I should know better

Well, she has arrived. Ella is my personal Christmas present to me - don`t ask how much, and don`t tell my bank manager either.

Another flatface - well, the Paps just see her as a little girl who may be young enough to yet recover from the nasty accident to her face. She is as bold as brass, and won over Velvet`s jealousy - no longer my only little girl - by insisting on playing. She has also played relentlessly with the tearaway Truly toddler, now known as Flair, actually tiring her out, and thereby winning a vote of thanks from her mother, who has been reduced to taking refuge on chairs her loud demanding offspring can`t quite reach ....yet.

Flair, alas, has inherited her father`s voice, the one thing everyone who uses him at stud prays he will not pass on. She is a foursquare fat pushy item, constantly demanding attention in a strange rusty bark which startles adults, but which, alas, I recognise only too well.

Ella, on the other hand, is exactly as impossibly cute and cuddly as she looks.