The Enemy

Those of you that know me (and it’s probably about 99% of the visitors I’m getting at the moment – hello there!) will have heard of my enemy. I’ve talked about them before numerous times – my war with them, their invasion of my space, my killing a few, capturing others…

Yes, I’m talking about squirrels.

My wife and I moved into our sunny maisonette in south-east London a few years ago, and a few months later, grey squirrels moved in as well. They climbed up the ivy on the side of the house, slipped in through the air vents under the guttering, and camped out in the gap between the floorboards above our bedroom, beneath the second bedroom in the attic.

They tended to get in after a hard day’s foraging at around ten or eleven at night, and get up (and so get us up) at about five the next morning. They scampered, they galumphed, and they chewed through the spotlight wiring so that half of the lights in our bedroom stopped working.

It drove us to distraction. Grey squirrels are different from other vermin (and yes, they’re officially vermin – more on that later) in that they cause a lot of wanton destruction. You can live with mice – just – and rats are unpleasant but at least you know they’re not going to gnaw out the joists in your attic and have the roof come down on top of you.

To make matters worse, I couldn’t get at the place that was affording them entry. We’ve got the first floor of the building and our house butts straight up against the neighbours garden, leaving no access . I tried going around there once to ask nicely if I could get into their garden to hack away at the ivy in the (probably deluded) thought that it would die and thus the squirrels would cease to trouble us, but after a mumbled conversation with a person with a strong accent through a letterbox I came away disappointed.

So I took the battle elsewhere. For a while I was humane. Then I was ruthless. My good friend Colin had several suggestions with what to do with them once I’d captured them including drowning, freezing, gassing them with exhaust fumes, and freezing them with liquid nitrogen. I took him up on none of these.

Instead, the ones I captured I chose to release several miles away. Officially this is a no-no. It’s illegal to release vermin once you’ve captured them. If you’re seen by police, you can get arrested.

I took the chance.

To be honest, after killing one and disposing of the body, I was so wracked with guilt I decided I couldn’t do it again. If I got caught, so be it.

So why am I writing about squirrels on this blog?

I came home today and heard a funny noise in the kitchen. The boiler’s been on its last legs for a while now, so I initially thought it was that.

Then I looked down.

A small furry face peered back at me from underneath the dishwasher.

It’s a little bit of an understatement to say that I flipped out. The squirrel vanished beneath the cupboards. I cast around me, trying to work out what the hell I was going to do: the chances of me catching the little bugger were slim to none, plus it’d hidden at the far back corner under the cupboards, far out of reach. To top it all off, my wife has been preparing a wedding cake for a good friend, and it was IN THE KITCHEN.

…sorry. My caps lock went on.

I blocked the exits, all apart from the back door that opened onto the rear stairs down into the garden. I got the trap but that was pointless: it was an inch too big to get under the cupboards. The only thing I could do was to remove the last kick board where it cowered and scare it into heading for the back door.

I spent a fruitless twenty minutes trying to remove the kick board. When I finally lost my temper and got the board loose, the creature shot out the other side.

There was a snap. I looked over.

One small, very scared squirrel, right in the middle of the trap.

It turns out there's an air vent in the chimney. It must've crawled down the chimney and into the kitchen that way, probably not long before I got home. I've since covered the vent to prevent any further unwanted guests, and will get a proper grille over it in due course.

More on writing next time. In the meantime, I'm enjoying my victory, small as it may be.

The Quantum Of Solace

I’ve just watched “The Quantum Of Solace”.

…What was all that about, eh?

I enjoyed Casino Royale immensely, but this sequel seems to be a mis-fire on many levels. There were little touches I enjoyed – the sequence during the opera where Bond listened in to the secret meeting; the montage detailing his subsequent escape; the quiet “thank you” from the Canadian operative near the end – but these were brief flashes of brilliance in a muddled mess.

I think there’s a rule developing: if your character swings on a rope or a chain during a fight sequence, chances are the film’s not going to be great. It’s true here, it’s true of the climax of Stardust (which has more than a few moments of brilliance itself) and it was true of the god-awful Van Helsing, where pretty much everyone swung on chains at some point. I think it was part of the casting call.

Special effects have developed to the point where you can almost believe it’s all happening in front of you, but there’s always a slight disconnect, a slight feeling of “pop”, usually a sign that the character is standing in front of a green screen. I can usually tell, sadly.

Anyway, all of this is an excuse to post this:

The Reading Pile

This is my reading pile:


Going through them in turn:

Iain M Banks, Matter.

Iain Banks (with or without the M) is the writer I want to be when I grow up. I can’t wait to dive into Matter, the latest Culture novel.

Stephen King’s The Dark Tower.

The final book in his seven part series. I’ve read them all before, but haven’t revisited them until now. It’s been great following his progression through thirty odd years of storytelling. I’ll hopefully have time to do a blog post on the series once I’ve finished this.

Sunnyside by Glen David Gold.

This is a signed first edition hardback. Yum. I love signed first editions and have a small collection – more on that another time. I found “Carter Beats The Devil” at a charity shop in Arundel and when I started reading it I fell in love. He’s got a great writing style and I was very excited to find a pile of signed Sunnyside’s in Waterstones recently. I’ve made a start on this but haven’t had time to devote to it properly yet.

Kate Atkinson – When Will There Be Good News?

This is the third Jackson Brodie novel and is actually my wife’s copy. I like her writing but struggled with Emotionally Weird. The previous Jackson Brodie novels have been good so I’ll hopefully like this too. One for the commute.

Nick Hornby – A Long Way Down

I’ve read most of his other novels. I thought High Fidelity and About A Boy were great, but I’ve found his later work to be a little too dour for my liking. How To Be Good was a tough read in places, and I stopped reading him until recently, when I borrowed SLAM. That, too, was difficult. Funny to begin with, and ferociously easy to read – his writing slips down very easily – but then it took a darker turn and I struggled to finish it. I know this one’s dark too, so it’ll be interesting to read.

Paul Auster – New York Trilogy

This is a new one for me. Never read any of his work before, but this comes highly recommended. This was his first novel.

Michael Collins – Carrying The Fire

Ah, Michael. Possibly part of the family – who knows? I should really find out. For anyone who doesn’t recognise the name, he was the third man on Apollo 11, the one who stayed behind whilst Neil and Buzz went down to the Moon’s surface in Eagle. This is his account of that astounding historical moment, as well as the rest of his career. At some point I’ll get Buzz and Neil’s biogs, but I’m most interested in Michael’s version of events – doubly so, after reading favourable reviews.

And finally, American Gods, by Neil Gaiman.

Neil is a poster boy for how to interact with fans and the world in general – affable, caring, intensely interested in a huge range of subject matters, and owner of a body of work that is astoundingly varied. For me, nothing can top his work on Sandman, but American Gods is still a very good book. This is the first time I’ve revisited it since it was published. I’m just under halfway through, and am enjoying casting the characters for the film version in my head – I can’t help seeing Brian Cox as Wednesday. Shadow remains uncast at present; he’s only vaguely described in the novel, and is hidden away in plain sight for the most part – perhaps that was Neil’s intent. It’s a little frustrating, to be honest – the peripheral characters are far more interesting in some ways – but it gives us a relatively unfiltered view of events. It’s been long enough since I last read it that I can’t quite remember the end, so I’m looking forward to getting there soon.