A Right Bore!

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In the grand tradition of, ‘Things to Do Before you Die’ we boldly set off last night.

We travelled first over the lumpy bumpy Cotswolds, whose true beauties are secreted away down tiny lanes well away from the rapacious eyes of the likes of us urban rapscallions.

At Newnham we found a car park and sat on a bench in the chill evening air as the light faded over the River Severn.

I’d wanted to see the Severn Bore.

The timetables promised a good sized one so we sat under the cathedral of the night sky aware of the hush of other isolated pockets of Bore watchers.

We heard it before we saw it.

But it was a low disappointing wave that rolled steadily by.

‘Well that was a bore!’ proclaimed The Teenager with typical understatement.

‘Perhaps it will be higher further up the river,’ I suggest. ‘Look it’s changed the direction of the river; the river is now flowing the wrong way. It’s raised the water level higher over those sand banks. Look,’ I say.

I’m trying to find something that will impress. I turn to science. ‘It’s a rare phenomenon,’ I gabble trying to find something, anything that will excuse this long expensive journey across country to see this singular unremarkable wave. ‘It’s the Atlantic Ocean!’ I pronounce as if this alone should be enough to induce adulation and ‘Ahhhhs!’

We drive higher up the road. At the Severn Bore Inn we have a chance to witness it all again.

‘Perhaps it will be higher here?’ I gush. 'The river's narrower.'

There are more people here, the atmosphere is one of playful anticipation. Everyone is watching the distant bank for the first signs of the breaking wave.

It comes low around the corner, late.

Someone is shining a strong beam from a torch. The beam is a meter behind the main wave that is hardly breaking at all. The water surges past. There is a boom as it hits something underneath the merry drinkers who are standing on a wooden platform.

‘Can I have the car keys?’ The Teenager asks flatly.

‘There are people in the water,’ I say tempting him to stay longer, trying to find something of interest.

They are surfers who have tried to ride the wave but who have found it was far too low for them too. They are flapping like performing seals and floundering.

‘Er, the keys?’ demands The Teenager.

‘Look, how they're being swept away. Look how strong the current is.’

The teenager is holding out his hand, ‘I’ll wait for you in the car,’ he says.

It’s a long journey home.

We get back home at about one in the morning.

I’m treated to every possible bore joke.

I'm made to promise that I won't drag him to see any more natural phenomena.

But for me some Celtic part of my soul felt that surge of water; and an ancestral primal sense of awe was awakened: as if mysteries were revealed and the gods walked close.

The power of it.

The wonder!

Ahhhhhh!

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Mice

I seem to get everything wrong.

We have mice again!

I guess the carpets which are made up of 100% chocolate, despite being swept by a Dyson every day, were just too tempting for them.

Then there’s been the wet August weather enough to make any rodent seek warmth and shelter. I’ve read that they can squeeze through tiny gaps in order to get into a house. Probably in our case they just walked in through the open back door!

My old humane mouse trap had become even more humane. It refused to close even gently on any tiny visitor, so I had to buy a new one.

The pet shop owner told me that people usually came to him to buy poison for their mice infestations. I was horrified.

My new trap has caught three mice.

The last was a very young mouse. I drove it to the fields where I’ve released others over the years. I’ve read on the Internet apocryphal tales of released mice finding their way back home again and I hoped that mine would not.

In the far distance there was a hawk hovering over a grassy mound. I hoped my previous releasees had become skilled at hiding from it.

For the hawk to be there at all the mouse population must be doing quite well, I reasoned.

I released the young mouse and immediately felt so sorry for it. It was confused to find itself running along a path and not alongside the familiar skirting board that it knew so well. I knew its chances of survival were not good, but at least it did have a chance. Eventually, it bounded into the long grass and out of sight; and I went home to wash, dry and reset the trap.

Last night a beautiful mouse was caught. This one stole my heart. It was so tiny. It rested its paws on the plastic bar inside the trap in a most appealing way. I wondered about keeping it. We still have two empty hamster cages. It would have made an adorable pet.

I thought about creating a rodent prison until all its siblings were also captives. I then imagined releasing them all at the same time. A spectacle of bounding skipping bodies scurrying off in all directions; but then I remembered what the pet shop man had said about wild mice carrying diseases, and I changed my mind.

It was too late to take the mouse to the fields, so instead I soaked a Chocolatey Square in water and popped it into the trap; so at least it had food, water and shelter for the night; and I went to bed.

In the morning under a lowering cloudy sky I took this tiny baby mouse to the fields. I looked for the hawk but it was not in sight. A group of about four teenage girls on their way to school were dawdling along the path. I waited for them to pass me by before I released the tiny mouse.

It didn’t want to leave the trap despite the flap being left wide open. I gently tapped on the plastic closest to it with my car keys and gingerly it began to step out into its new world.

Once free it began to run, but instead of running into the long grass it ran straight ahead along the path, delighting me with its delicate skips and bounds.

It had gone no more than two yards ahead of me when the hawk swooped.

The hawk grabbed the tiny mouse in its claws, flapped its wings briefly and then arched away high into the air.

I could see the mouse dangling pathetically from its claws against the white sky in a dreadful death silhouette. It had no chance.

I realised that the hawk had probably been watching me from the top of some tall trees behind me. It later perched there, right at the top, and I could not watch.

I was amazed that it had not been deterred by the schoolgirls further along the path or by me standing there.

