A sideways look at life by Jenny Beake

I am at this point in time staring at a llama.

Hopefully it will inspire me to write something witty.

It is a plant holder on my desk.

My allied llama if you will.

It would make a good film title, The Woman Who Stared at a Llama, similar to the film The Men Who Stare at Goats, but not a satirical war film, as that is.

But I suppose at a push George Clooney could be in my film and my character could be played by someone similar to me.

Possibly Cameron Diaz or some such type.

I have become addicted to watching things called reels on social media.

They are short (really short, seven seconds approximately) covering all subjects from Friends bloopers to funny kids and pets.

They have click bait titles such as ‘this is what happened when my toddler saw me and my husband cuddling’.

Once you click on it you see that the toddler wants to cuddle them too, rather than them all self combusting.

Not that I was hoping that would happen-the combusting-but logically it would hopefully be that the toddler wanted to join in rather than a huge argument and divorcing each other.

There is another one that is a scammer, again using click bait to see what happens when someone is cooking.

The recent one I watched was how to fry a massive fried egg by putting six yokes in the middle of a pan enclosed in a heatproof ring, then adding the egg whites around the side and whisking them up.

There are lots of stalling techniques happening so that more people click onto the reel and make the ‘dwell time’ longer.

Soon enough, or should I say ‘soon un oeuf’, I realised that I would never see the finished massive fried egg and that it was a scam.

That’s two hours of my life I won’t get back.

There was another one of these reels about ‘what happens when you add sweets to blancmange’ or some such utter tripe.

But of course I watched it for ages waiting to see what happens and nothing did.

Another one I watched, and you’d really think I’d learned my lesson by now, was a seemingly real hand with some sort of flesh eating worm embedded in it.

It wasn’t until someone pointed out the false hand that I realised. Up until then I was completely hooked.

Next someone will be telling me that the word gullible has been taken out of the dictionary.

I also spent a good 30 minutes watching the actress who will play me in my film, The Women Who Stared at a Llama, Cameron Diaz, making a salad.

I think it will be my plotline.

That should reel people in.