The real thing

Ezra insisted . . .
Actually there's not a lot of difference to the previous spoof.
God, help us.

Reeves and Mortimer

We were talking about British comedy this morning, (Ezra and I). Well steeped in Fawlty Towers, Monty Python, and Eddie Izzard, he is.
I was explaining about the wonders of Morecambe and Wise and then remembered the early episodes of Reeves and Mortimer. There was a bit of an episode where Mortimer was nailing a piece of bacon onto the studio wall; I can't recall much more than that except I did nearly die laughing. Here's one I just found . . . enjoy, Ezra.

Building number 25

A cross between a Dalek and a layer cake. I saw this while on a dog walk with friends in St Polycarp.
'What is it?' I said. No one knew, or if they did, they didn't tell me.

twenty minutes

While going to the printers yesterday, I discovered the surface of the road I would normally take had disappeared - took a different road to circumvent the huddle of yellow machinery and found myself lost. Lost in Limoux?
How can this be possible? Ezra and I have walked every inch, surely; gaped at every wood-effect door, and neat, gnome-filled garden and wondered who lives in the houses with the untidy, exciting gardens.
Yes, lost. The no-entry signs were confusing: one way streets for no apparent reason. After a bit of hapless car-wandering I ended up at the municipal cemetery. I thought there was only one in Limoux - on the main road, a solid rectangle of ancient stone tombs. I must admit, although being a fan of death-logements generally, I've never been in that one - something to be rectified.
Anyway . . . I parked and went into the one facing me rather than do the rectifying of going to see the other one . . .
Anyway, as I said: twenty minutes.
Time; an odd thing. You can spend twenty minutes faffing, trying to find where they have moved the tinned tomatoes in a supermarket, or glassily watching a game show, knowing it's crap but not being able to move; or sometimes twenty minutes can become stretched, embedded, something your mind chooses to remember.

Building No 24

Would you enter this hair salon?
I think I would not.
It is maybe some sort of time/space portal; once in there you would be strapped to a leatherette seat, one of those giant egg-shaped hair dryers from 60s movies clamped to your head, and that would be it: flung into a Stanley Kubrick film, walking about in pale beige leggings, serving trays of dehydrated pizza to a soundtrack of 'The Blue Danube'.
I like the way the building inhabits its footprint on this piece of Carcassonne soil: a long, lone brick of pink 'crepi' with a snarling mouth of 'grillage'. What about the window though? Surely if you bother to drag that metal across the door, why not the other bits of glass?

Misplaced fauna

A few days ago we heard a new bird-call in the garden; on investigation we discovered a grey cockatiel attempting to drink from the swimming pool. It would launch off, tail trailing mournfully in the water and then land again on the paved surround, head cocked in confusion. We couldn't leave it, pretty though it looked amongst the lavender; it would get mobbed or eaten or both, so Ezra heroically netted it and put it into the spare parrot cage.

These are expensive birds, mmm . . . rationality prevailed.
"Ezra. We must make 'found bird' posters and take them to the vet's, etc."
Then I remembered the slightly unhinged woman a few doors along who has seven dogs, chickens, a goat, budgies, parrots, an elephant (possibly) and cockatoos . . .
Ezra went to inform her son of our find, and, a few hours later the mother tottered along on high-heeled espadrilles, her voice piercing in the afternoon silence: "Bebe? OH, Bebe, tu étais où, alors?"
Thanks was brief, and then she told me off for not shutting our shutters: "Oof, il fait tellement chaud chez vous!"
"Oh, OK, au revoir then . . . "

Two days ago on a trip out to festeringly hot 'Bages' on the coast we found another lost beast.
As we turned a corner in the village, I saw a tiny blob attached to a huge blank, boiling hot wall: not a dead leaf caught on a scrap of web, but a minuscule bat: really so tiny, like it would be lost in a matchbox.
It was perhaps a few days old, no fur, just like the baby mice that I saw so many times in the old mother mouse's bedding back in my childhood. Why was it there in direct 40 degree sunlight?
How many times have I done this . . . and I never learn: pigeons with broken legs, vicious gulls with maimed feet, hopeless swallows, mice in the throws of a heart attack after being dropped by the cat; this was probably the silliest yet, but I couldn't leave it on that wall.
We took it home in a cigar box and tried to tempt it with milk, squashed flies etc. The next day was filled with bat-angst phone calls to bewildered bat experts who obviously knew it was hopeless. One even suggested putting it the fridge 'it will go to sleep' then the freezer - 'it is perhaps the kindest thing'.

Oh God, WHAT HAVE I DONE?
I should have perhaps found a more local tree, or camped out and waited for a frantic mother looking for her helpless offspring. How can something the size of a toothbrush head cause so much household disturbance? But it did: chaos, forgotten appointments, burnt lunch, frequent anxious checks by us all: 'look he/she is sucking that piece of wet kitchen roll - hoorah, all is going to be OK'. But we knew it wouldn't be for long.
We'd been invited out for supper, and the hosts own a large tree-y piece of land, outbuildings, and bats! We took Boris with us and at the appropriate dusk moment, re-attached him/her to a tree where she/he commenced high pitch squeakings, quite loud for something of that size. Bats circled and I tried to picture a happy outcome: probably unrealistic, but hopefully better than being frazzled on a wall or fridge-death.
It must be the menopause, (ridiculous sentimentality) or perhaps it is just me, but the thought of that tiny perfectly formed bat clinging to an oak tree is firmly wedged in my mind.
Good luck, Boris . . .

Bed of roses

Life is not always the above saying. Yesterday was rather more bucket of wilting ragwort.
Actually, it wasn't all bad at all, I just had a headache and the boy was vacillating between vile crossness and manic stupidity. He was tired and hot and headachy too - ultra high pressure it was, with vast cauliflower clouds as he put it - poetic.
Today, same weather, same mother and boy, but roses . . . perhaps not a bed of, but certainly a good vase full. We talked a lot, went for a walk in a village, previously unexplored (by us), went to Carcassonne to get his phone fixed by the miserable bastards in Boeig? Beoig? Boueyg, (however you spell it) telecom; forgot the phone, much to the only-just-hidden pleasure of the sulky 'jeune', and  adjourned to the square to drink foot-high fruit cocktails.
Found the boy a pair of shoes he liked (almost impossible) and two t-shirts that weren't black, and a daft t-shirt with bluebirds on it for Mark. On our return home, the dog hadn't peed on the sofa, and the donkey-birds (see several posts back) in the garden had been replaced by two pairs of musical songsters, twittering happily in the early afternoon sunshine.

As a celebration of the rosier days: petals collected by the boy, and syrup he made subsequently after an afternoon of 'airsoft' gun practise . . .