Craters and candlesticks

As if tending my scrubland garden wasn't bad enough, it has now been blighted with a mole attack. Yep over the last two weeks, I must have had at least twenty molehills in my garden, each of which required me to don my wellies, grab a spade and pat-down and level the little piles of mud that were deposited on the lawn. It made me properly curse, as in "you bloody, blind, furry, big-footed, red-nosed gits!" Jeez I was properly hopping mad at them.

Sometimes wildlife is crap, and I was sorely tempted to subscribe to www.concrete-the-earth.com.

Despite that, I didn't want to kill them (yeh, yeh, I am virtually a Buddhist, but with a hairdo and no orange sheet). The thing with moles, is that they are quite cute looking and have a pretty crap life. Can you imagine being blind and spending your entire time squeezing through tiny mud tunnels? Actually thinking about it, that's probably how Sarah Palin spent her life before formulating her political manifesto.

So, with the molehills levelled, I was sitting at my desk bevearing away at my computer, when I noticed that I hadn't seen Naughty George for a while. This was always a bad omen. Naughty George only does one of three things during the day: 1. sleep in his basket, 2. sleep on the sofa, or 3. partake in reprehensible behaviour. Needless to say, he wasn't in his basket or on the sofa. Sacre Bleu! After briefly searching the house, my hunt took me into the garden, where I encountered this.........

 Pic.No.1. Shit! My dog has no head!

At first I panicked because how uncool would I look walking a dog with no head? And then I realised that something else was afoot. The bloody git had dug an enormous hole in the garden in an attempt to get at the moles, and his head was down it. 

"Naughty George STOP IT!" I shouted, as my dog sheepishly pulled his head from the hole. He blinked at me, and his white eyeballs were the only features visible behind a mask of mud. I surveyed the scene. It looked like NG had been at his task for quite some time because there wasn't just one, but three large wholes excavated in the lawn. The bloody git.

But hey, I learned an important life lesson from all of this: When a dog digs a hole, he leaves a mound of earth behind. But, (and this is the freaky bit) that same mound of earth is never enough to fill the hole that has been dug. What the bloody hell is that all about then?  It's the metaphorical equivalent of voting for Gordon Brown after the recession.

So, with three new craters in my lawn (any ideas how I can turn them into a feature?), the day finally drew to a close and I decided to have a chilled evening on the sofa, reading and listening to music. I must have been pretty engrossed, because I didn't hear the back door of my house open. Yep, I was totallly oblivious until someone shouted "Eh up!" right behind me.

I leapt a mile off the sofa, shouting "JEEZ! F**K!" only to turn round and find out that my friend from the village, Clare, had come to visit.

"You stupid moose!" I exclaimed loudly, as Clare laughed her head off sympathetically, "you nearly gave me a bleedin' heart attack!"

Once she had recovered from her hysterics, she plumped two things into my hands, "here, I've bought you a present," she said.

Let me explain; Clare is an arty type and has a company called Forest Clay. She does amazing sculptures and things like that. And she goes mental if you call her a potter. "I'm not a potter," she says, "I am a bloody ceramicist." Ceramicist? Potter? Who cares? All you need to know is that she can make full size cows out of clay, and that one day, I am going to have one in my garden ..... and have comedy pictures taken with it.

Pic.No.2. Amazing hand-made conker candlestick holders

Her present to me was a pair of hand crafted ceramic candlestick holders made in the shape of conker shells. How cool was that? I was super chuffed! (picture does not do them justice).

"Awww, thanks matey, they are absolutely fabuloso" I said, "fancy a glass of wine?"

"Damn right," she replied, and so, in an unexpected turn of events, we whiled away the evening chatting..........

And by the end of the night, we had decided that we were going to write a children's book. Clare was going to do the illustration, and I was going to do the writing. Hey, if the Duchess of York can publish Budgie the Helicopter (or whatever it was called), surely we could do better? The only thing missing is the storyline ....

We were a bit like the childrens' book equivalent of that Dilbert cartoon where he says; "I hate working here, and I have decided I am going to set up my own business." His friend says "what business is that then?" and Dilbert replies, "something to do with Ebay."

Ummmm, cough, shuffle ....... anyone got any ideas for a storyline......?