Time slips by when I am outside and sometimes I stop and take a break which will involve a steaming mug of tea and, depending on my mood, either sitting on the tea-break seat or sometimes when I really want to lose myself in the garden and the moment I sit at the top of the garden on the Portmeirion bench. Time then stops for a while; I sit and look around, sometimes plans and tweaks for what I want to do next come into my mind; sometimes I realize what I need to move from here to there, sometimes I work out what needs to move from there to here. If I have some planting out to be done I can work out where it needs to go and in my head pictures form about what it is going to look like.Doesn't this all sound great? Well it is most of the time, but the other day whilst mid-tea break I realised I was being shouted at from the hedge. Someone was furious with me and hurling all sorts of obscenities in my direction, ok I admit I did not understand the language that was being used, but seriously there were rude words involved I could tell (I grew up watching the Clangers, it trains you for such things). I turned around to see who I had offended in such a dreadful way to be confronted with.....
..... a furious squirrel, and when I say furious I am pretty sure if Malcolm Tucker was being reincarnated (or should that now be regenerated?) he would be this squirrel. I think I was getting between him and the bird table. I confess here that before I lived in this house I was not even aware that squirrels made a noise never mind that noise. There are lots of squirrels here, I routinely see five or six around the bird feeders and they leap around the trees and hedgerow constantly. It was a real surprise to me when once I could hear a tutting noise, that I could only describe as a bit 'Skippyish', (yes that dates me as well, I know), and I looked up to see some squirrels bouncing around the trees in what is best described as a frisky manner.
Rather than just apologize to the squirrel I proposed a deal, a bargain, a pact, a way forward that would suit us both. I would go and get on with some weeding and let him and his compadres have access to the bird feeders if he and his merry band of squirls (yes that is the proper pronunciation), promise to stop digging up and eating newly planted bulbs. He squeaked his assent and so the deal was struck.
I just hope he didn't have his fingers crossed behind his back.
