Mice to see you...

OK OK I admit it - I've got mice!! I've been in denial these last few weeks desperately trying to find alternative explaantions for the mice-like scuryring sounds I've been hearing whilst trying to get to sleep at night! Must be some pebbles falling down the chimney or my weird neighbours on the other side!! But despite trying to rationalise away the problem my imagination worked overtime as I envisioned myself being attacked by mutant rats, my mother discovering my mutilated body and the headline in the local paper - 'Goldsmith's student savaged by killer rats'. (Incidentally I blame James Herbert for all of this - if your disposition is as sensitive to horror as mine then don't read his Rats trilogy!)

Despite traumatising myself with my morbid fanatsies I did actually manage to get to sleep at night - until yesterday that was. Mr mouse must've got fed up waiting for me to finish reading and turn off my light and so made a run for it behind my bedside table and all the way along behind my bed and out to I don't where........ Somehow the reality of a fast moving small brown mouse traumatised me more than my imaginings about mutant rats and I had to sleep in the lounge last night. I shut the door firmly but took ages to get to sleep worried the mouse would come and find me and somehow crawl under the lounge door!

I've lived with mice before but not in my bedroom. That's just downright rude - doesn't it realise that's invasion of my personal space?!!

Why are we so scared of such tiny creatures? And why do they only come out at night?

The Joys of Wine

Feast on wine or fast on water,

And your honor shall stand sure

If an angel out of heaven

Brings you something else to drink,

Thank him for his kind attentions,

Go and pour it down the sink.

G.K. Chesterton

Oh, I had forgotton the joys of wine!! I gave up alcohol for Lent and now Easter has arrived I can go back to enjoying an evening glass of J. P. Chenet with my Penne Arrabiata! And how I have missed the precious grape!! Banish all spirits and beer and I would hardly notice, but deprive me of red wine and I would truly be bereft! I am only glad that so many wise people agree with me!!

No thing more excellent nor more valuable than wine
was ever granted mankind by God.
Plato, 400 BC

Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of good wine
St. Thomas Aquinas

Wine in itself is an excellent thing.
Pope Pius XII

God in His goodness sent the grape

To cheer both great and small;

Little fools will drink too much

And great fools none at all.

Anonymous

A case of Not In My Back Yard??

I have a rather modest sized backyard contained by a brickwall painted white at one end, and white painted fences on either side. There are no exciting features, the earth below buried out of sight covered by cracked concrete, it's dull grey monotony broken only by the weeds persistently pushing their way through, like defiant reminders that the city cannot completely subdue nature. Natural life has been rationalised in my backyard into a low rectangular brickwall on one side forming what I believe is commonly known as a 'flowerbed' but I've yet to spot any flowers. The brown soil has been disturbed by lots of green shoots recently but these too could be weeds for all I know - the jury is still out.

There is no outdoor furniture - only a few rusty rakes and trowels and a random assortment of plastic piping, broken fencing, dead leaves and a small piece of carcass from an unidentifiable animal.

And then.... this afternoon I spotted a new arrival - a suitcase!!! Now tell me, how exactly do I approach my neighbours about that?!


Case History

- the label shows it has been from Austria
to London Heathrow, accompanied by
a Mr Brown.