Girl's best friend

Yesterday had a couple of mini land-marks associated with it - I finally finished the Portland Roach stone plinth pedestal (oh, all right - I'll post up pictures of it on monday, if you insist) which has been made using the diamond tools I have been raving on about recently, so it's now safe to wash my hair, which looks and feels like a white Brillo-Pad.

I'm rather proud of the above artwork, though I can hardly take full credit for it. I think I mentioned that the best way to 'sharpen' any diamond-coated rotary tool is to briefly run it through soft fire-brick, and this is the very brick I have been using over the last few weeks. The sharpness of the fire-brick cuts away all the polished and hardened residue that has coated itself around the tiny diamonds, exposing their rough edges again and allowing it to cut into the stone. The diamonds themselves never lose their roughness - a blade becomes useless after all the diamonds have fallen off the metal blade to which they were bonded and, with a good blade, this takes several years of use.

The diamonds can burn, however, but the sort of heat required to burn them smooth is only generated when they have become clogged and cease to cut properly. The more material that is quickly taken away during a cut, the less heat is generated, which - conversely - is why blunt wood blades cause a workshop full of blue smoke.

The other little land-mark is that my favourite barmaid did her last shift at the pub yesterday, and is now going off to have the baby that is making itself seen underneath that orange top she is wearing above.

Laura's entire family (brother and father) have what you might call a very distinctive profile, dominated by an elegant and beautifully shaped nose. When I first saw her father and brother, I immediately knew that they were direct relations, just because of that profile.

Yesterday evening when I entered the pub, she was engaged in an argument with another old local as to whether or not the noses of human beings continue to grow right the way through adulthood, as she had heard and believed. The old local said it was not true, so she went to the computor and looked it up, discovering that there was an element of truth in it, but not much - otherwise my nose would be on my chin by now.

I said that it was different part of the male anatomy that continued to grow into old age, and she said that - if that were the case - she and all her young friends would be going out with old men. There's no pulling the wool over her eyes.

Then I remembered that just after I had parked the car, I called into a charity shop on the other side of the road to the pub, where I saw this party-animal nose of an elephant's trunk, so I rushed over and bought it for 50p.

I walked back into the pub having positioned it strategically in the open fly of my trousers, then crept up on her to prove that my assertion was true, but - like I said - there's no pulling the wool over her eyes. I ended up presenting it to her as a leaving present, but only on the condition that she posed for the above photo. This is the calibre of fun that I have over a couple of pints each evening, and if you ever wondered if men ever grow up, this should answer your question once and for all.

Poor Laura - her mother is seriously ill with cancer, and can take no more chemo-therapy. Her father has a haunted look in his youthful eyes, and must be sick himself with worry at the same time as looking forward to the arrival of his first grandchild, as is her mother. It is situations like these that make me realise how lucky I have been (again).