THE LACEY CHABERT

I'm pretty dubious about the old woman. You know - the one who lived in a shoe.

She had, we are told, so many children that she didn't know what to do. So, I'm taking a census here - how many children is that, exactly? Is it, like, a hundred children or just three very boisterous kids?

If she had so many children that she didn't know what to do, might I suggest contraception as one possibility to consider?

And, who's living in a shoe, anyway? Was she just wearing the one shoe or was it that she had some giant, house-sized shoe split into rooms? The latter seems to be the popular interpretation, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Where do you find a giant shoe and what possesses you to convert it into a house? How long do you need to air a giant shoe before you can live in it? Would you use odour eaters as carpets?

Can I propose that the old woman "didn't know what to do" because she was stark raving mad? She's got all these kids, she's living in an item of footwear - frankly, I don't think she's playing with the full deck. Someone down that road should be calling social services, that's what they should be doing. It's just not a healthy environment for children to grow up in. It's a shoe.

In my mind's eye, I always had that shoe on the same street as the crooked man in the crooked house, and that witch who lived in the kettle in Chorton and the Wheelies. That would be one hell of a street but it would be a drag being the postman there.