A toilet brush is a toilet brush is a toilet brush, so you'd think. But you'd be wrong. I was wrong too.

Firstly, and I know that this issue has previously been covered in some depth chez la sorcière bleue, I do solemnly declare that the shape of a typical toilet brush de nos jours is not suited to its purpose. Namely, being able to scrub into the variously shaped nooks and crannies that our toilets provide.

Who decided that rigid bristles in a spherical formation was the ideal configuration for scrubbing into the sometimes square corners found in the interior of our porcelain pals? Who decreed that the older shape of brush - she of the angled head and more flexible bristles, she who can delve deep into the darkest recesses of the pride of Armitage Shanks - should be retired in favour of this younger pretender?

Whoever you may be, sir (or madam), you are a fool. And yet it is I who am left with a stained toilet bowl which no amount of scrubbing with your second-rate brush will correct.

To add insult to injury, my recently acquired toilet brush has one further useless features to add to its pitiful lack of ergonomics.

Ah yes, it may sit proudly and aesthetically within its chrome sheath, but when it is unleashed, one discovers an alarming fact. The brush head is detachable from its very shaft, via the medium of a screwing motion.

Why? Just why would you do that?

A useful feature, one may think at first, allowing the brush head to be replaced in future. But who, in their right mind, is going to want to fiddle around with the "business end" of a toilet brush? Can I just put my hand up at this point and declare: "Not me!"

The issue with this unscrewable head is that, inevitably, it begins to unscrew during normal usage. And there comes the dread. The dread that the thing will drop off mid scrub, and descend into the murky depths, where it must be fished out by hand or may risk blocking the system. If you manage to avoid this by noting that the thing is loosening, you must still work out how to screw it back on again without... ahem... soiling yourself.

No. I really must insist in future that the brush head is permanently attached to the shaft.

And talking of bog brushes - you should see my hair at the moment! When they told me during the chemotherapy that "your hair will grow back", what they actually meant was "someone else's hair will grow back where yours once was". I don't know whose coarse, bouffantish hair this is, but it bears no relation to my straight, sleek, shiny hair, which was last seen clogging up the Dyson over the summer...