Cloud Mouse on a Lump of Clouda

 Is it too early for a cheese-based pun? It’s been a week of two halves and, quite frankly, I’m looking for any humour I can find. 

This morning, whilst walking Nell the Poo, I saw this in the sky: 

Clearly a mouse sitting on a wedge of Gouda cheese. Can you see it, with its cute little mouse nose, and sweet little mouse ears, and its twinkly mouse eye? Actually, it could be perceived as a shrew with that nose but I’m not sure shrews eat Gouda, so the whole cheese thing wouldn’t work, so we’ll stick with mouse, shall we? 

Sunday was a lovely day. The sun shone, there was a stillness in the air and I did a spot of garden tidying before being distracted into clearing out the greenhouse. I planted out some baby thyme and hyssop plants, and potted on three hyacinth bulbs that had been drying all year and were just starting to grow their little green snouts for this year. I treated them to a bigger pot and fresh compost, and they might flower for Christmas. I made Sunday lunch, then watched a film, did some knitting, then retreated to Darling Buds to do some writing when Lord Malarkey fell asleep on the sofa and started snoring. I thought I had made a start on this year’s MMM Christmas Story, loosely (very) based on ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,’ but it soon became clear this was not going to work so I consigned what I had written to the bin. I might keep the Wardrobe bit. Mrs Pumphrey was rather keen. 

And then there was the Strictly results show, whose outcome I already knew on account of looking at the Strictly Spoiler website, and then the final of Celebrity Pottery Throwdown where completely the wrong person won. But it was a lovely, Autumnal, English country garden kind of day. 

And then Monday happened. I didn’t sleep well because Nell has decided to resurrect her nocturnal garden pee and/or poo visits, anywhere between 2.30 and 5 a.m. Disregarding her inconsiderate behaviour, I was magnanimous enough to take her for a walk, stopping off at the village hall on the way home to check it hadn’t been wrecked by a children’s party in there over the weekend. When I got home, I thought I’d FaceTime mum to see how she was coping with doing things by herself, now that her care package has finished. 

Almost immediately, she launched into an enthusiastic and cheery account of a visit she’d had from my son and granddaughters, how lovely it was to see them, how well they looked, how it cheered her up enormously. ‘Of course,’ she continued, ‘I know that you don’t…er…um, well, you don’t…’ and she pulled a face that was sort of a mix of sympathy and pity and distaste. 

‘Don’t what, mum?’ I thought. ‘Don’t want to hear about these lovely visits because I’ve not seen or heard from them myself for over 4 years now, despite writing to apologise for whatever it was that I had done to cause them to cut themselves off from me so utterly and completely?’ 

I didn’t say it, though. I have asked her, gently and politely, not to mention them because it has taken me a LONG time to acclimatise to this estrangement, and to cope with it, and every time she mentions seeing them it knocks me back. I know it shouldn’t, but it does. Maybe I was asking too much in asking her to be a bit mindful and considerate of how I feel. Maybe she doesn’t care how I feel? Who knows? 

Of course, I am happy for her, that their visits cheer her up and lift her spirits, especially in light of everything she’s been through in the last couple of months. But I don’t want to hear about them or talk about them. I smile, and try to say the right things, but…but…

Consequently, I fell into a bit of a sadness hole, and despite telling myself to PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER, IT HAS BEEN FOUR YEARS, I ended up sitting on the sofa all afternoon doing a bit of crying and snivelling, some knitting and some binge watching of ‘HyperDrive’ which is a sitcom from 2006 starring Nick Frost, Miranda Hart and Kevin Eldon that had just been put on i-Player. By the time Lord M arrived home from work, I was exhausted by the drowning in the emotional swamp of it all. 

This morning, I feel better. Not as good as Sunday, but not as shite as yesterday. That’s life, though. Ups ‘n’ downs, peaks ‘n’ troughs, sunshine ‘n’ showers. 

Seeing a cloud mouse on a lump of clouda cheese helped.