Bad Lindy's pit stop

It's not that Bad Lindy isn't herself without her phone, but that she's several times more of it. God knows what the vet's practice is going through, but the waiting times are said to have declined rapidly.

While she waits for a replacement, she's trying to soothe herself in the magical world of stuff, though so far without noticeable success.

"Look at this!" she says, when I fail to avoid her in the trendy kitchen accessories shop in town. Together with the trendy nail bar, roughly hewn teak table shop and six estate agents, it's sprung up to meet the locals' emergency shopping needs which, amazingly, no longer seem to include food. On the plus side, though, nobody round here is now ever more than six feet from a French manicure.

Bad Lindy is holding up a small, baby blue enamel bucket with a wooden handle. It looks like a miniature milk-maid's accessory but is labelled 'pegs' and clearly comes from the same design stable that made the lucrative decision to appeal to all our inner domestic slaves by repackaging bleach, disinfectant and washing liquid in clear glass bottles with fancy writing on the outside

"What do they think I do - milk the bloody tree for pegs when I've done the washing?" she says, balancing the handle on the top of one, outraged finger, as bucolic a figure as Marie Antoinette on steroids.

"I take it you're not buying, then."

"Buying? I'm off to the chemists. This deodorant they sold me is hopeless. Look at my pits!" Indignantly, she lifts one arm. "I'm going to stand in the shop like this until they give me a refund."

Judging by the now deserted kitchen accessories shop, she shouldn't have to wait very long.

Later, I call Vicky, who is watching as one of her children gamely attempts to pogo through the walls of her newly constructed shed. "It's almost too much fun for one woman to bear," she says.

Bad Lindy's spare man is still sending Vicky pictures of his pants, in situ. In an interesting variation of pass the parcel, they're getting progressively briefer with each text. The most recent consists of a thong so eye-wateringly small and tight that it's just as well he's not in charge of the gift-wrapping at John Lewis, because there'd be a lot of complaints. Depending on exactly what it was you were after, of course. And we're not talking peg pails.