I should know better

Still no let up in the weather, and I can see I will not be venturing too far from home - anyway Kallista is due to whelp this week and that`s a tie.

So I`m a homebird. I may well take up my knitting again. It`s brown, it`s a fuzzy sweater with an aran yoke, and I`m not sure I like it. I`m better knitting for other people - what I knit for myself never pleases me somehow.

I`ve knitted since I was six, when I was already turning out socks. And when I was a graduate student and like all students chronically short of money, I knitted fairisle gloves and hats for shop sale........sweated labour for little reward.

It was at this time that I met J. A tall goodlooking lad who somehow never seemed too short of money. One of our group mentioned this, and eventually he admitted his secret source of income - modelling.

"We`ll see you on the catwalk then?"

"No, it`s not like that. It`s photographic modelling."

Lots of suggestive remarks at this point. He became very indignant and defensive.

"It`s nothing like that! I model clothes for a very reputable designer!"

He was obviously in earnest and we let it drop.

But I was the only one of the group who knitted, and the one who discovered J`s terrible secret. He did indeed model clothes for a reputable designer. But the designer was Wendy. J was the guy on the front of the knitting pattern. The one with the fixed grin, leaning on a fence with his arm right up to show that the bobbles go all the way up the sleeve.........

I threatened to expose the awful truth and he went into total meltdown. His masculinity was at stake. It seemed that I could have accused him publicly of impotence, a criminal record, and he wouldn`t turn a hair.........but this!

He eventually offered me a cut of his income to keep the secret.

Did I accept?

If you have to ask, you`ve never lived on a small student grant.

Sometimes knitting can be profitable.