Mid Life Crisis?

[pongeroon]

Chantal, I do like the idea of the FIFI World Cup. Presumably played by teams of neatly trimmed french poodles with elegant french female managers .

Much better than boring old football

[Nature's Babe]

Count yourselves lucky girls, my partner is a walking disaster in the garden, he strimmed my salsify cos he thought it was grass, cut half a new gooseberry bush off with the strimmer, he thought it was a bramble, walks over beds I am trying not to compact, mowed down the foxgloves that I had planted for the bees, he is trying to be helpful lol - but he's better at construction,made a nice pergola, and is making me a greenhouse at the moment, he's a Londoner and doesn't know a plant from a weed !

[Chantal]

Chantal, I do like the idea of the FIFI World Cup. Presumably played by teams of neatly trimmed french poodles with elegant french female managers .

I was tired

[Chantal]

Now it's SOCKS!

From the usual black (for work), white (for golf and cricket) I have now found two new pairs of mens' socks in the washing basket.

Pair 1: Blue with Ice cream cones with pink stuff on the ice cream

Pair 2: White with red roses

I've just washed them and put them in the drawer; so far I've not had the courage to ask.

What the hell is going on?

Oh, his first bean came through yesterday

[The Mouse]

Very, very suspicious.

[Chantal]

OK, I plucked up the courage and asked the sock question. I am still struggling with the answer, although this has been confirmed by my sister.

Tim plays 20/20 cricket for a local pub team on a Wednesday evening and they apparently all have to wear socks with a pink motif (they are apparently pink, not red, roses) or they are fined!

I really don't know what to make of all this.

[alan refail]

Chantal

Only socks

Think yourself lucky

[The Mouse]

Curiouser and curiouser.

Sounds innocent enough - but I'd still keep the secateurs well sharpened, just in case.
His one bean could soon become a has-bean!!!
(Only joking. I may not have lived there for a long time, but the dry Holme Valley sense of humour is still with me!)

[The Mouse]

Chantal

Only socks

Think yourself lucky

I just hope that doesn't turn out to be the man in question! Someone would be laughing on the other side of their face - or maybe on the other cheek!

[Chantal]

Oh my good lord, NO, I've never seen that "man" before!

Seedling is researching the sock situation as she goes into the pub in question on occasions.

All quiet here at present, with the exception of me turning into a semi hysterical girly this evening when I found a HUGE rat lying under an armchair in the kichen. I pulled out the chair to see what Fabio was up to and nearly had heart failure. Anyway, I picked up the rat (in some kitchen roll), realised it was still warm and limp then then, as I dumped it in our green bin, the penny dropped that the damned thing wasn't actually dead

I then turned into a complete fairy and ran up and down for a while doing a fair impression of Jonesy from Dad's Army, before employed my neighbour Squirrel to deal with the beast.

By this time I was soaking wet from the rain and as I say, becoming somewhat hysterical, so I'm now sitting in my fleecy dressing gown with bottle of a rather decent Chianti and feeling much better. I'm trying to remove from my mind just what would have happened if

a) I'd not found it and it recovered and started running around the house

b) I'd not realised it was alive and it recovered then ate the contents of the green bin to gather strength before hurling itself out of the bin at either me, my neighbour, or the bin men. If the latter, we'd have been blacklisted for life by Rugby Borough Council!

I'm not sure which would have been worse.

[Primrose]

Chantal - your rat story reminds me of the 'Hunting, Shooting, Fishing' cat we had when we lived in our previous house on the bank of a small river. From an early age he was never afraid of water, and a neighbour once reported seeing him jump into the river to try and catch a water vole. I never quite believed this until one day I arrived home from work and opened the back door in time to see him coming into the garden, soaking wet, with something in his mouth. I tried to relieve him of the rat/water vole but he escaped with it indoors upstairs. I finally got myself shut in the bedroom with him and managed to prize the rat from his jaws, whereupon the bl**dy thing fled under the bed. You can imagine the ensuing chaos I caused poking broomsticks, etc. under the bed, shutting all other doors, trying to get it out of the house, which I finally succeeded in doing after about an hour.
I can tell you that the next time the cat returned home with a moorhen in his mouth, I kept the back door firmly closed!!!

[Chantal]

Today my present is a pair of my neighbour's gardening gloves! Diego has brought home two yellow rubber gloves already, which he apparently filched from their kitchen sink, so he is chief suspect in the latest theft. Talk about a cat burglar! He pinches balls too and I seem to be returning items to them on an almost daily basis. I've long given up apologising and they do at least find Digeo delightful, which is why they allow him in their house.

Honestly, after Tim's socks and bean planting, Fabio's rat and Diego's stolen glove collection I can hardly wait to see what happens next. Life is just becoming surreal

[Chantal]

Bummer. The latest gloves are not from next door and I have NO idea whose they are. I am so looking forward to door knocking asking if my theiving cat has nicked a pair of gloves! Or should I just sit tight and say nothing?

Is a cat (who I still believe thinks he is a dog) with a glove fetish a normal occurance? Does this happen to other people, or indeed their cats?

I think I may turn to drink again; where's that Chianti?

[Geoff]

Perhaps the gloves and the socks came off a washing line and the cat has been set up to take the blame, be worried about what else you might find!

[oldherbaceous]

Dear Chantal, you really do seem to be having all the fun.