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SHITHOUSE Whenever someone loses their life in tragic circumstances they are always described thus: “Oh he was a smashing bloke. Really genuine. And so generous. He would do anything for anybody.’ Or ‘She was a wonderful woman. A Saint. Everybody liked her. I never heard anybody say a bad thing against her. Or ‘She was a lovely girl. So bubbly. Always had a smile on her face and a kind word.’ No one is ever a shithouse. No one ever says; ‘He was a right arsehole. A real tight-fisted vindictive twat who wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire or give you the dirt from under his fingernails.’     This maxim isn’t confined to victims of murderers or those unfortunates who have been visited by incurable diseases. It seems to apply to anyone who has died. I have been to quite a few funerals over the years and I have yet to hear a eulogy in which the speaker describes the deceased in anything but the most glowing terms. And most certainly not as a shithouse.     The conclusion to be drawn from this state of affairs is that only the good die, shithouses never. So, in an effort to live as long as possible, I made up my mind to become a shithouse.     I informed The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road of my intention to be a shithouse from now on and the reason why. Atkins said that it sounds like a good idea and that he may very well become a shithouse himself, conveniently forgetting that he probably already is one. The Trouble said I should have no trouble whatsoever becoming a shithouse if my behaviour yesterday is anything to go by. I assume she means the business with her trousers.      Like the rest of us The Trouble tends to put on a few pounds over Christmas and also like the rest of us she has ambitions to get rid of the surplus poundage as soon into the New Year as is reasonably possible. She happened to mention to me that this year she would have to do without the use of scales in her quest as unfortunately she had forgotten to weigh herself prior to the start of the holiday festivities. No matter, she said, she would know when her weight was back to normal as the week before Christmas she had bought a new pair of trousers which fitted her perfectly.      Her plan then was to diet until the trousers fitted her as perfectly again. Foolproof. Not so. A sound method on the face of it, but open to abuse.      I have a sister who along with a sewing machine and the seamstress skills to go with it shares my sense of humour, so, just for a laugh, I had her take in the waist of the trousers by a couple of inches. Yesterday The Trouble declared that she felt she had lost enough excess poundage to get into the trousers again and disappeared upstairs to our bedroom. I have never heard the howl of a banshee, but if it is half as terrifying as the noise that came out of our bedroom two minutes later then if banshees ever hit town I don't want to be around when they do. I ran upstairs. The Trouble is not a fat woman, on the contrary she has a nice figure for her age, but even a nice figure can not get away with an attempt to force it into a pair of trousers deficient in the waist measurement by two inches. Consequently the small amount of fat she normally carries round her waist had become a roll of fat, spilling out of the top of the trousers, which, if not of lifebelt proportions, certainly looked like something which might be an aid to buoyancy had she been drowning.      Naturally I started to laugh. Not for very long though because clearly she was upset, a fact that became clear to me when she threw a pot of oil of olay at me. I apologised, then in an effort to restore the good humour she had been in before she tried on the trousers I let her in on my little joke, adding as a bonus that she had probably reached her target weight after all. For some unknown reason she failed to find it funny and she has hardly spoken to me since.      If this is all you have to do to be considered a shithouse it’s going to be easy.