Tuppence a Bag!

FOR DAYS AND DAYS since Xmas that dreadful Mary Poppins song has been going round my head. It's about birdseed: "Tuppence! Tuppence! Tuppence a bag!" (I bet you could have fed a human being for 2d in those days ~ forget the birds). I desperately need birdseed for my hammies yet nowhere seems to sell it. I think my rodents are fed up of living off the food I live on (pasta smothered in tomato sauce). Also they have become Tutku addicts. Tutku are Turkish biscuits I dunk in my tea. Brown and white in what I'd call a "harlequin" pattern, these are full of chocolate fondant. Not sandwiched like ordinary creme biscuits but totally closed in. My pets have gone longer than a month on this kind of diet ~ replete with breakfast cereals and pumblechooks and bread. I think it's about time they went back to "proper" rodent food of the type wild mice eat in your house ~ e.g. candlewax and soap (joke!)

Does anyone remember the time Itchy escaped ~ this was 2 houses ago ~ no sign of her for days. I was tearing my hair out. Also the place was scuttling alive ~ especially at night ~ with wild housemice and I was terrified they'd mug her and beat her up. Robos are not very violent animals, far more likely to take flight (or, unlike other hamsters, freeze and play dead) than to actually fight.

Anyway I was just giving up hope of ever seeing poor Itchy alive again ~ this must've been at least 48 hours after 1st disappearance ~ when a suspiciously persistent scrabbling set off in the corner, where I'd lined up my books, 3 deep on the floor. Imagine my surprise when I came face to furry face with a shocked-looking housemouse, which rapidly pinged out of the way. I couldn't believe my eyes when the scrabbling continued and there appeared a cleaner, fatter and smaller rodent (yes ~ Itchy really is tiny. Fully grown yet smaller than a mouse. Plus she can run faster.)

I could not believe this ~ the little swine had been out under my wardrobe with a frenzy of wild mice, partying away (no wonder all that squealing ~ and it wasn't from her ~ robo-voices are more like the honks you get from kiddy-toys) ~ they'd obviously shared their dinner. Or she had stolen it off them (cheek-pouches being such an advantage). They'd taken her on a jaunt across the adventure playground of my books. Unable to ping back under the wardrobe because I blocked off the way, and never having learned to spring the way rodents have to in the wild, she was effectively marooned within a Berlin Wall of paperbacks. I took advantage of her instinct to seek cover by dropping a toilet tube down there. She scuttled straight inside and appeared most astonished suddenly to get snatched up and plonked back down with Bashful and Spherical. Roborovskis are the most social of all hamsters. "Regular (Syrian) hammies will fight to the death anything that dares invade their burrow. My robbies on the other hand sleep 3 to a massive bed, which is always under their wheel. They don't seem to mind getting repeatedly kicked in the head as they carry on dozing when one of their number decides to get up for a midday spin...

... And back to drugs. I am depressed because my addiction is more powerful than me. (Is this the meaning of that 12-step phrase "we admitted that we were powerless over our addiction"?)...

... Every now and then I have a reality check. Similar to the time when, in the bourgeois house I used to live in (many years ago) my one ally said of the other housemates "they all think you're a heroin addict" ~ and I suddenly saw "heroin addict" ~ the drug-ravaged spectre one steers clear of on the street ~ converge with me. My innocent self. It felt most disconcerting actually to be this labelled character. I feel the same jolt here sometimes. Especially when I vision my blog popping up in suburban kitchens, casserole in the oven, dogs running around, grandchildren yelling in the garden. And I think What am I doing here? My blog was never meant to be a cry for help. It wasn't meant to be a game, either. "Confessional" rides a rocky road once outside the confines of Secret Diary covers.

"Never apologize; never explain" goes the Immanuel Kant quote on one blog I only recently took up perusing. The first bit I go with ~ but the second? ~ Each to his own. My style of soul-searching would sit about as well with Melody Lee as black pepper on strawberry icecream. My drug addiction needs explaining.

Even if you don't need explanations, I do. Maybe, if I dig around the dustbin of my life, I might find a diamond. My mind was once furnished with marvellous things and I must have chucked them out somewhere... maybe they're still around...

And here endeth today's babble.

PS just a thought: I bet yous lot all thought "tuppence a bag" meant bags of "gear"... but hey ~ if only heroin was tuppence a bag.

(I'd probably be using 2000 bags a day...)

PPS LA TOYA JACKSON is on Celebrity Big Brother... hahahaaahaaah!!

AND FINALLY: I don't usually deliberately post up crap (I just have execrable taste) but here for y'all is Julie Andrews chiming away our titular melody...