the image of a celebrity by supressing news of their sexual peccadillos, well that is just ridiculous.

But, whether you agree with them or not it seems that right now super injunctions are being handed out like confetti. Even as I write this today, two more celebrities have taken out super injunctions to prevent their behaviour becoming public knowledge. If I feel sorry for any celeb, it's the perfectly innocent celebrities who are being dragged into the scandals as people speculate the indentities.

It's now getting so ridiculous it's a joke.

Celebs/judges/football players/managers/politicians - listen! Save the thousands it costs you to slam a super injuction on the press because, quite honestly, WE JUST DON'T CARE - OKAY?