grumpyf1

I like things to be neat and tidy. Half the fun of playing with toys as a kid was making sure I’d packed them neatly away in the box afterwards. Take Monopoly; banknotes in denominational order, all the right way up and round. Property cards in the order they are around the direction of travel on the board (although I always had an existential crisis about the utility companies – mixed in with the streets, or grouped together as a set? I can feel my anxiety levels rising just thinking about it). Thankfully, I’m all grown up now, and if you’re presuming that my record collection is filed in alphabetical order of artist, then sub-ordered by year of release, and that I iron my underpants then you’re wrong. Only one of those is true. It’s comforting to know that it isn’t only other humans that have a need to keep things tidy. There’s a mouse near Bristol who seems to have taken it upon itself to keep Steve Mckears’ shed neat. After mixing up some bird seed, Steve was surprised ...

It’s been an exciting week, with many visitors to our humble abode. The trouble is, they weren’t invited, and they’re eating everything and leaving a right mess. If I’m honest, it’s partially my fault. When I first picked up the bag of bird seed in the cellar drawer, and spotted some loose bits in the bottom, I should have investigated. It was only when I moved the bag of peanuts days later that I realised there were a lot of holes in bags, and a large amount of empty husks. In the usual, paranoid way, on realising we were under attack, I immediately spun round, expecting to see something (and at this stage, I wasn’t clear what, so looked wildly up as well as down) crawling, scampering, running, hovering, or even doing some kind of interpretive dance. My guess was that we had a mouse loose about the house. Being sensible, I transferred the seeds and nuts into tins. I’d purchased them to keep outdoor feathered animals fed, not uninvited furry indoor ones. I...