Tiny Squeezy Bottles

For my last swim or four I've had the feeling that something has been following me up and down the pool. Not in the manner of people swimming behind me, because that's what happens in swimming pools (apart from the idiot flailing man who cut across me this morning without so much as a hand signal, forcing me to stop suddenly mid-length and almost drown in the wake of 'excessive bobbing breast-stroke' lady) but in the manner of something suspicious being there, right on my shoulder so to speak.

On Monday, I worked out what it was. It was a balloon of air catching 'neath the derriere of my increasingly saggy swimming cossie! As I was swimming, the bottom of my cossie was gradually inflating, poofing up and causing a not insubstantial amount of drag. Climbing from the pool at the end of my 40 minutes was like dragging the Hindenberg out behind me. Time for a new cossie, methinks, I thought.

So whilst in town on Monday I found a plain black number in BHS for £8. I also popped into Superdrug and purchased 3 tiny squeezy bottles into which I planned to decant shampoo, conditioner and shower gel to save me having to lug full sized bottles to the pool for post swim de-chlorination.

'Look at these!' I said to Andy, showing him my tiny squeezy bottles.
'They are very cute,' said Andy.
'And the bottles?' I said.
'Ahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!' said Andy.
'I'm going to use them for shampoo, conditioner and shower gel,' I said, moving on swiftly from the dubious mire of double entendres.
'Given that your shampoo and conditioner are the same colour, how will you tell the difference between the bottles?' asked Andy. (He was being particularly good at asking the correct questions that day.)
'Aha!' I said because I'd already given this some thought pre-purchase of said bottles. 'You'll notice that the tiny squeezy bottles have different coloured lids. Pink lid. Blue lid.'
'Oh yes,' said Andy.
'I am going to use the blue lid one for shamPOO,' I said.
'Because it rhymes?' said Andy.
'Exactly,' I said. 'And the pink lid one for...er, conDINK..tioner.'
Andy stared at me. His eyes looked suspiciously narrow.
'Blue for poo and pink for condink,' I said, firmly.
'That doesn't work,' said Andy.
'It does in my mind,' I said.
'And the shower gel?'
'Well, obviously I would have liked Superdrug to provide a third colour option,' I said. 'Like yellow. For gello. But it's not a major issue.'
'So how will you tell which bottle has the shower gel in it?' asked Andy, who was growing a little weary of the conversation by now.
'Silly hubbie,' I said, ruffling his hair. 'The shower gel is orange.'
'That's all right then,' said Andy, and went off to crack open another bottle of nettle beer which, he says, has improved enormously now he's let it stand for the 4 days you are supposed to before drinking.

One last thing. I have reached a point in Indigo Antfarm ,Violet and Blue where I need to decide whether it is going to end in triumph or tragedy. Plot points need to be inserted now in order to prepare for the tidy up at the end. What I want to know is this: do you, dear reader, find a happy ending or a tragic ending more satisfying? Do I go down the 'Hamlet' or the 'Love, Actually' route? Andy reckons a tragic ending is more literary. I would go for tragedy because the characters are turning into a right nasty bunch and deserve to get their come-uppance. Also, I feel tragic endings give the reader something to think over, to philosophize about long after the novel has finished. A tragic ending provides lessons to be learned.

BUT...

...happy endings are deemed more satisfying to your popular fiction readership and would therefore create more commercial power (i.e stand more a chance of helping me earn a bit of money now I'm three-quarters of my way through my year out of teaching). Also, happy endings make you say, 'That's all right then,' and smile and stride forth into the world with the feeling that everything is marvellous and perfect and whatever life throws at us, we can handle. Happy endings show the rose-tinted life we all aspire to achieve because we think it will, in turn, make us happy.

So, tragedy or triumph? Literary satisfaction or a big wodge of cash? What do YOU think?