snakes alive!

well readers, what can i say? yet again a hiatus in my musings, for which i can only apologise profusely. herself has been rushing about like a mad thing. the good news is that she now has 3 days a week at work which will help keep the wolf from the door on the financial front (to those readers who take things literally i should point out that this is a saying - there are no wolves where we live, at least i hope not...)

anyway, enough groveling. my news this week will more than make up for the silence. the peeps have made friends with a snake! this snake is called perky and is rather pretty, as you can see from the picture. perky the snake lives with the people who like swimming in ponds. more accurately, she belongs to the young lady pictured above, who, as regular readers will recall, wants to be an evil vet when she reaches adulthood. my lady friend and i were not invited, so i can only recount what i was told. it is probably as well that we did not go. my lady friend is of a somewhat nervous disposition. were she to be faced with a snake i fear she would throw her huge paws up in the air and cry "oh, lawdy joker, i do declare! it is a serpent! we are being judged!" or something equally foolish. myself, i am rather partial to any smallish creature between a couple of bits of nice brown bread. at least a lot of photographs were taken so we got to see what we had missed.

the peeps were treated to wonderful food. they are not an easy bunch to feed. herself likes everything except meat and vinegar. himself has a complicated diet on account of his dicky kidneys. he can only eat unhealthy things and a lot of meat. my boy tends to have one thing that he will eat for months and then suddenly go off with a loud cry of "but you know i hate noodles!", leaving a cupboard full of noodles, or whatever the foodstuff is. but the hosts had every possibility covered.

first, there were nibbles. perky the snake tried to stop anyone eating them:



but the peeps are not easily deterred. then there was a delicious starter of prawns and ham and things. herself has made a habit of having her prawns peeled for her. luckily himself is good at this task. it appeals to his tidy nature. soon himself had a pile of shells on his plate and herself was grinning like a cheshire cat. the man host caught on very quickly to herself's ruse.

"you are just being a helpless girlie about the prawns!" he said. it was obvious herself was bang to rights (a saying, dear readers. it means found out in a subterfuge, or possibly a whimsy). luckily himself took his prawn-peeling in good heart and peeled some more. meanwhile, perky the snake sat quietly, awaiting her moment.



then there were stews. one stew was squid and the other one lamb. both were, i hear, delicious. the young folks at this point got a bit bored with chatting. my boy invented a game which involved climbing a tree and getting the young host to pass up a number of housebricks which he arranged in a rather precarious structure. after being told to bring them back down again the young folks turned to a rather odd game which involved the young lady host standing with her eyes shut while my boy snuck up on her and poured water over her. in this photograph she is pouring water over herself. i suppose at least then she knew when it would happen.


i feel that the young lady host has a bit of a magnetism for water, what with the pond incident. later perky's husband, pinky, had to have his tea. i will not describe this in any detail, save to say that it was small and furry and frozen. herself did not look, but my boy found it very interesting. he is something of the ghoul.

later still my boy was treated to a show of the host's knife collection. my boy is very keen on weapons of all types. edible knives are even better:


there was even pudding - which i am told was strawberries and cream. eventually the peeps wended their way home, on account of it being work and school the following day. himself was less keen on wending than the other peeps on account of it being in the middle of the footie on the telly by the time they left - the man host is also a footie maniac.

my lady friend and i were very pleased to see them, so much so that my wayward tail managed to whack itself on the wall. this triggered the usual blood-letting that tails seem to go in for. the new kitchen floor, and a fair bit of the walls, took on an interesting polka dot appearance.
that will teach them to leave us at home when there are snakes to be chased...