A CAT CALLED MERLOT

Thursday 31st December 2020

This was the end of a strange year, by any cat standard. Christmas Day was quieter than usual. Under normal circumstances, we’d have had a toddler careering around the place and I’d have hidden away on the top of Queenie’s wardrobe. This year, it was just the two of us and very peaceful. It should have been four (Queenie’s soon to be step-mother, Suki and her mother Lydia) but on Christmas Eve, Queenie received a call from the British Consulate in Czech Republic to say Lydia had been discovered in the back of a truck without any ID and a compulsory ‘negative’ COVID test result. Allegedly, she and Suki had been feeding soup to the drivers of the backlog of trucks on the M20 in the port of Dover, when Lydia had started chatting to a “very lovely” young Bulgarian called Bogdan. He’d offered to show her round his cab and one thing led to another and the next thing she knew, she’d woken up to the sound of raised voices and foreign accents. For a moment she thought she was back picking cabbages in the fields of Lincolnshire, where she’d spent many happy weeks in 2005. However, moments later, she was pulled out of the cab by a man in uniform demanding her passport and was advised, in a very unwelcoming way, that she was in Czechoslovakia. She told Queenie, in a brief conversation with the border police, she’d obviously been the victim of human trafficking and could she get in touch with “that gorgeous George Clooney’s wife and get her on the case”?

Marjorie and I had a lovely few hours together on Christ-mouse Day.  We decided not to ‘do’ presents as most of the quality gifts in the garden had gone into hibernation for the winter or taken refuge in the bottom of the ponds, so there wasn’t much stock available in the Catch & Carry. We therefore left it to Queenie and Judith to indulge us with a load of faux fur toys that we pretty much ignored.   

Humans in the South of England went into lockdown again on ‘Boxing Day’. I’ve no idea why they call it that. I suspect it’s got something to do with everyone fighting each other having (ordinarily) been thrown together with their relatives for a whole day, the day before. Maybe it should be re-named Divorce Day? 

On Boxing Day night, the West and South of England was hit by storm Bella. I went out with a tortoiseshell with that name a few times and I’m well aware of the havoc they can wreak in a very short space of time. This Bella swept noisily through, with gusts of wind in excess of 80 miles per hour and severe flooding. Gary and Liam went out in the afternoon and persuaded Gideon to bring his sleeping pod Jonah, into Gary’s workshop, where they would both be safe. The next morning, Gary’s wife Laura cooked Gideon a lovely breakfast that he shared with me, before going for his daily swim in the freezing cold sea, which he told me was very good for his constitution. I would have liked to have told him that his bacon rind and a nice bit of sausage (without ketchup) was just purrfect for mine!

I’d like to wish all my readers a very happy & healthy New Year! Merlot xx