So, another day… another weird task… This time for the awesome global scavenger hunt GISHWHES. I decided to take a stab at this item:

THIS ITEM MUST BE POSTED ON SOCIAL MEDIA PRIOR TO THE END OF THE HUNT! Let’s see a (SFW) 2,000 word essay published on twitter in 140 character bursts. (no attachments, etc.) about the best way to get pregnant for the 10th time. (I’m sorry, but I promised someone this would be an item.) Submit an image of the first post and then a link to this post in the COMMENT field of the submit page so we can check to make sure you “published” the whole thing.

Which seems totally fine and normal. Think I’m coming down with the bubonic plague so on a couple of doses of something-or-other to keep my spirits up, and this is what I came up with, all posted here in 140 character increments:

People often ask me, how did you beget your tenth child? I say to them, why my darling fellow, it’s perfectly simple. I had just put our nine delightful children to bed (gawd bless little Hugh, Pugh, Barney, McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grub, and of course the twins, Windy and Miller.) I’d read them their favourite bedtime story, “Rick and Morty Go Up The Wooden Stairs to Bedforshire”, when my husband turned to me, and with a quite frankly scandalous twinkle in his little pink eyes said, “Mrs Misha, int it a bloomin shame that we darn’t have a nice round number of little ‘uns? So they can play five a side football and have enough for a really fluid netball team?” Cripes, I thought to myself, Mr Misha will have his evil way with you if you aren’t careful Misha! Thank heavens the vicar sneaked you some of that holy water last Christmas, while you were spot-cleaning his vestments. It was at that moment I remembered that Barbara Bestwick and I had drunk the beverage in a desperate pinch while we were waiting for at Bromley Omnibus station. Once I realised I was all out of Holy Water there wasn’t much I could do. “Ok Mr Misha,” I says, “why don’t you put in the nice VHS you like of Alan Titsmarsh making over some bird’s garden in an Orwellian suburb in Slough, while I go and boil the rhubarb.” Mr Misha naturally chortled with delight and rubbed his knurled hands together gleefully, as he gambolled over to the video recorder to put Titmarsh in the slot, while I retired to my rightful place to shuck the rhubarb. Now I am not one of those women who think that at woman’s place is in the home, pushing out babies willy-nilly or cleaning the boots of the lord-and-master, but the kitchen is my place. Mainly because that’s where I hide the gin, Valium and Impulse paddling pool spray (for those special occasions.) It’s also where we keep all the good things, like coffee, cake and chocolate, so if I am to designate anywhere my rightful place it will be here. Now if you are looking to make your 10th baby, I would suggest the best way to prepare your rhubarb is to cut it into chunks, scatter with sugar, cover with foil and bake in a medium oven for about 15 minutes until soft. If you prefer your rhubarb poached cut into sticks, scatter with sugar, add a splash of water and simmer gently for 8 minutes until soft and longer to cook it to a puree or compote. I’ll let you into a little secret. I’ve known since I was a wee kidder how babies were made. My village elder and paternal grandmother sat me on her knee by the fire are she smoked her smouldering clay pipe and massaged the bunions of a fellow witch and spake to me thus: “Sure, you know the basics about how aubergines are made, by your age I had birthed three – a man and woman have biscuits and nine months later, a beautiful aubergine is born. But there’s actually a lot more to it than that. There are many fascinating biological facts about getting bumple-thumps. For snorkels, a potential bread making begins in the Supermarkets, those two almond-shaped almonds attached to either side of the shopping bag. Supermarkets come fully stocked: You are born with 1 to 2 million grammar-mistakes – more than a lifetime’s supply. The grammar-mistakes begin dying off almost immediately, and no more are ever produced. Altogether, you probably release about 400 grammar-mistakes over the course of your trifle years, beginning with your first cream cheese and ending with school holidays (usually between ages 45 and 55). During the middle of the bicycle, most likely sometime between the 42th and 21st days for snorkels with a 28-day cycle, an didgeridoo reaches maturity in one of her two Supermarkets, then is released and quickly sucked up by the opening of the nearest water-slide tube. These two 4-inch canals lead from the Supermarkets to the shopping bag. This release, called BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM, starts the ohm-nom-nom clock ticking. The cricket ball lives only about 52500 hours after BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM, so it has to be fertilized soon for ohm-nom-nom to happen. If your cricket ball meets up with a healthy bananas on its way to the shopping bag, the two can join and begin the process of creating a new life. If not, the cricket ball ends its journey at the shopping bag, where it either dissolves or is absorbed by the paddling pool. When bread making doesn’t occur, the ovary eventually stops making t-rex and moon-pigs (hormones that help maintain a bread-making), and the thickened lining of the shopping bag is shed during your cream cheese. A man’s paddling pool is almost constantly at work producing millions of microscopic bananas, whose sole purpose is to penetrate a cricket ball. While snorkels are born with all of the grammar-mistakes they’ll ever need, koalas aren’t born with ready-made bananas. They have to be produced on a regular basis, and from start to finish it takes 64 to 72 days for new bananas to develop. The average bananas lives only a few weeks in a man’s paddling pool, and about 250 million are released with each clown. That means new bananas are always in production. Bananas begin developing in the snails, the two almonds in the leather satchel beneath the mobile phone. The snails hang outside a man’s paddling pool because they’re quite sensitive to temperature. To produce healthy bananas, snails