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Merry kiss-mouse

Last week’s fiasco with the car required me to replace the radiator at a cost of approximately £100 + VAT + labour + VAT on labour (no doubt). It also meant that I needed to arrange transport to get back to my home and then back to Karen’s at the end of the week. It also meant that I needed to arrange transportation into work, which consisted of one train journey and 100 miles in one of our company’s cars, which I had to be insured on, and which I generously filled up with diesel at the end of the week, even though it had only been half full when I had picked it up.

Total cost – I’d estimate nearly £300.

This morning, whilst putting a last minute christmas card into a big shiny red pillar box, I noticed that my right tail light wasn’t working.

I popped round to the garage to get a replacement 12V 5W bulb for £1, which I fitted myself in about 12 seconds.

Conclusion: if I can find a way to cool a naturally aspirated petrol engine using only light bulbs, I may be in line for a Nobel prize.

Merry kiss-mouse, people. If you find a mouse on your windowsill, give it a kiss. The odds of it transferring a disease to you are sufficiently small that it is worth it for the joy that you will get when you see the smile on its little mousey face.

And remember, keep your mouth closed when you kiss mice. Though they like a big sloppy Frenchie with tongues as much as the next rodent, you should be conscious that they also like warm, damp holes in which to make a nest, and once a mouse gets under your tongue it can only be coaxed out by dangling small cubes of Gouda from your nose.

*Originally posted here*

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What’s red and yellow and featherless down one side

As soon as the tree goes up, I can stop feeling festive again. It’s a great relief. Then all the tinsel and lights just become another way of decorating the flat – totally meaningless, no significance whatsoever. That’s how things should be. All things should be insignificant. Even the important things. Less ego.

Some of the things that we do will be bigger than other things. Sometimes we will find ourselves passing our days working away on one small project after another, and sometimes we will be confronted by something enormous, something so big that even when you stand back you can’t see all of it at once. And then you have to break it up into smaller pieces, like the squirrel.

Mmmmm, cubed squirrel meat…

At first, you will find that your pan will contain a few small cubes of squirrel. It will be a big, empty pan, with some pieces of squirrel in the bottom. Daunting.

And then, it will start to look like a pan full of squirrel cubes, but with some space in it. Less daunting, but still incomplete. Don’t fuck up now. You’re not out of the woods yet.

One day, if you are very, very lucky, you will be the proud owner of a pan full of squirrel, all succulent and tender, fresh from the tree. And then you can cook your squirrel, enjoy your squirrel, devour your squirrel.

Devour your squirrel.

Oh, and by the way…

…the answer is: a canary that has been held up to an industrial sander.

*Originally posted here*