I did it!

Success! I woke at 8.30 on the dot and here is the evidence, taken four minutes later, which is how long it took for me to switch on my mobile and take the pic. Of course, one good result doth not a successful experiment make, any more than one swallow makes a summer or the need for a Heimlich manouevre, so I shall try again tonight and hope to have more good news tomorrow. As for the previous night, perhaps my lack of success was down to a bad stomach. Which is now better. Hooray!

What did Flad the Impaler drag in and demolish last night? The guts left on the kitchen floor were huge; the liver was bigger, in fact, than most of the mice he catches. Was it a very big rat? There was no fur left in evidence. A squirrel? He usually leaves everything from the bum and tail down, having a penchant for squirrel brains and ears. I have refrained from photographing the remains. It is Sunday after all and I have no desire to make you spew up your bacon and eggs all over your copy of the Observer or the Sunday Telegraph. If you’re reading the News of the World or the Sunday Sport, spew away, you won’t notice the difference.

Mention of the NOTW takes me right back to a distant summer holiday in Wales. I was about 10 and my family were sharing a cottage with stuffy ex teacher and magistrate Auntie Edie and lecherous Uncle Ste who was always groping my mum. The Sunday newspapers were brought to the village by van and Dad gave me a coin and asked me to get a Sunday Times or, failing that, the Express. The van man, very Welsh, had sold out of both. “I haff the People or the News of the World, cariad,” he told me, singing the words like a baritone in a male voice choir. News? World? That sounded intellectual enough for me, so I handed over the coin and got a few pennies in change.

I skipped happily back and presented my booty but the reception was not as happy as I’d expected. In vain did I protest that they’d sold out of their favourites and I’d used my intelligence to buy something that sounded a bit dry and boring, perhaps, but would nevertheless match the intellect of my relatives. “How could you bring that disgusting rag into this house? What will your Auntie Edie think of us?” chided my father.

“But it’s a NEWS paper,” I protested.

“Yes,” said my mother, “it’s all news about convicted vicars and pictures of naked women.” Uncle Ste would love it then, I thought bitterly. The whole experience only added fuel to the protest that, according to my mother, had been on my lips since I was born and has been my leitmotif ever since: “It’s not fair!”

P.S. Vesuvius is not quite so glowing this morning. I spent an hour in the sun yesterday and the rest of my nose has caught up with it.