rats, mice, ducks, hitmen and dead elvis pt I
Tuesday, January 1st, 2008
Christmas this year was spent in a beautifully picturesque, wonderfully peaceful, and mobile signal free Cornish village called Mousehole (and pronounced, as the Cornish like to do, totally differently to the way it’s spelled: Mouzellle).
We broke the journey in another beautiful village in the west Country where we got to spend some time with the Godkids T and H (of which, more anon), before regathering our fellow travellers (in the sense of sharing a car to Mouzelle, as opposed to being members of the communist party in the 1950’s) and setting off Westward (Ho; but, again, more of that anon).
The journey was being shared with Irma Phrodite, who, having seen off the challenge from Peggy Mc Cartney, thanks to a combination of a pre-show bottle of Krug laced with ex-lax and an infestation of woodworm in the ex-Mrs Whackymaccathumbsaloft’s wooden leg on the night, is still the one-legged queen of interpretive dancing.
Irma, on our arrival at her domicile, doorstepped us, refused to allow us in to use the loo, and commented “I have to get out of the house for a few days anyway: It’s overrun with rodents the size of armchairs. I’ve laid out traps, and they haven’t worked, so I’ve sprayed the whole place with cyanide, and laid landmines in the larder. A nice trip away (to a place called Mousehole? - ed) would be just the ticket.”
We were sharing Christmas with one of Irma’s loveliest friends, one Harriet Harlotte, who proceeded to spend the journey to Cornwall discussing autopsies, fantasising about a weekly magazine-dvd combo she’d love to edit called Celebrity Autopsy, and theorising on how she might go about hiring a hitman to off the wife of a married man she mildly (or was thast wildly) fancies, before deciding that, as an officer of the court, such theorising was probably not really acceptable. “And besides,” she commented, smiling an ever so slightly disturbing smile, “It’s Christmas. Lots of accidents happen at Christmas. Lot of fatal accidents. Why spend money on a hitman when she might slip on the ice whilst putting out the bins, crack her head and bleed to death?” So there you go: Not just a borderline psychotic bunny-boiler; frugal too.
Just the sort of people one wants to share a cottage in a remote Cornish Costal Village at the very end of England at the darkest end of the year with…
Did I mention that there was no mobile signal?