Rat In Me Kitchen (And Me Bathroom)

It started with rhythmic scratching.

Something sharp being clawed against wood and brickwork.

I was the only person to notice it at first and was hard placed to positively identify where it was coming from. Somewhere around the back of the kitchen cupboards possibly. I even attributed it to next door at one point (they’re students; I wouldn’t put it passed them to hollow out a cavity in the brickwork on their side of the house so that they could curl up into a ball and listen to their Radiohead albums in peace without the cruel world impinging upon their listening experience).

But then the scratching seemed to hone in and centre on the part of the wall that disguises a run of pipework from upstairs. When I say disguises I mean the pipe is quite obviously boxed in and as a consequence we have a bizarre buttress effect in the kitchen that goes all the way up to the bathroom and from there up into the loft.

For some reason, possibly because I was watching Spring Watch at the time, I thought it might be a trapped bird.

But trapped birds tend not to live very long and the scratching continued.

And then got higher. And higher. Until we could now hear it plainly in the bathroom. Something right behind the tiles, scratching at the grouting from the inside.

The cats got spooked. And then got interested. And now they watch that little patch of buttressed plaster and tile like it’s the telly. They’re just waiting for whatever it is to pop its head out of the splintered plaster like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. To be honest, even if it was actually Jack Nicholson my money would be on the cats.

I am, however, 99% sure it is a rat.

And relieved. I think Jack Nicholson might be a worse pest to deal with.

My biggest fear is that the little blighter is attempting to gain entry to the loft. This would be bad news because we keep various family heirlooms and the boxes from my Lego collection up there. Did I say my collection? I meant, of course, my kid’s. Plenty of scope for rat mayhem.

I’m pretty sure all is secure but I haven’t yet ventured up there. But the time is nearing.

If you don’t hear from me for a while you’ll know it’s because “daddy’s home”.

Wasp Flavoured Toast

Maybe he was depressed? Maybe he was just tired of life?

I'm not sure if wasps have any natural predators (aside from humans protecting their jam sandwiches) but it's possible his family had been wiped out in some random act of waspicide. Maybe the exterminator left him alive to spread the warning to other wasps? A cruel act of mercy.

I've run any number of scenarios through my mind this morning, trying to answer the simple question: why? It was such a horrible way to go. So senseless. So needlessly painful.

It's not like I make toast every day. In all honesty I'm not a toasty person. But once in a while the whimper of charred bread calls to my taste buds. Sometimes only beans on toast can fill that hole in my soul.

So there I am. Like a scene from a sitcom or a kitchen appliance advert. The epitome of domestic bliss. The bread is in the toaster. The toaster is on. The filaments are heating up; they're glowing red hot. Already the mouth-watering aroma of slightly burning bread is filling the air.

Enter suicide wasp stage right, through the open back door.

There's no preamble. He heads straight for the toaster like he already has an agenda. I make an attempt to wave him back outside again; it's instinctive even though I know wasps spurn any kind of direction or air traffic control.

And then before my eyes he immediately dive-bombs into the toaster. I mean he does a genuine kamikaze straight down the side between the filaments and the bread like the Millennium Falcon entering the Death Star.

I'm gobsmacked. I feel a little bit sick. I'm so shocked I can't even turn the toaster off for a few seconds. When I do I peer in gingerly.

I'm not sure what to expect. A blackened bubble of antimatter glued to one of the filaments maybe. Or half a wasp scorched into the toast like the remains of a victim of spontaneous combustion: just his wellington boots and the pipe he used to smoke left weirdly intact.

But there is nothing. Nothing at all. Even when I take out the slices of bread the bottom of the toaster is as it always is. Full of toasted bread crumbs. No sign of a blackened thorax or a smoking mandible.

I examine the toast. That too is as it should be. No unwanted sticky matter like superheated bubble-gum adhering to the surface.

Where the hell did the wasp disappear to? Did he incinerate completely? One clean flash of light and then gone forever? His every atom seared out of existence? There wasn't even any smoke or the pop and sizzle you usually get with shop insectocuters.

I confess I didn't enjoy my beans on toast after that.

I chewed every mouthful a little bit too carefully. Just in case something crawled out of the bread and made one of the beans start to buzz...

Kissin’ Don’t Last, Cookin’ Do

I have lots of memories of my Nan’s kitchen from when I was a child. Despite the utility furniture it always seems a luxurious kind of place. Mostly because my Nan would allow my sister and I to help ourselves to the sugar bowl, to lick the icing spoon and, if we had been particularly good, she would allow us to stir the hot milk into the Bird’s custard. This was an especial duty indeed and always led to low level rivalry between my sister and I as to who’s turn it was that week.

The kitchen, of course, is a dangerous place for a small child but my Nan always managed to keep us out of danger without raising a sweat. The only real fear she ever expressed was on wash days when the old mangle would be in use to squeeze the water out of the clothes. She would always extol us not to put our fingers into the mangle and there would be something in her eyes other than a mere warning to use our good sense.

I have no idea if she’d ever witnessed a real mangle based accident; she never said. And now whenever I hear talk of mangles all that really comes to mind for me is Dudley Moore singing snidely of “not laughing so hard since Aunty Mabel got her left tit caught in the mangle”. Thankfully such incidents were a world away from my Nan’s kitchen.

What  sticks in my mind most about my Nan’s kitchen is the little mounted egg timer she always kept hung on the wall above the work surface. Engraved into the top of it were the words: Kissin’ Don’t Last, Cookin’ Do. I’m sure she said it used to belong to her own mother but I can’t swear to the veracity of that now. She never used it to time anything that I know of – her cooking was like that; instinctive, nothing written down, no reference to cook books. Ingredients and timings were all in her head.

She was a great cook. I know this because I was an incredibly fussy eater as a child but there was no food cooked by my Nan that I would not eat. Her stew was to die for and her Yorkshire Puddings were incredible. It is to my eternal chagrin that I never asked her for the recipes and instructions of how to make them. Lord knows I have tried and Karen has tried. But we can never manage to get them quite right. Never the way my Nan used to do it. I fear that all those childhood smells and tastes are lost to me forever.

Not that my Nan was always an expert in the kitchen. She was fond of telling us that in the first week of being married to my granddad every meal she attempted to cook on their new Rangemaster stove came out wrong. By the seventh day she told him that if today’s meal didn’t turn out right she’d be off for good.

She’d pause as the sense of shock sank into my sister and I and washed over our faces.

And then she’d smile and say, “But I’m still here so it must have turned out alright.”

I have the egg timer now. It was one of the things I rescued from my grandparents house before it was sold a few years ago after the death of them both.

I keep it safe in an archive box with other stuff from the house. It is much too fragile to hang back on a wall. Too old and delicate and far too precious to measure out petty three minute intervals of time.

The sands have stopped and are forever still, exactly as they were after the last grain ran through. Despite their immobility they measure years of time that are far more significant now.

Even cookin’ don’t last forever.