The thought of it watching my every move, its fatal surveillance of my naivety, my humane stupidity; with its cold calculating flight hardwired to catch and kill; was chillingly disturbing. I felt complicit in a murder.

Worse, I admired the bird for its calculating skill and finely executed manoeuvre.

I read on the Internet how releasing a mouse into an unfamiliar field without the support system of a nest, mobile phone and family is unkind and unethical; and how a mouse will be finished off very quickly. They were right but I hadn’t expected the mouse to only have less than ten seconds of survival time.

In dismay I studied the Internet for alternative solutions to my mouse problem. There is poison which offers a gut wrenching painful death; sticky pads where the mouse become stuck and might sadly gnaw its own legs off in its desperation to get away; then there’s a mouse trap hailed by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) as being the most humane treatment around. This lauded ‘final solution’ of a trap releases carbon dioxide from a tiny gas canister and kills a mouse in 60 seconds. Apparently this trap was given an award for innovation!

I don’t like the sound of any of the alternatives on offer. Tonight I’ll set my humane trap once more, and when it catches the next mouse I shall once again take it to the fields. I’ll avoid the path and release the mouse directly into the long grass. For me this is the most ethical solution at least I’m giving them a chance to live however slim.

And my last mouse… at least it managed a few skips and jumps, before it flew!

Delicious Chocolate Fudge Cake

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I wondered about baking them a cake as a ‘welcome to the neighbourhood’ gesture. I’d seen the removal van pull up and had heard the sounds of it being decanted into the empty house next door.

This house had been empty for a while. The curtains were down and the floorboards were naked. Workmen had carried out a few basic repairs, and then it had been left empty for months. A few of its windows had been left wide open by the decorator perhaps to air the rooms.

The neighbourhood cats truly appreciated this kindness. Cats, never ones to miss an opportunity, had this wet summer made it their own bijou residence. They’d climb up onto one of the low roofs and then surreptitiously sneak in through the open bathroom window. Once inside no doubt they perfumed the house with a certain Tom Cat’s ‘je ne sais quoi.’

I don’t know how to make cakes, but I wondered about finding a chocolate cake recipe on the internet and then baking one for my new neighbours as a welcome gift.

I imagined baking a delicious chocolate fudge cake; one that would be carefully iced and which would be meltingly soft in the mouth.
However, I knew that any cake that I made would inevitably be flat, burnt around the edges, poisoned with the rust of the tin, have a texture and taste of galvanised rubber and would when bitten into break teeth and send fillings flying.

So I did not bake a cake for my new neighbours.

A few days later I heard the unmistakable sounds of a house warming party being organised in the cats’ former chateau.

Around twelve I went to bed leaving The Teenager downstairs on the computer.

At three I was woken up. There were loud banging sounds and screams. I knew instantly that someone had broken into the house and was downstairs at that very moment murdering The Teenager.

Without hesitation and with my heart pounding, I tumbled out of bed and half fell downstairs to do battle with the intruders.

The downstairs rooms were in blackness. In terror I switched on the bright overhead light.

There was no one there. Everything was still.

The Teenager had obviously long ago gone to bed. From next door I could heard the revellers. The music was blaring. Doors were being banged loudly and it sounded as if an army was doing the conga. I could hear the sounds of people stamping loudly on the bare wooden floorboards.

I met The Teenager on the stairs. He too was bleary-eyed.

Downstairs we held a crisis meeting as the ‘music’ knifed through the bricks and mortar and cut deep into my psyche. There were more loud bangs. It sounded as if our new neighbours were now throwing their all their furniture down the stairs.

I realised to my horror that my car was parked directed outside their front door. I had visions of the drunken revellers smashing chair legs against it; or worse, of the conga line of revellers spilling out onto the street, and its leader stamping over the bonnet of my car before the hob-nailed-booted dancers in tow merrily followed suit.

I decided to move my car out of harm’s way.

It was three-thirty when I dressed, stepped into the black night and moved the car down the road. As I walked back up the street in the dark I realised that my legs were still shaking from the fright that I’d experienced earlier.

Something then clicked as I walked back up the hill in the chill darkness.

I suddenly felt angry. The red haze had descended

Next thing, I’m banging on their window.

It takes an age for someone to come to the door and to successfully unlock it.

She doesn’t speak English very well. She is slight in build and dark-haired. She instantly guesses, from the fury I’m unable to disguise, why I’m standing on her doorstep.

I use wild gestures to make myself understood. I am shaking with fear and anger, I’m expecting to be knifed at the very least. I try to speak calmly and explain the problem. I do not raise my voice and I do not swear.

She apologises, the music is eventually turned off by a belligerent looking man who appeared in the hallway behind her, and the massacre of furniture stops. I shake her hand introduce myself and leave.

They’re from Poland.

Some politician’s sweep of the pen has allowed them into the country and wrecked my night’s sleep.

Back in my small terraced house it is now impossible to sleep. The early morning programmes for under-five year old insomniacs are on the television. Their presenters’ bright garish costumes, brittle voices and artificial sets are sickeningly ugly and bring me no peace.

My day lies in tatters around me. I am muttering darkly. The Teenager is now calling me a racist and he’s probably right.

I’m steaming with anger and wondering what to do next.

Genocide perhaps?

No, I wouldn’t stoop so low.

I might instead… after all ...and much careful thought…bake them one of my cakes instead!
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