Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
something other-worldly and unfathomable, but Natalie knew better having already done
some investigating. The horses, clearly feeling that their sex life needed a lift and presumably
having watched Pierrot 'get off' by rubbing himself on anything and everything, had taken to
doing the same on tree stumps and had cut themselves in the process to such an extent that
their wounds needed cleaning and treating.
Natalie stomped off leaving me eye to eye with Junior in the stable. 'Where are you going?'
I asked.
'I'm going to google how to clean these wounds. And cleaning his "thing".' She shouted over
her shoulder leaving me and Junior for the first time in our relationship near to some kind of
understanding.
'She's going to search the Internet for horses' willies,' I said to Junior matter-of-factly.
'Yup,' he seemed to reply.
The rain just wouldn't relent; even the pond in our garden had reached worryingly high
levels. In the summer it looks like an asteroid crater with a puddle at the bottom, due to the
water table in that part of the garden being quite low, but that didn't stop our predecessors
filling the thing with goldfish. Every year they seemed to 'hibernate' in the mud at the bottom,
the water being completely frozen, and re-emerge bigger in the summer. That wasn't going
to happen this year. The water was high enough to have engulfed the bench that Natalie had
erected and a heron had feasted on the entire fish population, no doubt this being the first
year he could see the things. Meanwhile the current in the Cher must have been making river
fishing more dangerous than usual, even for a water bird.
Natalie was surprisingly indifferent to this massacre; I'd assumed that on hearing the news
she'd be straight off to the local Fish Rescue Centre and come back with an angry, maladjus-
ted carp or something, but no. She'd been oddly quiet about animal adoption over Christmas
and the New Year, and it left me uneasy, like something was in the offing.
Despite everyone in the family, Natalie's parents included, being aware of my jumpiness
around this time of year and the fact that the weather itself was depressing, it was apparently
'no way any excuse' for the quite 'appalling' birthday cards I had bought. And to be fair, they
were bloody awful. Despite these days of Twittermob outrage and gender sensitivity, I'm will-
ing to go out on a limb here: women are good at choosing cards and men aren't, simple as
that. In the same way that packing a car boot effectively is purely a male preserve, women
have a nose for the right card and also have the common sense to buy 'blank message' cards
if, as is normally the case, the printed message is so cloying it makes you feel like you've
been licked all over by a slobbery dog.
The French don't really do cards. A neighbour popped round for my birthday just before
Christmas and despite being there specifically for my birthday she still asked what all the
cards were for.
'Well, they're for Ian's birthday!' Natalie said.
