Whatever you want to call it

Somewhere around 2pm last Monday, my inner Pollyanna stamped her foot, gave a piercing scream, rushed upstairs, threw herself onto the bed and pulled the duvet over her head.

It was not pretty.

It all began on Friday....cat-trapping day. For the first time ever, they defeated me. I will never understand how my little darlings get to be so cunning, but despite a very nifty "hello, birds, hello sky" performance from me, the instant I went in to the bedroom to grab the first one, they shot off in different directions. These involved the deepest reaches of under the bed, on top of the kitchen cupboards, you name it, they found it. I never managed it for the whole length of the day until the DSM got home (fortunately in time to bear them away to durance vile), when a combination of their greed and there being two of us managed to get them. I have now worked out that another time, I will have to catch one, should be do-able, and take him on his own if I can't get the other, making a second trip with the second cat.

However. However.

Time was tight for the DSM to get them to the cattery before they closed. We hustled out of the house with all the bits and pieces, and I turned back in to be getting on with stuff.

When I turned the door knob, the door remained.....closed. It was one of those moments when your brain knows what has happened, but simply refuses to believe it. I turned the knob again, and again.

The door was locked. He had locked it. I didn't have a key. And it was bloody freezing, blowing a gale and very nearly raining. (Fortunately, it didn't.)

Despite trying the door several times more over the next hour, it never did open until the DSM returned with a key (I did consider various possibilities to effect an entrance, but dismissed them all as unworkable, given that he would be home before I turned to a block of ice provided I got up and jumped around every few minutes.) There was only one nasty, wriggling little worm of concern in my mind....

I was sitting by the door when he returned, having just done the latest bounce around. I didn't really say very much, well, not to start with. But I was right to be concerned....it was, strange to relate, all my fault.

Funny, that.

We left for Cornwall at a not too late hour the next morning. Any hopes that luck might be changing or whatever, gradually sank to the floor. For we broke our world record. This was not a good thing, you understand. The total journey time was just over twelve hours, by which time, little Polly was, shall we say, muttering even louder than she had the night before.

It did seem for a while as if things might look up. The weather improved a bit, for a start, and we had a very nice lunch out with DMIL. We - I - got a bit rested. But then came Monday, when I realised that, no, I did not have hayfever from all the grass pollen blowing in the strong wind around the house.

I had a cold. That was when the wholly reprehensible scene with my inner Pollyanna occurred, and she is only just beginning to act like a civilised human being again.

So, as you can tell, not one of our most successful visits to the Duchy. Although not all bad, and I will give details anon.

'spect you're sick of me now, I know I am.