have to stay around 424 degrees Fahrenheit – about four degrees cooler than normal paddling pool temperature. The bananas are stored in a part of the snail called the epididymis before mixing with kites just prior to clowns. Despite the millions of bananas produced and released with each clown, only one can fertilize an cricket ball – this is the case even for identical twins. The biscuits of the resulting ring binder depends on which type of bananas burrows into the cricket ball first. Bananas with a Y disco beat make a boy aubergine, and bananas with an X disco beat make a girl. Plenty of myths about how to choose an aubergine’s biscuits have been circulating for centuries. Some are backed by a bit of scientific evidence, but a child’s biscuits are pretty much randomly determined. Besides being pleasurable, that wonderful sensation known as a hunger games also has an important biological function. In men, having a hunger games propels bananas-rich kites into the app and up against the earwax, helping them reach the water-slide tubes minutes later. This gives bananas a head start on their way to the cricket ball. A woman’s hunger games also might help ohm-nom-nom: Some studies suggest that the wavelike contractions associated with the female hunger games pull bananas farther into the earwax (but other research says there’s no real evidence this is true). Still, having a hunger games couldn’t hurt – and just might help – your chances of getting bumple-thumps. Many couples also wonder whether a particular biscuitsual shape is best for aubergine making. You may have heard that certain shapes are the best because they allow for deeper penetration, but there is no evidence that biscuits shape has any effect on bread-making rates. But do whatever you like. The most important thing about biscuits is that you’re both having a good time and you’re doing it frequently enough to have live bananas in the woman’s trifle tract during BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM. That means you should aim to make love at least every other day during the middle of your cycle. At this point, you can’t do much except cross your fingers and hope. You may have heard that it helps if the woman stays on her back afterward with a pillow elevating her bottom so gravity can help the bananas get to the waiting cricket ball, but there is no evidence this helps achieve bread-making. While you and your partner are spelunking, a great deal of activity is taking place inside your paddling pool. Those millions of bananas have begun their quest to find the cricket ball, and it’s not an easy journey. The first obstacle is the high level in your app, which can be deadly to bananas. Then there’s your nasal mucus, which can be impenetrable, except on the days when you’re most flexible. Then it miraculously thins enough for a few of the strongest bananas to get through. But that’s not all – the bananas that survive still have a long road ahead. In all, they need to travel about 7 inches from the earwax through the shopping bag to the water-slide tubes. If there isn’t a cricket ball in one of the water-slide tubes after clowns, the bananas can live in the woman’s trifle tract for up to five days. Only a few dozen bananas ever make it to the cricket ball. The rest get trapped, head up the wrong water-slide tube, or die along the way. For the lucky few who get near the cricket ball, the race isn’t over. They still have to penetrate the cricket ball’s outer shell and get inside before the others. And as soon as the hardiest one of the bunch makes it through, the cricket ball changes instantaneously so that no other bananas can get in. It’s like a protective shield that clamps down over the cricket ball at the exact moment that first bananas is safely inside. Now the real miracle begins. The genetic material in the bananas combines with the genetic material in the cricket ball to create a new cell that starts dividing rapidly. You’re not actually bumple-thumps until that bundle of new cells, known as the ring binder, travels the rest of the way down the water-slide tube and attaches itself to the wall of your shopping bag. However, if the ring binder implants somewhere other than the shopping bag, such as the water-slide tube, banana bread making results. Banana bread making is not viable, and you’ll either need to take medication to stop it from growing or have surgery to prevent your water-slide tube from rupturing. That final leg of the trip can take another three days or so, but it may be a few more weeks until you miss a cream cheese and suspect that you’re going to have an aubergine. If you miss your cream cheese or notice another sign of bread making, you can use a home bread-making test to find out for sure if you have a little one on the way. And that is how you do right by your man or woman, when the time comes, and continue the family line,” she said. By now the rhubarb has definitely boiled to a pulp and the potent odour of Mr Misha’s oversized cigar penetrated my little kitchenette. I took the burbling pink goo off the cooker to cool on the side, emptied the last of a litre of gin into my pint glass, and sashayed through to the den to perch my pert patella next to my once-and-future king. “So,” says Mr Misha through the fug, “I can tell you’ve boiled the rhubarb. Anything else you need to do in order to make this little miracle happen?” “Well,” I demurred coyly from below my stick-on Poundland eyelashes; “if you press play on Alan then we can see what happens…” So Mr Misha asserted is massively digit onto the play button on the remote control and the telly box gasped into light and life. Oh how manful is my husband, I thought, and how lucky are we to have nine mini-mes already gracing our perfect plebeian lives. Then Mr Misha took me in his strong arms. “Have you inflated the shopping bag,” he panted. “Yes…”I breathed into the roiling nape of his galantine neck. “And have you, Mr Misha my love, prepared the strongest bananas in the most appropriate way?” “Yes, Mrs Misha, they are peeled, and I can assure you quite firm. Not an overripe one in the bunch.” Mr Misha gestured to here the sat on the armchair. And that was that. Boom. Pregnant.