Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
you at the same time). Seriously, if Crufts ever decided to run a Best Pervert in Show he'd be
a shoo-in. However, he was the least of my problems.
Toby appeared to be undergoing a total mental breakdown. After emptying my case, sorting
through mail, reorganising the fridge and tutting at the state of the cutlery drawer, I was in
bed by one o'clock. Toby was whimpering outside my door at three, then again at five and
finally, for good measure, at seven. By the morning, however, far from feeling contrite, he
was throwing himself at the patio doors like a bull ready for the off. He was due to have some
jabs at the vets later in the week and I was tempted just to ask for a straitjacket, one coated
with vitamins so that Pierrot would get his medicine when he started licking it.
The cats were a different story. I say cats, I meant cat. Flame had gone missing, he regularly
stays out through the night but I hadn't seen him at all, which was a bit of a concern. Vespa,
on the other hand, had left her mark.
'Daddy!' Thérence said. 'Daddy! Poo!'
'OK,' I said, 'I'll change your nappy.'
'No, Daddy. Cat.'
I went upstairs to find all three boys poking and prodding at some noxious substance, they
were like policemen at a crime scene, unwilling to touch the evidence but advancing theories
as to its perpetrator.
'I think it's just a furball,' I said, kneeling down and donning the Marigolds.
'Poo,' repeated Thérence, and he kept on doing so, despite the fact that his brothers and I
were telling him it wasn't. Then we noticed what he had found in another corner of the room
and it looked like a sandpit in a warzone. The contents of this massive pile of... of... I don't
know what, either vomit or excrement, I don't know, it was like a beach after a violent storm.
There were rocks, bits of wood, some plastic, piles and piles of sand and at least one dead
bird. It was vile.
Something was up with the horses, as well; Junior I expect to be vicious, but Ultime seemed
to be in a right strop with me too. Natalie insists that the horse manure be cleared and piled up
every day, which is fair enough but what I didn't expect was the horses to follow me around
and angrily crap on the space I'd just cleaned. It was an act of pure aggression and the fact
that Ultime was at it too was very disappointing.
The hens had laid two beautiful eggs on the first morning and then, while I went off to get
them some food, they not only trod on them but smeared them on the walls of their coop in
some bizarre protest.
There was definitely something going on.
The boys, by contrast, were well behaved, if prone to disaster. Samuel had to have stitches
in his forehead after falling off his bike, Maurice was missing his mum and when I finally
got him to bed he insisted that he no longer needed a nappy; he hadn't actually needed one
