Sunday 27 December 2009

Santa’s little helper and PCS

I think I must be suffering from a soupçon of PCS (post-Christmas stress)! Yesterday morning I found myself pouring apple juice into my coffee instead of milk. Unfortunately, I came to my senses too late and had to start all over again.

Then I had an enthusiastic helper whilst ‘picking’ the turkey. A helper whose eyes never left the carcass as my knife sliced away, and whose nose was ever on the move for anything that may accidentally fall to the floor. I think he thought it must be Christmas and his birthday all rolled into one. Try as I might, of course, I couldn’t help the odd morsel of skin or meat from flying from my knife to the floor – gravity has a lot to answer for at such times.

This morning I awoke to find a turkey bone on the kitchen floor and two cats looking extremely innocent, if not with a modicum of satisfaction upon their faces. Unfortunately, their plans of blaming it on the dog had been foiled for, in case they hadn't noticed in their early hours pig out, the dog was actually upstairs with us. Therefore, it didn't take long to deduce that the ripped open plastic bag on the cooker that held the remains of the poor fowl and the bone on the kitchen floor had both been the victims of the two cats mentioned above, namely Helios 7 and Spider McGraw. Ironically, I had left the bag indoors rather than put it in the rubbish bags outside to avoid such molestation, but - unfortunately - had forgotten to move it somewhere less obvious before I went to bed.

So I shall leave you with a verse from T.S. Eliot that pretty well sums up the antics of the dynamic duo:

Then the family assembled for Sunday dinner
Their minds made up that they wouldn't get thinner on
Argentine joint, potatoes and greens
Then the cook would appear from behind the scenes
And say in a voice that was broken with sorrow
"I'm afraid you must wait and have dinner tomorrow
The joint has gone from the oven like that!"

Then the family would say, "It's that horrible cat!
It was Mungojerrie or Rumpelteazer!"
And most of the time they left it at that

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