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birthday that I started having an unhealthy interest in birdwatching, too. For the next three or four birthdays, I asked for binoculars and books on birds – I even subscribed to a birdwatching magazine. Every month, I would become enthralled by the exotic birds that would grace the glossy front cover. Frustratingly, it would always be a flamingo or a frigate with its beautiful red plumage. This was particularly mean as well as misleading to the keen bird-watcher, as such cover stars were native to such tropical paradise as the Galapagos Islands and there was no way a landlocked ornithologist like myself would ever come across one. I would have to make do with the Canada geese and pied wagtails that I saw at Pitsford Reservoir.
    One time we got a free tape of birdsong, that you played to get yourself acquainted with the different calls that you would hear when you were in your hide waiting to see your first bird. The twittering coming from the stereo speakers didn’t really have much of an effect on me, but Big Puss went mental. His eyes as big as ball bearings, he stalked the stereo, ferociously intimidating, hungry for bird-meat. In the end,when he couldn’t find a bird, he just jumped on me and bit me instead. He was ruthless, a tireless killer and also a sexual predator, and although he had been castrated he still liked to make love to inanimate objects. My teddy bears, my slippers. He would bite the head of my He-Man and grind mercilessly, making a horny purring sound like a next-door neighbour using a strimmer.
    This was my first introduction to sex. Mum would come in and hit him with a tea-towel.
    ‘What’s he doing, Mum?’
    ‘He’s being dirty.’
    So from then on, whenever Big Puss ground away on my teddies or sometimes even me, I would shout, ‘Mum! Big Puss is being dirty! Big Puss is being dirty!’ And Mum would come in with a tea-towel and shoo him away: ‘Dirty cat! Dirty cat!’
    I didn’t know what being dirty was – I still don’t think I do – but anyway that’s when I first came across this thing ‘being dirty’, and I learnt it off a big horny ginger tom.
    Like most families, the father thinks he rules the roost but it is the mother who is really in control. After my younger brother Gary and I had tired of pleading with our parents for a tortoise, we moved onto dogs. We wanted a pet dog. Dad instantly set out his stall: he wanted a ‘big dog’, a man-dog, a dog that if it was human would enjoy a pint and stare at the barmaid’s arse as she bent down for the cheese and onion crisps. He must have felt pretty emasculated then when we came back with Minstral.
    The only way I can describe Minstral is for you to imagine the kind of dog that Paris Hilton has poking out of herhandbag at those Hollywood premières. Minstral was a gorgeous little mongrel a few months old with the most expressive face going. His mother had been a pedigree King Charles Cavalier Spaniel, the breeder told us snootily, but a dirty Jack Russell called ‘Rusty’ had sneaked through the cat flap and raped her. It seems the mother had brought shame upon his council house and wanted nothing to do with its bastard offspring, so we took it off his hands.
    Contrary to what you might think, Dad and the bastard dog bonded and from that moment on they were inseparable. They would go to bed at the same time, rise at the same time and go for drives together, with Minstral sitting obediently in the passenger seat. The partnership got so intense that Mum thought the dog was resenting her. So much so that she phoned the vet to say that Minstral was giving her dirty looks. I was horrified. I envisaged the vet nodding sympathetically – ‘Yes, Mrs Carr, that’s right, Mrs Carr’ – while trying to switch on ‘speaker phone’ so everyone in the clinic could listen to this ‘weirdo woman’ in a love triangle with a mongrel.
    From that moment on, Minstral and Mum both battled for Dad’s affection; it was a battle that would