Rats

I was up most of the night, listening to the rat running about in my house. I kept thinking she was in my room, but the door was shut and I’m pretty sure she was actually behind the sofa in the living room. It’s most disconcerting. It really shouldn’t be - I had pet rats, I love the creatures - but that all-too-familiar pitter-patter of a rat lolloping along the floor is a little sinister when you don’t know the creature in question.

I saw her in the flesh last night, crawling about in the airing cupboard. She’s obviously made a nest for herself under the floorboards, using bits of carrier bag which she’s chewed up and pulled down there. I feel quite sorry for her. The man from Rentakill is coming today to ensure she had a lingering and painful death. Her only crime is trying to go about her life and I’m not altogether sure that I have the right to decide she has to die, purely because I don’t want to co-habit.

The tube was heaving on my way down to Peckham this morning, filled to the rafters with people who tut when you lose your balance, or, in my case, try to put a computer away in a suitcase. Londoners have this rather nasty habit of making you feel like you’re deliberately trying to be obstreperous when you get into a pickle on the tube. I’m sure I can be as guilty as the next man in this regard. How many times have I huffed at someone who stops in their tracks to read a tube map, or got irritable at someone talking too loudly?

I reckon the tubes themselves are getting louder. I wrote a blog post recently where I was beginning to wonder if my decrepitude was making me more sensitive to noise, but I spoke to a musician a couple of weeks ago who said that tests had been done and that underground trains regularly topped the decibel level where extended periods of exposure could lead to permanent damage. And they wonder why we’re all ratty down here.

Perhaps we all need to remember the quote I once found written on a gravestone, “Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”