What I am about to type will disgust you

So if you don't want to be disgusted, admire these wholesome family portraits and then flee from this site, preferably sprinkling yourself with holy water and applying one of those plague doctor masks with the giant crows' beaks as you go.

But first, pre-disgustment wholesome family portraits:

Wholesome Beatrice, getting down low with the Dustmaster 2000.


Wholesome Harriet of the unsmutched belly.

Now, vamoose, especially if you (a) work with me, (b) are likely to see me in the next week, or (c) are in the habit of excommunicating people on grounds of poor - nay, criminally negligent - hygiene. If, on the other hand, you want to wallow in fresh depths of disgustation, then huddle round and make sure you've got your bleach handy, because [da da da dum] I have worms. Thread worms. In my digestive tract. And it's a good thing, too, because if I didn't have worms - according to last night's google research - I'd have haemorrhoids, and apparently the only thing you can do for haemorrhoids is shove anaesthetic cream up your bottom, give up sitting, and betake yourself to the barber surgeon for a quick haemorrhoidectomy. All you need to dispose of worms, on the other hand, is a single dose of over-the-counter vermicide and then a brisk incineration of your house to get rid of the eggs.

I only realised that I have worms this morning, and I have since showered three times, invested in a six-pack of the aforementioned over-the-counter vermicidal tablets, a new nailbrush, and a bottle of strawberry flavoured Belgian beer (for inner cleansing, etc). I have also undergone six psychosomatic parasitosis-induced hysterical episodes, for which the beer would be useful, but I'm keen to keep my wits about me. Last night, as I lay in bed failing to get to sleep because my fundament was itching and I was pondering the fate of my benighted nethers, my mind turned - as minds do in these circumstances - to the public history of my bottom. I had a sudden terrible vision of the time my mother waited for the entire family - sisters, brother, sisters' boyfriends - to gather round before attacking the splinter that had lodged in my left buttock no-thanks-to-the-cats-tongue-wooden-floorboards-at-ballet-class. And another sudden terrible vision of the time I came home from a birthday party with a yellow paper dog mask, took off my party dress and sandals and socks and underpants, found my yellow - that is to say, horseradish, that is to say, supposedly dog-coloured - skivvy, donned it and the mask and beetled off down the street on all four feet with my naked bottom wagging. Neither of these terrible visions was as terrible as the terrible vision my mind was concocting of the gloved doctor preparing herself for my haemorrhoidectomy, and so I was glad when I woke up this morning and realised with dawning clarity that I have worms.

What troubles me, of course, besides the fact that there are small creatures roosting in my hindquarters, is that there is something seriously wrong with my hygiene routine. I mean, I wash my hands after going to the loo, with soap!, and I don't make a habit of sniffing other folks' bums or handling raw sewerage, but in the last year I've had my first wart, two cats' worth of ringworm, and now this. Noone has ever, ever, ever told me that they have worms. Ever. So I have no way of judging what a reasonable rate of infestation might be, but this - this doesn't seem reasonable.