Something very exciting happened this afternoon.
Guffy has caught her first mouse.
I think it was a mouse. If so it was a big one. It was so big that it may even have been a very small rat.
It was on the floor of Mark’s shed, leaking its bodily fluids from its neck. Fortunately it was thoroughly dead by the time I discovered it, although it was still being patted about in a hopeful attempt to revive it so that it would run about a bit more. Guffy was very pleased with herself indeed, and not at all impressed when I removed it to the dustbin.
I left it there until she got bored with it, obviously, just to let her savour her triumph, but it had got to go. There is a limit to the length of time one wants corpses cluttering up one’s outbuildings and I did not think it would be a nice surprise for Mark when he comes home tomorrow.
Actually it might have been. When I told him about it on the telephone tonight he was just as pleased as I was at her success, and almost managed not to make cynical remarks about the relative costs of Guffy and her veterinary problems and special cat food, to set against the potential expense of a rat trap.
Actually we could probably have hired Rentokil to provide a full-time gamekeeper for about the same money.
I am sorry to say that my day has not mirrored Guffy’s for runaway successes.
I am fast becoming a person who could be described as being Unaccomplished.
I am trying very hard to manage to achieve a lot of cooking for our trip, partly to avoid the dubious pleasures of French lunches, some of their ideas of bonne cuisine are so unspeakably revolting that I really don’t want to risk them, perhaps you might have tried merguez.
Also there are budgetary constraints, obviously.
I have not accomplished it.
So far I have managed to make some burritos, which are at least complete, and are sitting in the freezer, and some pastry for cheese and onion pies. This is still raw and is sitting in the fridge. I am mildly concerned about the potential utility of it anyway, because I think there is too much fat in it, I will have to try hard not to forget to bake it blind tomorrow.
In any case, I managed to grate my knuckle whilst I was grating fat into the pastry, and had to stop, because of The Chef’s Blood not being the sort of flavouring that you would like to see advertised on the packaging for cheese and onion pies, even way down the list of ingredients next to Emulsifiers and Sodium Sulphite. I do not think it would be likely to become a best seller.
Really I do not know where the day goes. It disappears into a thousand small tasks. I had to rush out to purchase a camping stove halfway through it, not because there was anything the matter with our stove, but because we are going to be self-caterers next week and I did not want to forget about it, suddenly remembering halfway around a Parisian ring road that there would be no cups of tea after all. Fortunately the ironmonger in Windermere stocks absolutely everything that anybody could ever want, and made me suddenly very reluctant to leave, this is the most convenient place imaginable.
A travelling stove and a kettle seemed like a sensible idea. In our previous adventures in France we had learned that most small town restaurants offer a choice of water, the sort of coffee that makes your tongue try and crawl away to take refuge in one of your ears, or wine. Cups of tea, as favoured by Brits on holiday, are not necessarily considered an important addition to a menu, and even when they do appear, quite often taste unfamiliarly odd.
We like some things in our lives to be predictable. If we move to France we will have to arrange for our favourite chai tea to be posted to us.
We are going on Monday.
It is getting very close.
