AUNTIE Dot has started painting. She gave no indication that her interest lay in the arts when she worked in the chippy, although she was a dab hand at the art of concealing an extra fish under a pile of scraps whenever one of her numerous family members - yours truly included - happened to fall through the doors.

But now she is a lady of leisure and has swapped her Leeds semi for a bungalow by the sea in the husteless, bustleless haven of Filey, she has started to spread her wings and is fast becoming something of a culture vulture.

As a way of getting to know some new people and snatching a few hours away from an old one (no offence Uncle Brian), she joined an art class. Now she has a healthy portfolio of watercolour paintings.

Some are good (you can almost smell the heady scent of her floral paintings) and some are not so good (she readily admits that her fish pictures stink), but there is only one that has pride of place in her heart and in her home.

It is not a painting of her four children. It is not a painting of her legion of grandchildren. It is not even a painting of her favourite niece - although she does have a very fetching school picture of me and my cousin Andy circa 1976 (he's wearing what looks like an Action Man khaki sweater, I'm wearing a rather snazzy powder blue polo neck, and we both have haircuts that scream "bowl!").

Her artwork of choice is a lovingly crafted watercolour painting of Katie and Blue - her dogs.

Why? Don't ask me. Much as I like her chocolate Labrador and her small, whiskery, toothless mutt, I don't share her overwhelming joy at their presence. In fact, I don't get the dog thing at all.

I like dogs. I have no problem with people having a dog as a pet. I even wave at my neighbour's Alsatian when I'm passing by on the school run. But I don't understand what possesses a grown woman to want to carry a dog around in her handbag.

Britney Spears and Bit Bit; Paris Hilton and Tinkerbell; Geri Halliwell and Harry. You can't tell me these girls have a healthy relationship with their pooches.

Buying your canine companion a squeaky bone and a tartan blanket is one thing, but buying them a Louise Vuitton dog carrier, a houndstooth cap and jacket from Puppia at Harrods and a £350 food bowl from Royal Crown Derby is quite another.

Walk them, stroke them, feed them tidbits from the table and paint them in watercolours if you must, but please don't get them their own credit card.

Melon-brained people with a penchant for moss-coloured corduroy, or scientists as they are more commonly known, have deciphered the X chromosome that explains the difference between men and women and holds the secret to at least 300 inherited diseases.

"This is probably - I would say definitely - the most extraordinary in the human genome in terms of its inheritance pattern, in terms of its unique biology and in terms of its association with human disease," says Mark Ross, chief melon brain at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, who led the British team in the international effort to analyse the 155 million letters of DNA code, containing more than 1,100 genes.

Well done Mr Ross, but I could have saved you a lot of time and effort. If you wanted to pinpoint the X chromosome, all you had to do was sit us down in front of the telly. Women like watching The X Factor and men don't. QED.

Updated: 09:04 Monday, March 21, 2005