Mostly mice.

'Tis the day before C*****mas
And all over the house
Comes a sound of sighing
Even from the mouse.
(Well, because of the mouse, maybe. And other things.)

I can't really write poetry. Oddly enough, Susie doesn't write poetry either. If she does, she says it doesn't deserve to be called Poetry, so she only calls them Pomes, but she hardly ever does anyway. She says it comes from being too impatient to fiddle around for ages to get the right scan (? is that the word?) in each line, and that although blank verse is fine, she feels like a fraud for not understanding the rules - a bit like how she thinks of opera, apparently, that it helps if you've been told what's happening to begin with, and understand musical history, and if like your storytelling dead dramatic and a bit hysterical and repetitive and with a lot of high notes that make your innards vibrate. She likes bits of opera but not whole ones (although has only ever been to see about 3, and one of them was Nixon in China, and that's the one she liked best, not just the John Adams music but the lyrics had words like 'behemoth' and the set had a real-life-size plane, a huge jet - though it was only a flat version, a fake - which Nixon walked out of and down the steps and waved to the audience as if they were the world's press and the whole rest of the world in fact because it was a historical moment.) Anyway. Poetry and Opera. I quite like poetry, myself, actually. It puts things into nutshells, doesn't it?

So, the mouse-wars are still going on. I can't remember if I put anything about that in the blog before, and it's a long story, but basically the house (flat) has a mouse, which is quite ingenious, and Susie's been making barricades to try and stop it getting onto the counter and chewing things, but the mouse keeps finding ways to jump over or wriggle under them. Though Susie doesn't want to kill it, and it's ignored the humane mouse trap [how can it be 'humane'?] it's been driving her mental with its scurryings and escapes, so she calls it Moriarty. But I say, hey, if it's so blooming clever, how come it doesn't clean up the evidence? How come mice haven't invented Dysons? Or underpants?) - anyway, where was I? Yes, mouse wars, but the last few days there've only been tiny skirmishes (I love that word, it even sounds like two mice running around with swords).

The sighing - all over the house - is about aching bones and stuff, and also anticipation. Susie hates the day before something, or the hour before something. (So do I) Like when you've been staying with people and are about to go home and you've got a plane to catch in the afternoon, so: what do you do in the morning of the last day? Because you've kind of packed the night before but not really, because you still need your toothbrush and might want to change your jumper or your jacket, or put in a last minute thing the person you're staying with has given you, usually weirdly shaped. So for hours before you even get in the car or bus or taxi to the airport, you're in the stage of waiting-to-depart (Susie calls it Leaving-Limboidosis). And the late morning of 'the day before C*****mas' is not even the Eve yet, so you're waiting and waiting for ages and ages, and you look at things and wonder what to eat and what to do and if there's going to be post today or not, and if you should kind of be on holiday, or if it doesn't count because, well, for Susie anyway, if you're freelance you're never really on holiday.

So there's a lot of sighing. From me too. But I suppose I could go and make a sandwich.

HAPPY C*****MAS!

ps - i found this site called 'mousegard' - medieval mice battles - amazing - http://www.mouseguard.net/