Richard's birthday a few weeks ago, on the second day of the New Wine Guernsey weekend. We celebrated with a few friends and a good sing song in a local school - over 700 people.

And afternoon tea with a dozen or more of us - scones and lashings of birthday cake.

A few days later Cat and Jonny's present arrived.

Marzipan. Perfect.

Death of a mouse

After the shenanigans of a few weeks' ago, when I finally discovered that there had been a mouse UNDER MY BED, chewing at my door, I decided I needed to put poison down.  I'd tried a trap for weeks and weeks, baited with peanut butter or chocolate, but it was obviously an abnormal mouse as it didn't go for either.  (Friends have been catching a mouse a day for the last three weeks using Cadbury's chocolate fingers.  I feel there should be an advertising link in here, though I'm not sure it would be a useful one for Cadbury's.) And I stepped on it one morning, too - luckily it was facing the other way so my toes escaped harm.

So there's poison under the bed - where the mouse no longer goes, judging by the absence of droppings - and poison near the back door, under the bird seed.  We suspect the bird seed is the major attraction.

I walked in the back door last Saturday to see this:

One very poorly mouse.

I did feel bad. He is really sweet. (It must be a he or we would have been overrun by now.) Then I reminded myself about the sleepless nights and the mouse droppings in the cupboards.

So I covered him - after adjuring him to stand still so I could take a photo - with an empty ice cream container. And left him for Richard to find.

When Richard arrived home, the mouse looked at him hopefully for a second, twitching its whiskers, before relapsing into the doldrums.

I will gloss over what happened next, save only to say that the mouse is now in Mouse Heaven.  I hope. Because he was, really, quite sweet.

Keeping romance alive in unobtrusive ways.

I read, occasionally, a blog called The Generous Wife.  Sometimes there are just a few little reminders of how not to take my husband for granted. 

Life offers those reminders too.  Conversations in the staff room when people complain about having to do a 'blue' job.  ('Blue' means jobs that the man is supposed to do: like cleaning out gutters.  'Pink' is for ladies' jobs - like cooking. Self-explanatory once you know. I think.)

We share our jobs out pretty much. I don't like it if Richard has emptied the dishwasher more times than I have, or has hung washing out twice in a row.  It doesn't seem fair, even though he tends to have more 'at home' time than I do.  He still does an awful lot for our marriage which I don't touch - accounts, car maintenance, gardening...Occasionally I forget myself and start complaining...ungrateful.

But Richard often does little things which pass me by - I take them for granted. The cup of coffee he brings me every morning (I was so tired today I slept through it - cold by the time I woke, but I was warmed by the thought). Getting my bike out of the garage for me so it is ready just to hop on to when I am running late. Meeting up at lunchtime on his day off.

Last week was just the best, though. I was on a school trip and had mentioned we might be stopping at a particular cafe/public toilets for the children. In the end, we didn't have to, but he cycled up there for a solitary cup of coffee, sitting outside in the sun in the hope he might see me.

That is just so romantic, it just melts me. I'm still smiling at the thought.

And, although his trip was in vain, at least he had a lovely half hour at a beach cafe. Some compensation.

(Updating this to link in with The Time-Warp Wife)

facebook

Much has been written about internet networking: facebook, twitter and the like.  I'm just going to add my bit.

Facebook is like one big gossipfest. Useful, but also designed to make those not 'in' feel 'out'.  It's particularly bad for teenagers - facebook promotes the one-upmanship and putdowns which so many suffer from.

That makes me angry. Life is difficult enough in adolescence. Why can't people just be NICE, REAL and HONEST?

There we are. I've said my bit.

Of sorrow, grief and loss...

I haven't had the energy to write for a few weeks now. Missing Mpira too much.  And there have been other sudden deaths and disasters of people in my life. Not as close, but Mpira was, after all, 'just a dog', although to us he was much more than that and has left a huge gap.

My sorrow this time has been less for myself but more for the families of a dear friend who has disappeared, a child who is terminally ill... what tragedies these are for those closest.  Touching me.

Such loss seems harder to cope with as I grow older. ?  Surely it should be easier to cope with life experiences like these?  Surely?

Overrun

Overrun with livestock.  Well, not really.  It just seems like it.

First, a few days after Mpira died, a duck appeared - with 15 ducklings. Which rapidly began to decrease: first one drowned in the pond, which I wasn't too sad about; after all, if a duck can't swim, it doesn't deserve to survive. You have to think of the survival of the race of Ducks - no good encouraging the continuation of genes which encourage drowning, if you're a duck. 

Then there were 14. Mama Duck took them on a walk one morning and lost one on the way, returning with 13.

Then there were none. No duck, no ducklings. A drake arrived in the garden and started harrassing her: despite our best efforts to chase him off, we couldn't be there 24/7. So she took off. Not literally - the ducklings couldn't fly, having only vestigial wings which they couldn't even flap.

Now we have the odd drake - very odd.  And the odd pair - also odd. No eggs, no ducklings, no apparent purpose in life. They don't even take a purposeful interest in the pond - it's more the 'oh, I say, a pond, we might as well make a perfunctory splash just for ducks' sake' approach.

Rabbits, now.  Mpira just LOVED chasing rabbits. Nothing pleased him more than to take off at top speed after these interlopers. 

News must have sped round the warren, because they were there the very next morning. Two large, fat, lolloping rabbits, lumbering round the lawn in the early morning. They've moved on now: to the next door field, where they gaze at us over the wall, unfazed now there is no terrier to see them off. Instead, there is a tiny baby bunny which sits, completely unafraid, munching away, taking no notice of us as we walk to the cars and back again.

Oher rodents too.  The rats which Mpira loved to harrass, screaming up to them and then pulling up short with a bounce which set him rocking on all four paws, like a car which has jammed the brakes on, rocking on its springs.  They are out on the lawn under the bird feeder in bright daylight - no worries, no cares...

And the MICE.  I didn't mind the odd glimpse of a furry body dashing for the outdoors - they didn't seem to be eating anything.  We did, however, block up the tiny hole which we thought might be an entrance. They retaliated by gnawing away, seemingly outside our bedroom door, ALL NIGHT.  Clever, too - they stopped as soon as we sat up in bed, so it was hard to determine exactly where they were.

Livestock. Wild life.  Overrun.

Not enough words

Mpira.
Born 2.9.1999. Born into our family 2.5.2000. Left us for ever 12.4.2010.

There are not enough words to describe that dog. 

No longer

No longer
do I shut all the doors when I go out, leaving you
lying sentinel at the door, ready to greet the postman.

No longer
do I return to see you, gazing raptly through the window as you
perch atop the sofa back, keeping watch for our return.

No longer
am I greeted with shrieks of pleasure, a frantic
waggling of tail and body, ecstatic at my homecoming.

Instead I live with
a silent and empty house
a sore and grieving heart
a desolation of spirit.