Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Immediately the mood changed at home, rather than coming downstairs in the morning and
being greeted with leaden skies, spring brings a freshness to the day; there is hope, there is
potential.
'Spring is my favourite time of the year,' Natalie said for the fourth time that evening, as
she concentrated hard on her garden design drawings and her notebooks. I had had the rare
pleasure of being at home for a week but had barely seen her in that time, though in truth I
hadn't really expected to. When spring arrives she is outside from sunrise to sunset and if we
could rig up powerful arc lights for the night she would be outside then too.
My outdoor roles are, by choice, fairly limited but I am occasionally called upon to perform
some menial task and one of those is 'small animal rescue', which hitherto has consisted of
only two actual rescues. The first was the kingfisher that flew into the lounge windows and
knocked itself out, and the other rescue was when a small rabbit, which must have been
dropped by a clumsy buzzard, landed on Eddie's head. That all changed with the advent of
the cats. I was now constantly on call, like a lifeguard, always ready to rescue small animals
of differing varieties from the clutches of the evil cats. Mice, shrews, birds, lizards - their
cruelty is indiscriminate while they just toy with the small beasts. They had actually taken
to dragging whatever creature they'd caught to the front of the house where they knew we'd
watching, because they knew what would happen next. Natalie would stop humming and
shout, 'Ian! Vespa's caught something!' The boys would come running and generally get there
before me, the cats would have a crowd and then I would turn up like a wheezing David Has-
selhoff and the chase would begin.
The cat would pick the thing up in its mouth and make a dart for the open field, I'd go after
it, rugby tackle the cat, whereupon the other cat would pick up the ball/mouse and run with
it. I'd go after that one too. This would go on for as long as they want it to and is quite simply
exhausting, rendering me a sweaty mess in whatever area of the garden we would finish in,
unable to walk anymore, triumphant in my rescue of whatever creature I might have saved
that day, but physically spent. This is where Natalie's shrewd garden design would come into
its own, as fortunately there are plenty of places for me to just sit down and have a rest; she
certainly never uses them, especially in spring.
One of Natalie's most endearing qualities has always been her quite monumental determin-
ation - her utter refusal to yield to the inevitable, despite overwhelming evidence that she is
fighting a losing battle, is almost superhuman. I don't mean that in an unflattering way either,
the reason we are able to have what we have despite me hardly being around is because of
her strength and resolve. But when she first insisted on keeping the cats I did point out, with
a certain degree of 'I don't know why I'm even bothering to say this but...', that they would
kill everything in sight. The small rodents that scurry across the patio, the lizards that bask
on the walls, the fish in the pond and the myriad of birds that nest in the garden; all of that, I
said, you are putting at risk. Are you really sure that that's what you want?
