I suppose I had to expect it one day. But it's still a shock.

I'm sitting here ready to write the week's column and I can't, for the life of me, think of one single thing to write about.

It's probably a combination of things. It's November, it's raining and the shop opposite put up its Christmas decorations two days ago.

Soon the supermarket shelves will be groaning with mincemeat, tinsel wrapped puddings and a vast range of confectionery which, until last week, had plain wrappings but now has a Santa or a sleigh attached and consequently is more expensive. There are also big displays of stuffing mixes, a sure sign that somewhere in the not too distant future there's going to be some kind of festive occasion which won't be festive unless it is accompanied by large blobs of packet stuffing.

Depressing or what?

I've got a cold at the moment, so I suppose I could write about that. Why not make everyone else feel miserable as well?.

I can't be bothered to try all the usual cold cures, which don't cure anything. Most of them consist of things I wouldn't consume if I was healthy, so why try them when I'm under the weather?

Nose

Anyway most cold cures now come in little bottles called Night Sister or some such title, which is a slight improvement on having something called Vick shoved up your nostrils by the none too gentle index finger of your grandmother. In those days you had to be fit to survive cold cures and if the finger didn't get near your nose it would usually attempt to get at your chest with goose grease, brown paper or a blob of Vick.

Come to think of it, where did we get goose grease from? I never remember us eating all that many roast geese. None in fact. I suspect it was ersatz goose grease in the shape of half a pound of lard.

All these things were hardly cures, mainly preventative measures; as if germs, spotting a well wrapped child smelling of lard and Vick and encased in a roll of brown paper, would turn tail and flee in the direction of someone with an unprotected chest.

Getting sympathy when you have a cold isn't easy. If you make pathetic little coughing sounds the response from everyone else is that they've either just had a cold, think they're getting one, have one now which is much more virulent than yours or have flu which is infinitely worse than a cold, or so they imply.

Ignored

I rang my son earlier in the week to sniff down the phone for a kind word or two. He sounded depressed and said there was something wrong with his computer. 'I think I've got a problem with my motherboard', he said. 'Perhaps it's because you don't ring it often enough', I said acidly, which he ignored and suggested I should eat more oranges to ward off colds and then started on about daily intakes of vitamins until I lost consciousness.

Well, that's successfully got rid of half the column, so what shall we not talk about now?

The cats aren't doing much at the moment. They're settling down for winter, growing more fur and eating more (if that were possible). They are, however, carrying out a campaign of harassment against my daughter which involves a new rug in her sitting room and a new doormat in the hall.

Basically she has never grasped Rule Number 98 in cat lore 'never try to keep a cat away from something new because it will always think it is far more interesting than it is and will move heaven, hell, high water and as many tins of Whiskas as it can lift to get at it'.

Explore

What you do, as any sensible cat owner knows, is to allow the cat/cats into any room where you have installed something new and give them ample opportunity to explore it, never indicating for one moment that you are worried when they gallop across your Chippendale or priceless Chinese silk rug or that you care a jot when they rub up against the pale cream leather sofa (not that anyone in my family would be so daft as to buy anything pale cream, or pale anything for that matter).

Once you have ignored them they will lose interest.

If, on the other hand, you begin a regime of door shutting and armed guard mounting and leap screeching to your feet if so much as a tiny paw ventures into the room you will pay dearly.

The cats will make it their only ambition in life to get in. Furthermore they will become pale and wan if they are frustrated for long and consider ringing up cat helplines

Revenge

And when they do get in, and they will, they will wreak their revenge by pretending to cough up fur balls or disgorge the contents of their stomachs just for the fun of it (and as we all know cats can do this at the drop of a hat), plus doing what appears to be the cat samba all over the rug, finishing with one of those feline rolls which is intended to, and does, remove and leave behind at least one layer of fur.

At the moment we are in the war of nerves stage, with cat noses pressed up against every entrance to the sitting room and human protagonist beginning to flag a bit.

The door mat is as fairly fancy new one with all sorts of flowers on it and has led to one or two clashes over shouts of 'don't put your dirty feet on the doormat' sort. Despite it's designer looks it is still made of coconut matting which to a cat means 'a nice flat tree just for the purpose of claw sharpening'.

Now they know they aren't allowed near it they make frequent short sorties, scratch frantically and loudly for a few seconds, then run off.

Funnily enough they ignore the two coconut mats by the back door, they never used the cat scratching post we got them and when the old, equally flowery, doormat had been overscratched and relegated to the side door they never looked at it again. Now I wonder why that is?

Sorry I couldn't think of a column this week.