Continuing the wildlife theme reminds me of an occasion, just after I moved into my flat in Earl's Court, of an encounter of murine kind.
My partner and I had invited some friends to come over for dinner one evening, with the intention - apart from enjoying good company, food and wine - of getting some ideas for decorating the flat, as one of the guests was studying interior design at the time.
The meal went very well, the wine and conversation flowed freely. We were getting onto the desired topic of interior décor (appropriately enough, over the cheese course) when one of my guests suddenly announced, looking into the kitchen, 'Oh! I see you've got mice'.
Well, that was news to us. We peered gingerly into the kitchen, to find a mouse happily jumping gymnastically around the wine rack with such great panache, it would have put Olga Korbut to shame. Armed with knives and forks, all three males in the party lumbered drunkenly into the kitchen to try and catch the mouse. (I'm not quite sure why we took our cutlery with us, but that's what you do after several bottles of Sauvignon blanc and Rioja.)
Of course, we just weren't a match for it, and in the blink of an eye the mouse had disappeared under the washing machine and back into the communal pipe conduit to some safer and doubtless more sober lodging elsewhere in the building.
Needless to say, the conversation never returned to decorating, and I ended up painting everything magnolia.
Oh, and I never saw the mouse again. Perhaps it didn't approve of my cheese board?
1 comment:
Hilarious and very vivid (although I don't suppose it was that funny at the time...)!
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