I got an e-mail from a friend this morning who asked me about something I told him ages ago. I mentioned that I had read somewhere that Aristotle had said that women have fewer teeth than men.

I had an idea that this was said by Bertrand Russell, so I looked it up. I didn't find it. But Google is my friend.

A quick search for "Aristotle women teeth" brought up the following quote:

'Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.' (Bertrand Russell)

A further look down the list produced a reference to the exact work, and even the page: The Impact of Science on Society, 1952, p7.

Then I wondered: what if this was itself a myth? It would be ironic if that proved to be the case. Russell was a clever populariser, might he not have distorted the facts to make a good quote?

Again, Google came to the rescue. "aristotle online" quickly produced a reference to the Internet Classics Archive. A search through here quickly turned up a work entitled The History of Animals, written about 350BC. And sure enough, in book two, he writes:

'Males have more teeth than females in the case of men, sheep, goats, and swine; in the case of other animals observations have not yet been made'

Just think, if Aristotle had had access to Google he might not have made such a fool of himself ...

Every Monday I pick Philipp up from school and we go around to the flat and I spend the rest of the afternoon with him. Usually this involves me being the patsy in a game with fluid rules, made up by Philipp and somehow always favouring him.

Last Monday we were playing with Action Man. Not the full size one, a sort of minor version which comes free with McDonalds. Actually, Philipp is like most kids these days and views McDonalds as a toy store with free food (which you don't have to eat).

Anyway, on Monday things got very exciting, with events culminating in a battle between Good and Evil which involved, among others, Action Man, Pikachu, Ryan Giggs, Homer Simpson, and Lara Croft.

Naturally, Lara and Ryan were on the side of Good although some would quibble with exactly how Evil Homer Simpson is.

Of course Good won in the end. Or at least Good was ahead when Susanne called to say that dinner was ready.

Ahem. It's getting close to Christmas and the goose is getting fat. My bank balance, on the other hand, is not.

So it's time to remind you of the existence of the Life As It Happens shop.

Baffled when trying to decide what to buy? Not any longer. Not when you can buy a Life As It Happens 2003 calendar or T-shirt.

And what woman could fail to be impressed by a classic thong with a Life As It Happens logo on it?

Admittedly, it's a picture of a fish.

Okay, you've got to admit that the Life As It Happens clock is a good idea. Watch the hours of your life ticking by, that sort of thing.

Be the only kid on your block to own a piece of LAIH merchandise. Even better, be the only person on your continent with a Life As It Happens thong!

Er ... that's not really a great sales pitch, is it?

Thanks to everyone who left messages of congratulations on my forthcoming marriage. We've not yet arranged when or where this will take place, except that it will probably be somewhere in London (unless it's in Ireland or Berlin) and will probably take place somewhere between January and October 2003.

There might be a quiet wedding with a few guests, followed by a party somewhere which might take place the same day or several months later.

We would like to do something unusual to celebrate, but also somewhere cheap. The one option kind of limits the other. However we have already ruled out the idea of whitewater rafting on the Grand Union Canal.

Anybody got any ideas?

We flew into Dublin on Wednesday evening.

Thursday was mainly occupied with encouraging small children to dress up as scary ghosts. With the aid of white face paint and a long plastic cape, Philipp became a small, compact vampire. I'm not sure the glow-in-the-dark teeth were realistic, but they certainly showed up over a long distance. To judge by the amount of sweets he and his friend gathered, the people of Balbriggan are either very kind or easily scared into giving food away.

Friday we mostly recovered from Thursday. Then in the evening, Susanne and I went to Skerries. You remember Skerries, don't you. Yes you do. Pay attention, please.

We had a lovely dinner in the Stoop Your Head, which is an excellent pub in Skerries. Then we went for a walk along the short pier and watched freshly caught fish being loaded into a lorry. A man in a big woolly hat was busy supervising the process.

"Howarye," he said. We nodded a greeting.

We sat in a pub and drank some more and then got a cab back to Balbriggan which is just a little bit along the coast. The cab was a kind of minivan and the driver spent most of his time dispatching other cabs to other venues in the area.

When we got home we sat and talked for a long time, holding one another and not wanting to let the evening come to an end.

I told Susanne that I wanted to be with her for the rest of my life, which I did. It seemed somehow reasonable, in the circumstances, to ask her then if she wanted to get married.

Look, you have to understand that we're not big on this sort of thing in Ireland.

The classic Irish proposal used to take the form of, "Tell us, Dymphna, how would you feel about being buried with my people?"

Then there was the couple who had been going together for years and years and finally Finbarr worked up the courage to ask Eithne did she not think they ought to get married.

She looked at him as if he was mad.

"Sure who'd want to get married to us?"

Well, Susanne is German and therefore much better at that sort of thing.

She said yes, of course.

Balbriggan, Co. Dublin

We've been having a lovely Hallowe'en in Ireland. Expect an announcement later ...