A CAT CALLED MERLOT

Thursday 26th August 2021

I’m happy to say things have returned to normal in The Avenue this week, albeit Marjorie is still a little traumatised and staying in the confines of her garden. Kes has reported the gardeners to the police. 

On Monday, Rodney the iguana escapologist from Number 4 got free once again and this time was found in Alfred’s friend Mavis’s handbag. Mavis was practicing a nice waltz with Alfred in his living room on Thursday afternoon, when she saw her bag making its way independently along the sofa. Suffice to say the choice of dance very rapidly turned into the quickstep out of the room and into the relative safety of the back garden. Alfred, armchair-skilled in bomb disposal after watching copious documentaries over the years, opened the bag, from a distance with his litter-picking stick and wearing his plastic COVID face shield for protection, only to find Rodney, benignly tucking into a packet of fruit gums. I meanwhile pretended to peruse Alfred’s ornaments from the top shelf of the bookcase, until it was safe to leave the house. Andrea Delacroix was very apologetic about her errant pet and in an act of true altruism offered a signed copy of her latest gambling plumber novel ‘Busted Flush’, as a goodwill gesture. On hearing there was another copy in circulation, Geoff from Number 29, hot-footed it round and offered to purchase it for his growing collection of what his wife Carol called ‘Sychophantia’ 

Tic-Tac Teddy and Queenie’s mother Lydia visited on Saturday with Queenie’s brother Stephen and his wife Vicky, for a lovely family afternoon. They also brought their child who arrived, dressed as Spiderman. Normally that’s my cue to decamp to Marjorie’s for the day but as they were having a BBQ, I thought I’d hang around and see what tit bits came my way. Tic Tac Teddy who apparently knows everything about everything, immediately took over Stephen’s place at the grill while his ‘Princess’ Lydia, sat on a chair all afternoon, drinking wine, being waited on and feeding her grandson lots of cake. It all ended badly of course with Spiderman getting a bite from me (under extreme provocation), before he was thoroughly sick in the flower bed. Stephen, who I noticed got increasingly irritated with Tic Tac, told his mother off for feeding Spiderman rubbish all day which ruffled Tic Tac’s feathers. He told a glowering Stephen that he shouldn’t speak to Lydia in ‘that manner’. Immediately there was a bit of a scuffle with the meat tongs which resulted in the tossing of a lovely piece of fillet steak that landed in Vicky’s lap. A rather loud row ensued, before Tic Tac and his princess left in a royal huff. All was not lost though, as I tucked into the discarded steak before nipping onto the table and licking the whipped cream off the top of Queenie’s cheesecake while she was putting something back in the fridge.