Ousted

I'm half zen-vegan-Buddhist-let's-not-hurt-them, and half GET THEM OUT OF MY HOUSE. It's an interesting dichotomy. We have de-camped to our various families' homes, not wanting to be bedfellows with the little blighters. At this point I'd like to say that poor Jo is utterly terrified of the things. If you think of your WORST fear - this is hers.

Some of you may be the same, which is why I've opted to not put a stock photo of a mouse on this blog. I'm nice like that. I'm not a huge fan of them either btw - we had them growing up once and I distinctly remember a) standing on the sofa with my Mum shrieking as one ran around the floor like it was doing the Olympic 200m and b) waking up and finding one asleep NEXT TO MY FACE on my bedroom curtains. Yes, this actually happened. It almost looked cute, but, no.

Jo's dad, heroically, has caught some of these mice and set them free on Two Tree Island. They live to see another day! Just not in our home. We had a sprightly pest control man come round and cover up all our outside air grates with a fine metal mesh. People of Leigh-on-Sea, he said this to us: if everybody put wire mesh over their air grates, nobody would have mice. He said that they can get into holes the WIDTH OF A PENCIL.

Think about that for a second. Those little grates on the front of your house that you think are so small nothing could get in apart from maybe an ant, NOPE, they're like a 6 lane highway to these buggers. You can have this info for free. It's what he told us, and apparently he got into trouble with his boss for telling people that too, because it puts them out of a job.

Now we're back in our own gaff, hopefully no more little visitors, a new family on Two Tree Island living it up in their new environs, us in a well-protected home and in the words of Thom Yorke: no surprises please.

To read all of Ray's previous blogs please click the link here