Too Many Bills!
Under the post titled BILL Parcells, Anonymouse BILL (we'll call him) snuck the following little gem on the day before heavily armoured BILL Fedun misinterpreted my gayly sardonic little Christmas romp as the ravings of one in whose cornflakes someone pissed.
Too many bills, I'd say. Sadly, I bid farewell to Parcells and armoured Bill. Dear anonymouse Bill (we'll call him) is a keeper, to wit...
Sometimes I lie in my little bed behind the foot-
moulding in the sitting room and read a bit of Talleyrand before sleep
in the handy micro-edition
from Prentice-Hall-U.K.
Contrary to what you might
think, the soft droning purr of the big brindle
tabby lying just beyond
my penny-size entryway
(inboard of and slightly above the quarterround) is rather a lovely soporific instead of some sort of dire portent or threat. The best of us simply live
with it, you see. Now and
then we do get the odd
depressed mouse or even an
occasional frankly- psychotic one..though I
personally think, from my
armchair genetics study,
that these traits have been by nature bred out of
us with the help of a harsh environmental mechanism: sad and mad mice are terribly vulnerable and are often 'disappeared'
before they have the chance to marry and create
issue. Take my great Uncle
Maurice, for instance. Not
mad by birth, he came home
from The Great War with a
very odd superbright look
in his little marmite eyes
and a whiskers twitch that
was very very disturbing, especially to the little ones who would whine and
hide behind Mummy. He had been in ground munitions with the BEF throughout the second Ypres Offensive and was always muttering about fuse lengths and flash delays and such like
and seemed to be fond of collecting stinky volatile
liquids.
There was a tom everyone
especially hated, very stupid but extraordinarily
mean. I won't offend your
tender sensibilities by
telling you what he liked
to do to us. Anything you
can imagine is bad enough.
Uncle Maurice began to
call the tom Kaiser Bill
and blurt out things like
"Cut his bloody ballocks off and hang'em on the Wire! That's what I say!"
and "Hangin's too good for
him! He wants another
worser end, he does! Summat like poor old Herbert with his guts draped out all over the parapet and a-crying for his mother 'til he faded!"
I had the feeling it was
only a matter of time. A
day came when Uncle Maurice
turned up absent as we say
and all feared the worst.
I did notice that U.M.'s
materiels were gone missing
and there was an unusual
scent in the general air..
like a garage or a car park
or a petrol kiosk...
By the big hallway hole,
then, the one nearly as large as a shilling that a
catpaw and much of a fore-
arm can get in..a reaching
clawing arm and we knew by
color it was Kaiser Bill..
Maurice by the hole just inside and drenched and ragged and bloody but smiling a hideous smile and with both hands he prepared to
scratch the kitchen match
the size of a mouseball bat
across the lath.."Hai! It's me boys!" his voice
screaming with dark joy,
"anyone care for a bit of HOT PUSSY!! Hahahahaha!!!"
Of course the whole lot
went up..Maurice too, which I must believe he intended all along. We put
him out, too late, while (at the risk of portraying us as sadistic) we enjoyed the sound of a thoroughly
accelerant-conflagrated
Kaiser Bill richocheting
off the household walls
until he, too, like poor Herbert, faded.
Too many bills, I'd say. Sadly, I bid farewell to Parcells and armoured Bill. Dear anonymouse Bill (we'll call him) is a keeper, to wit...
Sometimes I lie in my little bed behind the foot-
moulding in the sitting room and read a bit of Talleyrand before sleep
in the handy micro-edition
from Prentice-Hall-U.K.
