Hearth & Horn

I am living on a daybed in my junkshop bedsit this month.

We've had rats over the winter and I've not wanted to kill them. Call me a fool, but I can't overcome my sense of abhorrence at killing something for human convenience. Rat poisons are cruel, and since we moved in I have been in love with the owls outside my window at night. Instead, I've been patching holes and listening to them thump about in the ceilings and occasionally running across the landing. Last week we managed to catch a baby one, and carried it up over the mountains to live in a hedge.

my soft neighbours like to eat my clothes if I leave them out - but, like all animals, they are innocent and very good. This month, they have repaid the favour of sharing my home: bumping the electrics until the bulbs came out and started flickering and we had to get a leccy round.

Reader: I rent, so it will not shock you to discover - as I have discovered in every rented home of my adult life - that the house is a deathtrap. I mean before the rats. The earth wires of the sockets have been attached back to the metal casings, i.e. not earthed at all, and the hideous spotlights in the ceiling are right against the timber, so they have been causing little fires in the rafters for years. Probably, the reason we didn't have a real house fire sooner is how much I loathe them (I use soft lampshades in the evening).

I really hope that with all the disruption now, the rats are going to just move out. We've got builders here every day, and I am frantically shuffling all my possessions into one room then the next so they can get to the floors and roofs. Husband, meanwhile, is out every day with the dog so dog doesn't even know disruption is going on - I'm restoring his room at the end of every day. Dog is having a great time: apparently they spent an hour yesterday lunchtime just cuddling in the woods. Dog doesn't like to be touched, so he's getting enough exercise to have chilled right out.

I'm exhausted and I feel bad, because now is my time to speak up and say where I want lights, or other such things - if it's being done now, it might as well be done the way I want. But mostly I'm disrupted and tired, & fretting a lot about dirt getting on my ample quantities of stuff. The car is broken, and we're not able to get it to the garage - foiling my plans to have a good ole declutter as we go. & the stress is making us peckish, as neither of us are quite able to cook. Shed plans are on hold & I'm upset about it mouldering as we wait.

I do quite like having a bedsit, though. I've moved the bed down to the living room, & I wake up into a large bright space filled with interesting objects. I hate bedrooms - I always have, such wasted rooms and not even pleasurable enough to sleep in. I'm napping a lot, doing a bit of pottering in the garden, shuffling objects around, napping some more. Today I'm going to watch Wind in the Willows and have a slow afternoon.

in any case: thank you rats