Talpidae, or moles as we commoners call them, can kick up mayhem aplenty beneath our emerald lawns; digging, chewing and slashing in hot pursuit of earthworms, which, through toxins in the mole’s saliva are immobilised and stored in underground caches of up to a thousand. What once was level and pristine ground is quickly changed to semi lunar landscape. Mini volcanic mounds spring up overnight and flowers droop because their roots have been bulldozed off. Tunnel networks to challenge the London Underground spread through the entire garden and Jones, our four-legged digger-upperer, with much glee, is becoming obsessed with the dig of the century.
In retaliation, I have borrowed some traps from our farmer neighbour and already been sent to hell by my kids.
‘Murderer!’ they called me; along with, ‘mole killer’, ‘animal batterer’ and a dozen other names to match my heinous crime of protecting our garden. However, I went ahead with eradication plan A, and, when the boys were asleep, snuck outside with my spade and extermination kit.
With my lamp on low burn and me looking somewhat like a Victorian grave-robber, I set about the task of ‘demolerisation’. Six molehills were selected, six holes were dug and six traps were primed, semi-buried and covered with grass sods. Ripper-like, I sneaked back inside, hid my muddy willies and, whilst still smiling triumphantly, fell asleep in front of the telly.
Holly, one of our Labradors woke me up at six this morning; covered in lab-slobber I made myself a cup of coffee and went to sit in the loo for half an hour.
‘Got the bastards!’ I whispered gleefully and then rubbed my hands together in anticipation of six, abundantly filled traps.
The first five traps, though sprung, were empty. In the last I found a neatly folded sheet of paper – upon it, scribbled in black ink, were the words, ‘Hasta la vista, Baby!!’
I didn’t look round, but knew the kids were watching from their upstairs bedroom window.
It was with the dignity befitting an English back-woodsman that I took up my guttering lamp, spade, and empty traps and went inside...
*
That Boy, again – an excerpt...
... It came at my father with wide, reptilian eyes and a guttural hiss that frightened mother from the kitchen. I fell backwards – hit my head on the kitchen wall, shouted out a ‘B’ word and then, started to laugh. Mother’s ‘poison-spitter’ was in fact, a flea-ridden, ash-covered, half-starved Siamese kitten.
Dad dropped his hooker-outerer and, slack-mouthed stared down at his refugee. Mother discarded her cigarette and scooped up ‘poor little Cinders’ before dad had chance to say we couldn’t keep it. So we kept it. Cinders of the Dover Stove; like a phoenix she had literally risen from the ashes, a bright and comforting addition to all our lives.
*
The days in Mashaba dribbled past, but the excitement of Friday draw night was always looked forward to. Double bonus for mother; Friday night was also logged as Library night, along with that one in a hundred chance to win ten quid. The library was sort of a bunker style arrangement, tagged to the side of the Mine Club. To mother and mother’s friends it was a place of solace, a womanly refuge where men never ventured; who needed books when a bar filled with beer stayed open as long as its patrons stayed upright. Often, I stood outside and waited for dad to finish his tenth bottle of beer and customary, Nellie Dean before he emerged to take us home; fag between his lips, bitching like hell as to why he had left Mother England in the first place, car keys pointed with belligerent intent at our dutiful Morris Minor.
The draw-master always did his thing roundabout nine o’clock. Any earlier and the club would empty; once the tenner had been won and lost, most people rounded up their kids, picked up their basket of assorted drinks and crisps, then headed homewards for a fun-filled night with Jim Reeves.
For ten minutes, thirty cars revved up, moved if their drivers were capable and, as a convoy of weaving, wobbling tail lights, evaporated into an asbestos-laden night...
*
No comments:
Post a Comment