Contrary to what you might
think, the soft droning purr of the big brindle
tabby lying just beyond
my penny-size entryway
(inboard of and slightly above the quarterround) is rather a lovely soporific instead of some sort of dire portent or threat. The best of us simply live
with it, you see. Now and
then we do get the odd
depressed mouse or even an
occasional frankly- psychotic one..though I
personally think, from my
armchair genetics study,
that these traits have been by nature bred out of
us with the help of a harsh environmental mechanism: sad and mad mice are terribly vulnerable and are often 'disappeared'
before they have the chance to marry and create
issue. Take my great Uncle
Maurice, for instance. Not
mad by birth, he came home
from The Great War with a
very odd superbright look
in his little marmite eyes
and a whiskers twitch that
was very very disturbing, especially to the little ones who would whine and
hide behind Mummy. He had been in ground munitions with the BEF throughout the second Ypres Offensive and was always muttering about fuse lengths and flash delays and such like
and seemed to be fond of collecting stinky volatile
liquids.
There was a tom everyone
especially hated, very stupid but extraordinarily
mean. I won't offend your
tender sensibilities by
telling you what he liked
to do to us. Anything you
can imagine is bad enough.
Uncle Maurice began to
call the tom Kaiser Bill
and blurt out things like
"Cut his bloody ballocks off and hang'em on the Wire! That's what I say!"
and "Hangin's too good for
him! He wants another
worser end, he does! Summat like poor old Herbert with his guts draped out all over the parapet and a-crying for his mother 'til he faded!"
I had the feeling it was
only a matter of time. A
day came when Uncle Maurice
turned up absent as we say
and all feared the worst.
I did notice that U.M.'s
materiels were gone missing
and there was an unusual
scent in the general air..
like a garage or a car park
or a petrol kiosk...
By the big hallway hole,
then, the one nearly as large as a shilling that a
catpaw and much of a fore-
arm can get in..a reaching
clawing arm and we knew by
color it was Kaiser Bill..
Maurice by the hole just inside and drenched and ragged and bloody but smiling a hideous smile and with both hands he prepared to
scratch the kitchen match
the size of a mouseball bat
across the lath.."Hai! It's me boys!" his voice
screaming with dark joy,
"anyone care for a bit of HOT PUSSY!! Hahahahaha!!!"
Of course the whole lot
went up..Maurice too, which I must believe he intended all along. We put
him out, too late, while (at the risk of portraying us as sadistic) we enjoyed the sound of a thoroughly
accelerant-conflagrated
Kaiser Bill richocheting
off the household walls
until he, too, like poor Herbert, faded.
posted by Kitty O'Keefe at 7:02 AM
1 Comments:
THE MOUSE IN THE CLOCK
Chapter One
So long as we are on about Christmas..(do try
not to say "Bills!" again
until January at the very
earliest, there's a sweet
pussy..I mean, kitty.
(Though a mouse, I am of the manly gender and tend to get those two cherishing
diminutives mixed up)..
I think I would like to share with you one of the most dear and warmly held yuletide traditions in all of Mousedom..a treasured tale loved and lovingly repeated every year since time before memory. Each mousehearth, no matter how tiny its fire, has its eager huddle of old and young alike waiting for the grayest senior to begin the story. I always think of Greatgranny telling it way back when I was just barely up out of my puphood.
"This is not," she began, "a pretty tale on the whole. There is blood and treachery..coldheart sadness..there is the
sharp bite that crushes.. and the dear one who never again comes home.."(wee Timmy snuffled and his widowed mum held him close)"..but there is also the great courage of a tiny heart..a loving pair whose sweet legend still resounds in our lives
..what it means to truly give a gift..and some thought of why we live as we do and where. Are we, then, ready to begin?"
Gleaming little eyes all 'round and smiles and nods and bold Maudie called "Go it, Gran!".
She looked into the rose glow beneath the twigs and rocked twice, three times, and cleared her throat:
"So long ago that this housing estate was one of the ridings of a great house..so long that there were no electric lights, no radiograms, no railway engines and no automobiles or motor-bicycles..so long that the humble folk stood still and took off their caps when the great folk passed along the road..but not so long that there were not already clocks!"
"Yayyy!" Timmy burst out
and was gently surpressed.
(You see, everyone knows
..each and every mouse that now lives.. knows this story. It is not the knowing of it that is enough, really, but the telling of it as we are all together wintering over the Cold Blowing that
matters, as you shall soon see in Chapter Two.)
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