Day 117: I See A Rat In IKEA

A trip to IKEA involves Many Things, most of which have been written about elsewhere. I will therefore not bother to roll out a smorgasbord of familiar gags about food serving platters called 'Smorgasbord', meatballs in gravy, the difficulty of assembling flat-pack furniture, missing nails and tea-lights at 2p the hundredweight. I will instead draw your attention to this astonishing intrusion made by the animal kingdom some time today in IKEA Croydon:






















How he got past security I will never know. Everyone loses their sense of humour in IKEA (so no-one would have thought to put him there), and I can't see how he could have climbed up there himself. I suspect that there is some Dark Magic at work, and will alert the Swedish Ambassador immediately. "Ambassadör , där er en råtta i min affär!" That should do it.

Day 116: I Am On The Warpath

TwatBoy Upstairs is a twat, so he feeds urban rodents. There are no songbirds in Brixton, only squirrels, rats and pigeons. So what exactly the twat thought he was doing by putting a birdfeeder stuffed with delicious nutty-nut-nuts on his window-ledge I will never know.

I didn't sleep well last night. I had Strange Dreams and woke to find my face had creased itself in on itself. My hair was vertical, and one pyjama leg rolled up. I feel briefly back into a deep slumber, only be be woken by the dull THUD THUD of my stupid fat cat making his portly way to the back door, accompanied by a piercing squeak. I let him out, and then I Saw Them. Three of them, on the lawn, stuffing their stupid little faces with nuts from the birdfeeder which, I noticed last night, had fallen to the ground. And somewhere hidden in the undergrowth was another squirrel making the call over and over again, calling his squirrel friends to feast upon TwatBoy's nuts.

If the Calling Squirrel is successful, he will in some ways be doing me a favour. However, the grey squirrel call is like a quack-quack followed by a shriek, and when an animal has been doing it for thirty minutes, even the thought of ten squirrels attached to the front of TwatBoy's trousers cannot dissolve Murderous Thoughts.

Happily, however, America exists. And in America you can get these. Come to Mama, my little rodent friends.

Day 115: I Am A Bit Disappointed

This afternoon I went to a 'Blogmeet'. That is when bloggers meet in the same place and drink and that and talk. I was very scared and a bit intimidated, because Really Good Bloggers Who I Really Admire were going to be there. But they were all lovely.

Which is a pain in the arse, frankly, because now I've got cock-all to write about.

Day 114: I Check My Other Hotmail Account (The One I Keep Forgetting About), And Find Pure Gold

Well I mean REALLY. Is there much to add? Yet again, the mysterious and wonderful Martina fills my days with Joy.

Day 114: I Find The Perfect Adornment For My Garden, But Am Disappointed And Called Dirty

To make my garden a centre of amusement and entertainment for passing visitors, Noel-The-Gardener suggested old toys festooned across my brutally pruned roses, small lanterns hung in trees, and gnomes in the shape of politicians and other public figures placed ironically about the place. But I felt no inclination to rummage around for legless Barbies and Action Men with broken Eagle Eyes in the local charity shop, and thought instead I could do better.

As I progressed down Brixton Hill on the 159 bus the other day, a splendid piece of classical statuary caught my eye from the top deck. I could imagine him - all 6ft of him - hidden in my Bower of Bliss, with (perhaps) a single string of fairy lights hung around his manly neck, and a large felt hat placed at a jaunty angle.

Today, as I wandered down Brixton Hill to Job Centre Plus (it was boring; I filled out some forms; Adrian said he didn't want to work there, and no, they didn't have any marketing jobs), I made a special detour to give him the once-over.

Horrors! What did I find? He was NOT FOR SALE. What's more, I couldn't check him out (as it were) properly, as his modesty had been Covered by the shopkeeper. And what a shopkeeper! Tempting me with his wares that were not for sale; putting white vinyl sofas on public display; covering up the classical manhood and chasing me from his premises when he caught me lifting the piece of paper. "What you doing? What you DOING? Put camera away! Leave paper! Leave shop! Dirty lady!".

My reputation is in tatters. I am now officially a "dirty lady". Oh well. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.