Challenge Joanna

The very lovely and extremely fragrant Dulwich Mum has set me a challenge. This challenge does not require me to leave my house and head off to the nearest shopping mall with instructions to "spend, spend, spend" like her previous task but to do something that comes even more naturally to me: reading.

I must, apparently:

1. Pick up the nearest book.

2. Open to page 123

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the next three sentences.

5. Tag people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

1 is easy as my latest book is right to hand (on the dresser next to the phone and a wodge of old receipts) and it is entitled Samantha Smythe's Modern Family Journal by Lucy Cavendish. Number 2 is extremely easy (even though I have only managed to read up to page 26 so far). Number 3, piece of cake. Oooh, cake. Sorry. Number 4 is coming up next and goes a little something like this.

They wipe their yoghurty little mouths on the curtains. They, especially Bennie, tear around the house and slam into doors which they then push open at high speed so that the doors jump up and down on their hinges and smash into the walls and take little chunks out of the plaster and then these little chunks become bigger and bigger until they look like deep ravines or scars in the paintwork. They perch on the top of the cushions on the sofa so that all the furniture is squashed and uncomfortable. In the summer, when they can't be bothered to walk the few steps it takes to get to the loo, they just urinate on the mat outside the back door. "What's that smell?" my mother once asked once.

Well. That sounds just like my house. Apart from the urinating. But there was that one time that Senior Dog started peeing the minute he stepped onto the patio because he'd left it too long to go out into the garden to "be clean".......anyway, Mac likes Frubes and he likes to spread it around. The sofa and the clothes that I happen to be wearing at the time being favourite places. He hasn't mastered the sharp corner on the top landing either and the laminate flooring is covered in scuff marks caused by him slithering round it on his way to wreak havoc in his room. The dogs also have this problem as they rush in to join him barking joyfully and careering all over the landing like Dancing on Ice rejects, claws gouging great scar lines out of the distressed oak. David shows no respect for cushions or indeed knows what they are for: he sits on them rather than snuggling them round him and nesting. And I've already explained about the strange smell as you step out of the kitchen.

And, to complete number 5 and therefore the challenge, I would like to tag Kelly (this should be interesting, judging by her latest post), Dulwich Divorcee, darling Rilly, Mya and Elsie Button.

I hope you all find time to pick up a book and get turning those pages!