A CAT CALLED MERLOT

Thursday 19 August 2021

When Kes, Marjorie and I arrived home after the kidnapping and liberation, it was quite late. We’d managed to lose the men in the fields and when the coast was clear, we made our way home. I toyed with the idea of getting a black beret to make me look like a freedom fighter but wasn’t quite sure how it would stay on my head. Queenie, unaware of the ordeal, scooped me up for a cuddle and looked very concerned when I yelped, with pain. Setting me down on the floor, looking worried, she had a good feel around and found the source of the pain. The next thing I knew, I was being booked in with the vet, the following day. Suddenly, I didn’t feel very heroic and so the beret idea went out of the window and I sat on her lap for the rest of the evening, after a bit of food, feeling glum but very relieved Marjorie was saved.

Alfred from number 19 has joined a ballroom dancing class in the town and has met a widow called Mavis. She was originally from Yorkshire but married a man and moved ‘down South’ in the 1970’s. I was a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to visit any more in case of a swinging but she seems very nice. I watch them through Alfred’s sitting room window and they’re really quite good; not up to Strictly’s standards but much better than some of the politicians who seem to take the wrong door to the Question Time studio and find their way onto the dancing competition. Still, I’d heard being in politics meant you had to be ‘light on your feet’.

On Saturday afternoon a very big, expensive looking, gold car rolled onto the driveway and an elegant, dark haired woman got out of the passenger seat closely followed by the short, portly driver. Queenie looked quite taken-aback when she opened the door and found her transformed mother, Lydia, on the doorstep hair dyed black and styled. They stayed for an hour or so and Lydia who was dressed in a tailored suit that meant I wasn’t allowed to sit on her lap, bought me something in a jar, called Caviar. On close examination, it looked like tiny balls of black jelly, so I was a bit apprehensive. Their visit was particularly entertaining with Lydia speaking in a strange, clipped manner and behaving bizarrely, as if in an episode of Acorn Antiques. Before the car had left the driveway, Queenie had dialled her brother Stephen to break the news that Lydia had gone completely ‘Joan Collins’ and had moved in with a rather loud millionaire called Tic-tac Teddy from Bethnal Green, who addressed her as ‘Princess’. All bets are off as to how long it will last.