Yes, Lois and I are still here, rattling around like two peas in a drum, in this crumbling Victorian mansion, built for one of Queen Victoria's Vice-Admirals, a house set in 6.5 acres of grounds, a house which from the 1870's onwards accommodated the Vice-Admiral plus his wife and a troupe of servants, all summonable by bell-pushes embedded in the walls next to the massive fireplaces.
By contrast, Lois and I have, for company, mainly just ourselves to consort with 24/7. But we also have a dog, two cats and a bunch of tropical fish to look after. We're here in the first place because we're pet-sitting for our daughter Alison and her family, who are on holiday in southern Europe.
Everywhere in this house is pretty spacious, every room, every so-called nook and cranny. To try and make the house seem more crowded, we sometimes space ourselves out on the sofa in the evenings. We spend our nights in an enormous bedroom, although we can't space ourselves out in the actual bed, as it's only a standard double, at 4ft 6.
These are the rooms where, 150 years ago, one of Queen Victoria's Vice-Admirals lived with his wife and a bevy of maids and butlers: servants who could be summoned by any of the numerous bell-pushes to bring a cup of tea or a gin and tonic, a bottle of after-shave, whatever.
What a madness it all was, having a big navy and lots of admirals, just so that Britannia could "rule the waves" over all the seven seas, in places that were really none of our business, when you come to think about it!
Anyway, be that as it may. You might imagine that the two of us are having quite an easy life here, getting up when we want, going to bed when we want etc.
But dear me no! Our life here is not without its crises. And the crises are usually to do with the pets that we're pet-sitting.
We've discovered that he secret of pet-sitting a dog, two cats and a bunch of tropical fish successfully is "PETS SHOULD ALL KEEP TO THEIR OWN FOOD". If that rule isn't followed, all hell can break loose, to put it mildly!
DISASTER!!!!! When Lois and I get out of our bed this morning we find we can't feed our daughter's tropical fish - normally this is our first job of the day now that Alison and her family are on holiday in Spain, and we're here pet-sitting and all.
It's 8am - and those tiny little buggers are gagging for their tropical fish food!!! We've already switched their tank's little light on, which is the fishes' normal "Pavlov's Dog" trigger to tell them they're about to be fed.
Awwww!!! - the poor things, they must be totally bewildered, that's for sure!
The big tin of tropical fish food has tooth-marks on the side and is suspiciously empty, and the lid for the tin is about ten feet away from it on the other side of the living-room.
We suspect that Dumbledore, the ex-Copenhagen alley-cat, is the guilty party, but we can't prove anything without evidence from Forensics, who aren't answering their phone for some reason, so we'll have to shelve that for now, and just go out to a pet shop and get some more of the tinned stuff - what a total madness! And it's only 8 o'clock!!!!
[It's hardly the "crime of the century" now is it, Colin! - Ed]
[You've already reached your madness quota for today. So just watch it, that's all! - Ed
By contrast, Sika, the family's Danish springer spaniel, is fairly easy to feed, and to control generally. Lois says that if, for example, he won't come into the house when called, she offers him a piece of carrot. He'll do anything for a bit of carrot apparently.
I'm not quite like that - there are certain things I just won't do, even if Lois offers me a carrot. But the idea throws an interesting sidelight on the day's big story on the influential American news web-site Onion News.
“The data show that far more children than usual are conceived on or around Apr. 4, the day dedicated to this nutritious root vegetable,” said study author Elton Gates, a reproductive endocrinologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who noticed that worldwide birth rates increased dramatically in early January each year and hypothesized that it was the result of widespread sexual intercourse at carrot-themed celebrations...
Pressed for details, Gates told reporters that he had never attended a Carrot Day orgy, but hoped someone would read his study and consider inviting him to one next year.
Perhaps people are more like dogs than has previously been thought.
I wonder......!
Feeding and controlling Sika is relatively easy, and Lois and I always ensure that we have a good supply of carrots in the larder.
Exercising Sika is a different matter. If we try taking him for a walk, it's the old cliché, and I expect you've guessed already - yes, he takes us. Luckily a woman called "Jules" (Julia) comes every morning at around 10 am to give him a good work-out and a long walk on the common.
That's Jules's job - she's a professional "dog-walker", and she does about 6 or so dogs a day.
And until today when she told us, Lois and I didn't know that she keeps a set of around 6 clean boots and 6 clean coats in her car, so that for each dog she can put on a different coat and a different pair of boots. The coat and boots get so muddy, she says, and she often has to let herself into her customers' houses to find their dog and take him outside. Hence the 6 sets of clean boots and coats etc.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!
20:00 We spend the evening in front of the TV on the enormous sofa with just Otto the cat to supervise us, which is nice.
No comments:
Post a Comment