rootle

Britney and Shakira could scratch and rootle for Britain at the Chicken Olympics.

Not any more - I too had a rootle round in the freezer and found a pork fillet, and so we also had pork satay for supper that night - and the next.

We need all the time we can spare to rootle like truffle pig lets through the masses and masses of potentially perfect,labelled clothes.

"So I know you're OK!" Hence a few days ago, on the way home from teaching, I'm having a rootle though the summer dresses in Zara when he calls me.

And have we lost all ability to rootle out a bargain?

Come the urge to inhale I'd have to fetch a step ladder, climb up and poke into a dark invisible corner with a fish slice to rootle them out - which I did the night my friend rang to tell me her husband had died.

Having a photograph taken is as appealing as root canal surgery and, after each unfortunate incident, I rootle around in the photo box under my bed for proof that I did once look if not beautiful, well, what?

My inner thighs, let me tell you, still bear the scars.) Well, this year's interpretation (see, I'm becoming fashiony by osmosis) is to create a biker boot with strategically placed holes in the ankle, to either let the sweat out or give the wearer a whole extra layer of dressing anxiety as they rootle through their sock drawer for appropriately 'statement' socks.

STUCK for something to write about during this, perhaps the least noteworthy week of the year, I did what I did last year and had a brief rootle round the virtual world that lives inside my computer.

Ten minutes to actually get into the shop because list has to be clamped to trolley handle, that's after I've moved six trolleys from the line to get to the one with a list-holder on it, glasses to find otherwise I can't see the list plus laborious rootle into depths of bag for pen to cross things off or I buy it twice, then trickiest of all, weave handbag strap through trolley in case somebody should decide to nick it while I'm comparing labels on beefburgers to see if own brand has less beef than Birdseye - it usually has by the way.

If paleontologists would like to take a rootle through the average modern woman's make-up bag they'd find crusty eyeliner, gungy lipstick and dried-up mascara, all apparently from the Jurassic era.

Over the years I've hoovered up everything from Action Man's moon boots to champagne corks, and I've always managed to rootle them out by a gentle massage of the hose or redesigning a wire coat hanger into a poking-round-bends shape.

Youngest called one day when we were both out, to rootle out something he'd thrown in the loft in 1986 and kindly left a note pinned to the bottom of the stairs - "two deceased mice in loft".

The chappie who is going to rootle about in our nasal tubes is the cleverest and most wonderfully competent rootler in the world.

Suzie Rootles Stevens "He only didn't do anything because he got caught!" Vicky Eager "Bullied or not, he had weapons and materials for building a bomb in his house and the very clear intent to use them.