REVELATIONS AND REVELRY

This is ridiculous and I am going home. I had planned to stay until tomorrow but on hearing the plans for the day I decided to revise my timetable and go back to Hampshire tonight. I have concerns about my lack of an author press kit so I want to get going on that (author bio, photos, etc.) but also a situation has arisen here.

Steve, my step-father, hates cats. With a passion. I don’t know where this antipathy comes from but for years my brothers have been begging for a cat, and he has steadfastly refused. He doesn’t like the look of them, the feel, the way they climb all over you or anything about them at all really. As I mentioned before there are already two (formerly three) dogs, a pygmy hedgehog, a tortoise, a tank of tropical fish and a handful of chickens. And it is this last which is causing the problem, because along with chickens come rats. Hundreds of them if you listen to my mother, which I generally don’t, but how to keep the rat population down has long been a major concern here. For a while my parents experimented with allowing my brother (he who eats peas wrongly) to shoot them with an air rifle. But then presumably it occurred to them that allowing a fifteen year old to roam freely round the garden in the dark with a gun might have dangerous repercussions for anyone else out there.

So I got up this morning and my mother announced “I’ve discovered a way to get rid of the rats.”

“Really?” I said.

“Yes, really. I’m going to get some cats. Feral ones that will live in the garden and keep the rats down.”

“But doesn’t Steve hate cats?”

“Yes but these ones will be fine because we won’t see them, they can sleep in the shed in the straw and they’ll eat rats so we won’t need to feed them. I’ve found out where to get them – we’ll go today.”

So my poor step-father, who is currently working abroad in Ireland, will travel home at the weekend to find that my mother has got not one cat, or even two. No, she will have installed a flock of cats in the garden. Quite apart from Steve’s view I find the idea ludicrous. Clearly, I can have no part in this.

The other thing I noticed last night was that my mother is growing some plants in the corner of the large and beautifully decorated sitting room. I imagine most of you are now thinking of nice pots and flowers and things but NO, do not leap to this logical conclusion. I mean that there are two green things with leaves literally growing through the carpet by the window and have been for some time. When I saw that they hadn’t been removed, I commented, something along the lines of “Mummy! Those plants are still there?!” My mother looked unconcerned and said “Yes, I know. Steve thinks they’re disgusting but I want to see how big they get.”

I rest my case.