I am writing with trepidation and sockless feet, for there is a mouse loose in the house.
Yesterday we had a lovely day down at the S&H and his bride’s where the boxes still unpacked have all been moved into the front bedroom so that the rest of the house is beginning to look habitable. We went bearing gifts, the plastic coal hole and two folding garden chairs and a little plastic picnic table and taking a few tools for assembly. The rake, it turns out, was for raking the ground flat, prior to assembly of the plastic coal hole, which went together easily with three of us arguing for half an hour and a few screws. Once erected, it perfectly matched the back fence and was exactly not big enough to fit the bikes in but was big enough to get the lawnmower in and some other bits. It took three of us to replace the fence panel that had blown out of its moorings, so we could slot in the metal hooks and string the washing line up.
In the afternoon we found a garden centre where I had great pleasure assisting shopping to replace the S&H’s assorted plants, mainly peppers, that had died in the move and buy some basic garden tools. After planting the plants in the new pot, we had a cup of tea and left. It was a lovely day and I thought after all that fresh air I would sleep soundly.
Well I did but the sound was coughing, so at half past six I got up and fed the cats and made a cup of tea.
Cleo, who had met me on the landing several times having a quick choking fit, decided by about half past eight that the thing I needed to make me better was probably more than the grass she’s been leaving by my bedroom door. What I need, she thought, was a nice fresh mouse, so she brought one at speed past the OT, getting ready for golf and up the stairs at a lick. The palaver on the landing as two of us danced around after the cat after the mouse, was quite considerable and ended with the mouse getting airborne over and then through the open plan stairs and falling to the natural conclusion of all mice in this house, namely behind the dolls’ house with the missing back panel. The back panel has been missing for twenty seven years in this house and possibly a hundred years before that but I have now decided after the usual fruitless chase, watched by two cats in interested Wimbledon spectator mode, to replace it this week.
The mouse was not in any of the sports bags, not in the administration-for-mother bags, not in the tapestry frame box (now removed upstairs and heading for the loft) not in the fifties tin house or any of the souvenir steins or assorted other boxes of junk. So, where else could it be in an open plan house?
Anywhere.
Which means it’s time to open all the doors and lock up the fruit bowl again.
Prior to having the S&H’s two cats I had a wonderful electric supersonic device to frighten away all undesirable wildlife, who took one earful of the high pitched squeaks I couldn’t hear and headed for the hills. As I don’t want the cats to do that, it is plugged in still, hopefully, but not switched on.
I am not well enough for a mouse, all I want is a night’s sleep without the choking…………..
slimmer thighs and less moustache and more balance in the bank and fewer perennial weeds but right now I’d settle for a night’s sleep.
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