Claire Black: Suddenly, I’m thinking about the things I don’t categorically remember doing

THE taxi is speeding up Leith Walk. We’re making good time for our train, and due to the road surface – or lack of it – I have had several vertebrae realigned, which will save on osteopathy fees.

I’m also feeling slightly motion-sick, but I don’t want to complain because the driver is friendly and he’s done ever so well getting us past the bus convoy on Elm Row, which is so long that Evel Knievel couldn’t jump it. Seconds later he pulls into the kerb, and from the crinkled eyes I see in the rear view mirror as he reaches up to stop the meter, I can tell he’s pleased with himself.

Then it all goes wrong.

“Erm, we’re sorry but we’ve just realised we don’t know if we’ve turned the oven off. I think you might have to take us back home.”

We didn’t say this entirely as one, but near enough. And I know it can be a bit icky when couples speak as one, but in this instance I’m going to give us brownie points for unity because the other option was to scream recriminations about the other’s supposed incompetence.

The fact is, this had been a joint effort. We’d each used the oven. I went first, then as R was fishing her pizza out of it, the phone rang. She went to answer it, pizza in hand, and didn’t remember whether she’d turned off the oven. An hour or so later we both left the flat.

“It was off,” I said. “I am sure it was off.” And then doubt. “I would’ve heard it if it was on – it’s a fan-assisted oven.” R heard the hesitation and pounced.

“I remember definitely not turning the oven off,” she said, somehow (oddly) now occupying the moral high ground. “Can you say that you categorically remember turning it off?”

Suddenly, I’m thinking about all the things I don’t categorically remember doing. There’s so much. I start to sweat. I know it’s off… I know it’s off.

Alas, twice in the past couple of months – for the first times ever in my whole life – I’ve left the oven on. I’ve been in the flat both times, so apart from the kitchen being an ideal temperature for a hot yoga class, no damage has been done, but still, would you believe me?

“I think you’d better take us back down to Leith,” I say to the driver. “I’m really sorry.”

“Don’t worry,” he says, hiding his disappointment. “It’s no problem to me.”

‘CHANGING the world one butt at a time.” These eight words are the only things that could ever make me like Spanx.

Seriously, I have not a good word to say about a garment that is basically a 21st-century torture device available to both genders. But there’s just something about the insouciant silliness of that company slogan that makes me unable to dislike it.

Sara Blakely, the 41-year-old founder of the big pants business, is a billionaire, so I guess I’m not alone.

MY INTEREST in the London Olympics 2012 has recently increased by approximately 300 per cent.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m as big a fan of snatch-and-jerk weightlifting as the next person, but what’s got my torch burning is that I’ve just discovered that Elbow have been asked by the BBC to write music to accompany the Games coverage on telly.

Guy Garvey, what a man. I can’t wait. And the corporate freeloaders sitting in the best seats won’t even get to hear it. «