my photos of pets in period costume are just too naff

Like many people of a certain age who look in the mirror and see a crepe frill where their neck used to be, I am thinking about downsizing. Empty teen bedrooms, getting older and the prospect of not seeing the winter heating bill and wondering if I’ll have to try and sell my body again on OnlyNans (special offer! I will today lower a thermal sock top) have inspired fantasies of moving somewhere smaller. But the prospect is terrifying. Why? Because of the ridicule, of course.

Ever since house-selling moved online, every Tom, Dick and Fanny can snoop around your bedroom, kitchen, bathroom to judge your lavatory flange, then share it on TikTok, Facebook, Reddit, mocking your taste, skankiness, anaglypta and wind chimes while writing hurtful things such as, “Imagine the static electricity off that nylon bedspread!” or, “I could grow maris pipers on that pedestal mat.”

A TikTok account called Worst Houses on Rightmove scours homes for sale around Britain purely for mick-taking purposes. It is quite funny — but only because it isn’t my house. I’m happy to laugh at yours, with its water bed and tiger-skin wallpaper, but not mine, not with my scuffed skirting boards. The website speculates that one detached property in the West Midlands must belong to a pair of swingers. The evidence is quite persuasive.

One £750,000 semi in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, has been so roundly derided that it made it into the national press this week under the headline: “Is this the naffest house in Britain?” Imagine how mortified you’d be if that was yours. Though it is an absolute shocker and was dubbed online as a “Poundland Dubai makeover”.

The homeowner’s main crime — and, to be fair, it’s a serious one — is to have painted the walls and even the bed with “more motivational quotes than a call centre”. Imagine waking up every morning to “I only see goals” or “Throw me to the wolves and I will come back leading the pack”. (Will you? But wouldn’t you be missing a leg or two?) I prefer the uninspirational quote such as “Don’t try and you’ll never fail”. Or “Go back to bed, loser”. More heinously they have covered every blade of grass with grey concrete, front and back, so it has all the kerb appeal of a BP garage forecourt. Maybe plastic grass was just too tasteful for them.

But all I can think is: what would these armchair critics make of my house, especially since mounted on the wall I have not one, not two, not three but four framed photos of my pets (two dogs, two cats) dressed in period costume? I worry that things can’t get any naffer than your dog dressed in epaulettes as the Duke of Wellington or your cat in a dress and ruff like Queen Elizabeth I. But this is the fact of the matter. Worse, I absolutely love them.

Nicky Haslam could obviously never visit my house since I also have rattan garden furniture, which is basically fake basket weave (he says this is naff and only wrought iron or wood furniture will do), and a fire pit, aka “outdoor fireplace”, which another etiquette expert deems “a bit Love Island”. And he’s right. Plus they make your knickers on the line smell of smoke.

I’ve got red roses in the garden (naff, Haslam says), wooden trellises (“suburban”, I’ve read), a standalone bath that is not cast iron but acrylic and a rescue dog, which last year were decreed (by Haslam again) “common”. Mercifully I don’t have a hot tub or black-and-white prints of New York or a low-hanging chandelier in a bungalow, but I’m still nervous I’ll be judged online for my giant kitchen clock (“Dunelm basic”, I’m told). Maybe I’ll stick to big heating bills and ankle-flashing on OnlyNans. Subscribe today! Please.

I know just what my dog’s thinking

Humans are terrible at reading dogs’ emotions, finds yet another university study that makes you wonder: “How do these things get funding?” We could be “projecting” our own feelings when we decide that, say, vacuuming makes the dog become “anxious” or “angry’ — or so says the research from Arizona State University.

Look. I know my dog detests the Hoover because she dances around it, snarling and baring her teeth. She wants to kill it and has partly succeeded by chewing up the attachments.

But I can tell these researchers things that a dog is definitely never thinking for zero funding. Such as: “Walkies — again? But what about your deadlines?” “Have you been out? I hadn’t really noticed.” “I won’t sniff that poo. It looks too disgusting.” “Any chance of a bath?” and “Is me dry humping this cushion in front of your guests a bit embarrassing and gross? Fair enough. I’ll go and take a cold shower.”

A growing problem

More exciting news from the front line of the “full bush movement”, ie women no longer shaving and plucking their pubis like a dead pheasant and returning to how God intended. Sadly some have so overdone the stripping of the front lawn that they can’t grow it back again. Blimey. So, scorched earth scrubland like the Chaparral?

But lo! Enter the “pubic hair transplant”, which is growing in popularity. For about £3,000, a “pube plant”, which takes hair from your head, can restore Lady Penelope to her former glory. Which is lovely but I do worry about human insanity. Women spend thousands of pounds to dig out the turf and achieve a Barbie “flower”, then spend thousands relaying the turf again. And what if you can’t afford it? I suppose there’s always Amazon, which sells stick-on merkins in a variety of shades from £13. Though be warned, some look like Hagrid’s beard on a bad day. The beauty is, you could always recycle one as a toupee for your balding cat.