Thud. Poor little pinky had fallen. She wasn’t well. The Zozo found her that morning huddled in the corner of her car, face on the floor. She wasn’t eating and was very wobbly on her feet. Since then I’d had Pinky out and fed her some chocolate cake. This had perked up a little bit but was still wobbly. Now, unable to stand properly or walk straight, she’d obviously slipped off the ledge in her cage. Watching her make her way back up again was distressing. She was wobbling so much she could barely walk up her ramp, needing several attempts to make it. Clambering up the various bits of her cage was a struggle, the risk of falling again ever present.
Sadly we knew this was it. Pinky was 2, which is very old for a mouse. She’d outlived the other mice by a long way and she’d survived long enough to meet Willow. That night I gave her a final stroke and said my goodbyes.
At some point during the night Pinky passed away. I think she had a happy life. She certainly bought us more joy. I spent the morning packing away her home and cleaning down where the mice had been. At some point over the next few weeks we’ll put her, and the other mice, into the Cristal box and cremate them. What with Willow to look after I think it’ll be a while before we get any new pets.
One of the perks of working at a company that sells wine is that I get free wine; £320 worth a year! Now, if you remember, I put some of this to good use and bought lots of bubbly, including a £140 bottle of Cristal (that’s £20 a glass with my champagne flutes!). What with of The Zozos family visiting Little Cottage yesterday I decided it was time to crack that bad boy open.
Now I may work for a wine company, but I am far from a connoisseur of wine. Hell, I don’t even like red wine. I tend to rate wine on the basis of “can I drink it?” and like my wines not to be too dry. With this disclaimer in mind I found Cristal to be very drinkable, certainly nicer than the Veuve Clicquot I normally drink, however, there’s more to this equation than taste. Veuve Clicquot costs £40 a bottle, or about £5.75 a glass and based purely on how nice something tastes I’d say Cristal is about £6.50 a glass tasty, or roughly a third of what it really costs so it’s unlikely I’ll ever be buying it for real money – its just not worth it to my mind.
She didn’t found an iconic company that went on to have the largest market capitalisation in the world. She didn’t give us the worlds best operating system. She didn’t invest the iPod, iPhone or iPad. She wasn’t admired, or even loved by millions. But she was loved by us and we’ll miss her.
The Zozo is currently selling all the stuff I’ve accumulated over the years and that now languishes in the loft. My Sony AIBO [robot dog to you] has gone; 46″ HD TV, sold; High quality video camera, with someone else. Now don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a bad thing. I’ve been meaning to do it for ages but just never got round to it. The Zozo is proving to be very good at the selling and has made over £1500 to date, buts there’s more to go. There’s A3 printer, PSP, Yamaha speaker bar and all manner of other stuff to go… or there would be if I didn’t find some unwelcome guests in the loft today.
It would seem we have wasps. I don’t know how many, but there were a few about which would imply a nest. Upon realising this I made a tactical withdrawal from the loft to investigate options. I want these wasps gone. Not just ushered out you understand: gone, killed, eradicated. I hate wasps and they hate me, but, I have access to nuclear, biological and chemical weapons… well, OK, maybe only chemical ones, but I’d use the nuclear option of there were one.
I want these wasps to die. I want them to die in horrific manner. I want the tales of their deaths to be so gruesome as to give other wasps nightmares when they hear it. I want it burned into their genetic memory and used to scare young wasps in centuries to come. I want little wasp heads on spikes surrounding the house as a warning to other wasps. Above all I want to be able to get back I to my loft so I can get the rest of the stuff for The Zozo to sell.
We lost another mouse last week. Buttons, one of the second batch of two we bought, died rather suddenly during the day. We weren’t aware that she was ill so The Zozo wasn’t on hand when the end came. Apparently when she was found the other two had rather snaked on here. I’d kind of expect that behaviour from Princess, but I can’t help but be a little disappointed in Pinky as I thought she knew better.
This latest bereavement means we’re down to two mice. Princess was the other mouse in the second batch and so is the youngest. Pinky, who we thought would be first to go, is still hanging on in there and is a real old lady now. The Zozo suspects she’s now deaf, or at least hard of hearing and she’s getting a little clumsy, falling off things from time to time but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion she’ll outlive all the mice, and maybe even survive long enough to meet Nubbin.
The Zozo is painting the bathroom this week. It would seem the previous owner didn’t use bathroom paint and that, coupled with a low extractor fan means the paint on the ceiling is getting steamed off. By way of hinderance I sanded the roof in preparation. In doing so I managed to: trip the upstairs lighting circuit; knock one of the spotlights out of it’s hole in the roof; at best, blow the bulb on the spot, at worst I’ve destroyed the transformer; leave sections of peeled paint, whose surface area seems to be 3 or 4 times that which has actually been removed; and get dust everywhere. I really suck at DIY.
The paint strips on the floor is and odd one. You look at the floor and think there must be enough to cover a square meter of ceiling. Look at the ceiling and you’ve done, at best, 10cm x 25cm. Something’s not right there.
Today I head to work smelling vaguely of dust with grey, rather than black shoes. Still, it should all look lovely once The Zozo is done
The Zozo has started her maternity leave which means, for the first time in a while, we’re getting a whole weekend together. Not only that but we get the whole of next weekend together, and the one after that, and the one after that. In fact we’ll have every weekend together until Nubbin appears, then it will be weekends with the three of us. I suspect there will be less lie ins with a baby about though, so for the next 7 or 8 weekends I think I’ll make the most of them
A few weeks ago our dishwasher died, deciding it was far more fun to perform the first 1 second of the wash cycle, then pump itself out, beep and flash error lights at us than it was to actually work. The result was us calling out an engineer who looked at it and declared it written off as by the time we’d paid for parts and labour it would be cheaper to get a new one. Arse.
Daisy, one of our mice, has not been well of late and The Zozo has been fearing the worst for a couple of days now. At some point during the day yesterday she died. Arrangements for the cremation will be made later. Please send donations to our house fund in lieu of flowers.
With the departure of Daisy we have only 3 mice remaining: Pinky, Buttons and Princess. Pinky is the last survivor of the original 4 mice, which is surprising as we’ve been worried about her since before The Brain died. She’s obviously a fighter.
While we don’t really own much in the way of outdoor space we do have a spot where the bin store and pterodactyl table live. This is up against a wall which has ivy growing over it from the other side and some sort of shrub getting buried under the ivy on our side. Every so often I cut the ivy and shrub back a bit. Not much, just enough so the ivy is not encroaching on the bin store and the shrub isn’t encroaching on the path.
This weekend I decided to give everything a proper trim. The new bin store is bigger than the old one so I cut the ivy back harder. I also cut it back along the entire length of our part of the wall, not just over the bin store. This revealed rather a lot of the shrub which was either dead, or just devoid of leaves due to being smothered by ivy. Problem was if I cut those out I also took out the few branches that had leaves. In the end I pruned it right back to the main branches and about 2 foot off the floor. I figure it’ll either sprout new green growth and be nice and shrublike again, or it will die and we can put something else there.
By the time I had finished I had 7 bags of trimmings and had created a new space… and discovered a gate. There obviously used to be access from the plot on the other side of the wall, although the ivy that side would prevent anyone getting through these days. It would be great to think there was some kind of forgotten garden on the other side of the gate, but there isn’t. We can see what’s on the other side from our bedroom window, and currently it’s rubble while they build new flats.
