Will I end up in Belmarsh for fiddling kitten heels?

A parcel has arrived addressed to ‘Cydney Kite’. The spaniel is ecstatic. She has never received her own mail before, let alone an express delivery package. She wags her entire body frantically as I open it and is driven half demented by the heady smell that arises as I lift out the packing bubbles to reveal…

The nice people at Lily’s Kitchen have sent her a food parcel. They read about me getting a £60 parking fine for stopping outside the pet shop and would like to help out. There is a lovely note to this effect and a selection of canned meat, biscuits, treats and a packet of particularly strong-smelling dried fish sticks, which I’m guessing is what is making her almost hyperventilate with excitement.

‘Oh dear,’ I tell her, ‘What about my reputation?’

I hadn’t meant to do product placement. I only mentioned Lily’s in passing. I wasn’t trying to advertise it to get a freebie, honestly. In fact, I almost included a paragraph about how I buy posh dog food mainly for my own selfish reasons, because I can’t stand the smell of what I would call real dog food.

There is real dog food, you see, which is gut-churning mulch, and then there is what the posh dog food companies call ‘real food for dogs’, which is something entirely different. It isn’t dog food at all, but food, which you give to dogs.

A good posh dog food will smell of human grade pâté and not make you sick when you open it. According to the builder boyfriend, who has tasted Lily’s in a fit of hunger after walking in from a building job and finding nothing in the fridge, it tastes like coarse Ardennes, which is impressive.