Pad Life 18: Them's The Breaks

It will – because you have a life – totally have escaped your attention that Little Cat and I have been on hiatus for the last eight months or so. Obviously we have been carrying out a secret mission to save the world, and obviously we have been shit at it. Hence we have been stripped of our position with the Get The Handcart Out Of Hell team at the UN, and have returned to our day job of peddling nonsense.

          It wasn’t our fault. The team was short-staffed. We did say, there’s only so much rota-juggling you can do, and you can’t keep relying on half the team to provide cover when the other half has been signed off with stress again, and vice versa, and what, we said, what will happen if everything everywhere goes tits up all at once, and they laughed at us, they really did. Well, who’s laughing now, eh? No-one, as far as I can see.

          We’d just unpacked our suitcases when Little Cat started meowing sadly at the telly. Larry the Downing Street cat was waiting patiently to be let in at the front door, and I’m not sure if she was sympathising with him because he’d been left outside or because he actually had to go in there.

          We watched Burblechops burble his ‘speech’ – using the term loosely – at the lectern, and wondered idly if this was the first recorded instance of a prime minister using the phrase ‘them’s the breaks’ to describe the biggest parliamentary shitshow for at least a century. He was right about the parliamentary Conservative party being a herd, though. I was reminded of that scene in Jurassic Park where our heroes first meet the brontosaurus herd, which looks lumberingly peaceful and content to stand stuffing its face until it can stuff no longer, giving no hint of the lithe velociraptors waiting a little further up the road.

          Life in and around the Pad remains reasonably tranquil. There is a lovely new young lady upstairs, who has asked me to water her plants while she’s on holiday next month. I was pleased to say yes, and only after she’d gone did I reflect that asking me to look after your plants is like celebrating your daughter’s marriage to Bluebeard. I will do my best, I really will, and hope they enjoy the same longevity as my Snake Plant and my Peace Lily, rather than the brief torrid life of my Cape Primrose and pretty much anything else with flowers on that finds its way into the Pad. Although my terrarium is flourishing, presumably because there’s a barrier between it and me.

          For Little Cat, our return brought the unwelcome discovery that not only had two tabbies moved in round the corner, but they seemed to think they could just walk the pavement as though it belonged to anyone with paws. One of them, a round, wide-eyed affectionate little thing who will roll over for a tummy tickle anytime and anywhere, was easily seen off. The other, a svelte creature with a sculpted face and a complete disdain for anything as bourgeois as a tickle, was a different matter.

          Little Cat is not averse to the occasional punch-up, but only when she knows she can win. She doesn’t do uncertainty when it comes to physical violence. So, silent motionless staring was undertaken.

          It was like a medieval battle, when the rules dictate what time you start and what time you finish. Every morning for three days the two of them met on the corner, at an obviously agreed time, growled a bit, then settled in for the stare. Every so often they’d break off, by mutual consent, for a bit of coat grooming (their own, not each other’s), before resuming the positions and the unremitting eye contact. On the fourth morning, negotiations were concluded. Little Cat now has the pavement, the shrubbery, and the bit of grass over the road, while the tabbies rule the car park and the bin store. How might history have been changed if the Krays and the Richardsons had learned the real art of staring.

          One pleasant thing to return to is the monthly writers group that is not a critique group, not a group to teach you anything, but merely a bunch of writers who meet in a bar, compare writing avoidance techniques (one of which is coming to a monthly meeting in a bar) and collectively try to overhear other people’s conversations and observe other people’s body language. It’s most therapeutic to discover that there are other people whose idea of a really nice evening walk is peering through windows in the magic time between the putting on of lights and the drawing of curtains. Summer’s rubbish for that, obviously, but autumn to spring is full of delights.

        I mean, if you could sneak past the police officers by the Downing Street gate and peer in at the windows, what tableaux would be presented to you before they realised you weren’t an obscure Tory back bencher, invited for discussions about what plum Cabinet job you’ll get in exchange for not giving your vote to Rishi Sunak? Sadly the gold wallpaper is probably only visible through an upstairs window, and a ladder would be a bit of a give-away (although they probably wouldn’t notice another greasy pole). I would have liked to see what play equipment they have in the garden for the kids, but unfortunately that got broken in a work meeting. I’m curious to see the cauldron where they brew up the Polyjuice Potion that is intended to make them look like serious politicians, because maybe it’s the shape of the cauldron that means it never works, although the Confundus Charm seems to come out of it okay. Now, if you want a conspiracy theory, it is my own belief that they’ve been putting Confundus into the water, because how the hell else have they got away with it for so long?

          Ah well. I’m sorry Little Cat and I failed to complete our mission. I can’t tell you what it was, of course, but sooner or later someone will leak the files to The Guardian and you will know what you could have won. In the meantime, find your nearest Defence Against The Dark Arts class, and practice like hell. There isn’t much left to break but they, at least, are going to make sure they finish the job.