* 14 Jan 2010 RATTUS MC FATTUS

14 Jan 2010.
Bear with me - this blog is keeping me sane. Delete it immediately if you wish. Oh! That's right, you can't. Shame!
✫•❤´¯`•.☆
Bulletin from the UK Cold Snap 2010. Thurs 14 Jan
subtitle: RATTUS MC FATTUS

BACKGROUND: Coldest snap in UK for 30 years. No central heating or hot water in our house since New Years Day.
Been living in the SofaNest near the gas fire. Ablutions by kettle, flannel and wet-wipes.
Small, timid car, Miss Minerva Micra, stuck on road. No 1 daughter, Shans, throws toy baboons around and lives upstairs next to her space heater. Engineers arrived Monday and Tuesday, but not on Wednesday. They are Tea Yuppies, all drink designer Teas and eat gourmet lunches.
Our village roads were chaos - traffic gridlock on icy roads. Our French-speaking Robert Robin Redbreast hasn’t reappeared. I fear the worst for him.

WEATHER REPORT
Last night (-2C), after a Wednesday (-1C) when we had a further 4" (9cm) of snow, so again, treacherous ice under a disguise of sparkling, white snow. Thick , misty Thursday morning.
HAVE SAUCEPAN WILL DIG
At 08:00 this morning “Keef”, Boiler Installation Supervisor, knocked on our door. He explained that he was alone today, and his van was stuck on the icy road in our Close. Did I have a spade?

We do have a spade. It’s somewhere in the garden shed, and we’d need the spade to reach the shed down a deadly flight of icy, steep steps. (Say nothing about forward planning, please.)

Keef got out his little plaster trowel. Visions of a functioning boiler and hot showers began to recede. Digging with that was just farting against thunder.

And then... then I had an idea of such brilliance that I remember why I call myself the Genius Ninja-Granny. (Actually I don’t, but hey! It was a genius idea.)

I remembered how I’d used saucepans from my camp kitchen to dig myself out of the sand when stuck in a dry, sandy river-bed in a Game Park at home in Zimbabwe.

So, locating two old long-handled saucepans under the kitchen sink Keef and I used a pot each to dig away the snow. Then we broke-up and removed the ice in two tracks from under his wheels all the way to our driveway.

Thanks to those old, ruined pans we now have a workman, with his van and all his pipes and tools, at the house, working at getting the radiators re-plumbed.

Not being a hoarder, thank Goodness that I didn’t just hurl the old pans out. Then again, I never thought I’d say it, but thank God I’m such an absent-minded cook that I go off and leave saucepans burning; molten on the hob, to carbonise.

RATTUS MC FATTUS
This is what happened in 2008 when the coach I had to catch from South Africa to Zimbabwe was delayed. Liz and I waited for 2 hours at Polokwane. (If you use Google Earth (free) you can see where I'm talking about)

Polokwane south-bound Ultra City is an interesting place. We spent 20 minutes watching a rat foraging. It was interesting because we could see Rattus Fattus (Yes, we named him. After a while we felt that we knew him).

He was a portly fellow, but agile despite his rotundity. We could see him clearly in silhouette, running around inside the sparse hedge, backlit by the verandah lights.

He went busily from bin to bin via the hedge. A chip from this bin. Rush back to the hedge and eat it at leisure. Out again and into a Steers container in the gutter. Ah! Heaven! A bit of burger. Rush back to the hedge and eat it at leisure.

Out again and into another bin. Mmm! Mmm! Was that a muffin? Yess! Choc-chip. His favourite. He chanced a greedy nibble from that before heading back to the hedge to finish it off.

He was in the gutter again when a woman walked past. He sank down and remained motionless, just a dark blob of a shadow, a wraith of an anonymous bump in the darker dark. No wonder they say that, wherever we are, we are always less than 3m from a rat.

Sometimes we're much closer than that - such as when we marry them. But those are stories for a warmer day.

Have a superlovely, delicious day my friend.
The Zimbo Ninja-Gran xx

Copyright author 2010