Brie My Baby

Before I left home today, one of the first things I did was to drink a cup of tea. Tea where I'd left the teabag inside the cup to stew for what seemed like ages (I'm more of a 3-4 minute tea bag person) as I guilty washed up all the dirty dishes I'd used yesterday. Now I don't know how long I took to wash those dishes up, but I'm sure it was more than 4 minutes. So by my definition, I had a pretty damn strong cup of tea. Except during class just now, I only heard about 50% of the words everyone said, and the rest was background noise. The only word that really stood out was when someone said 'middle eastern' and 'conspiracy theory' pretty near to each other, like in a sentence or something. And only because it was a class on economic policy, so words like 'middle eastern' and 'conspiracy theory' stood out. What, a conspiracy economic theory? To get them to buy up the whole of the UK, like they already are? Anyway so needless to say, 9am class was an utter washout. I also noted today that Murray Mint, has dandruff in his hair, but that somehow doesn't make him any less hot.

So anyway I washed up the dishes this morning. Now for some time, we've been having quite a mouse problem. The fucker has been in my room, eating my honey almonds, scattering the crumbs all over my high heels, and shitting all over my luggage and floor. Recently however, after the fucker appeared in Tiff's room on Sunday night, she went ballistic and bought a bunch of glue traps (with express delivery, she is most proud to add). So anyway Tuesday night, after I came back from Wild Times, I heard a bunch of scraping sounds. True enough as I came up the flight of stairs, I actually saw the fucker. EXCEPT: I saw really only half of it. The back bit. And it was half under Flat 3's door, and it seemed to be stuck.

So i screamed. And screamed. And Tiff and ZW came out and screamed more. And the mouse panicked and started forcing itself more through the little door gap, until it's bum disappeared and all we saw was it's tail. And then that made us scream more, and that then made the mouse struggle more, and blablabla ad infinitum. But of course some of the screaming made some sense. For example, some of it was: "JOSHUAAAAAAA! BENJAMIN!!!!!!!!!!!! OEIJ! OIEJ! WHATEVER YOUR NAME IS!!!!!!" (said by me, the names of the guys in Flat 3 upstairs), but most of it was "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" (said by everyone) and "OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!!!!!!!" (I think said by Tiff and me). And as we stood there screaming our heads off, we wondered why NO ONE SEEMED TO REACT. It's like if you scream in London, no one can hear you.

ZW managed to call someone, who then got in contact with the guys upstairs, and FINALLY they came down. And as they opened the door to 'rescue' us, we screamed more as we finally saw the full mouse, stuck to the glue trap. The first thing O said as he lifted the glue trap to look at the mouse was, "HAHAHA IT'S SO SCARED IT SHAT ITSELF". No shit, there were 3 girls screaming non-stop at it. If I was the mouse I'd be scared too. And then that's when they told us the bad news: it wasn't just A mouse we were reckoning with, it was multiple mice. Like a mice family. 'Cause they'd just killed one last week. Anyway we left the guys to dispose of the mouse. They said they'd leave it on the ledge and let it freeze to death, just like they did to the mouse they caught and killed last week. At night as I lay in bed, about to sleep, I heard the loudest singular SQUEAK I heard on Earth. I had just been contemplating at the moment whether to go use the bathroom. I decided against it and somehow went to sleep.

The next day, O and B came, and set up a bunch of glue traps in a row under their door. True enough yesterday morning, we woke up to a yet another mouse stuck. Except this time they didn't remove it straight away, electing to leave it stuck there till night time, when they got back to school. As I cleaned up the mess the mice left outside our flat last night with the vacuum cleaner, I could see it struggling and freaking out with the wail of the vacuum cleaning approaching. I wonder if you can suck a mouse up a vacuum cleaning, come to think of it. But I didn't.

Which brings me to this morning. So I was cleaning up the dishes, with my usual token Yellow Rubber Gloves. And those gloves + water + clean dishes = SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK. So I spent my entire time washing up in utter terror. I started singing to myself a made up song which was Christian gospel-ly. I thought of the mouse suddenly running out from under the sink and eating my toes, to take revenge for it's fallen comrades. I was freaked out beyond comparison, all the while conscious of the fact that DAMNIT IT WAS THE GLOVES.

So that's been my life thus far: swing dance and mice.

I also read Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild in less than 8 hours, from midnight Thursday to evening Thursday. It's a fascinating, fascinating book on the nature of youth.