Friday. The rats have left, the ship is bare. What remains is shelving, for which bids are invited. On it, a solitary copy of (appropriately enough) Mass Effect (£22.97). No, prices weren’t cheap; all sweets had gone, and near the front of the store 
huddled items from the far back of the stockroom, like a Millennium Celebration Banner (Complete with “2000” in figures, thus useless even to those preparing for the next one). Yours for £1·99. Only in Woolworths. Only Today.
Wacky families? All of us? Weirder than this (Right h/t Brent Diggs) — plucked out of the blogosphere in random fashion? back in May Brent posted a Short Conversation with God. Here’s a snippet...Me? I’m just enjoying the kids playing with the rats upstairs, to Janis Joplin, now Steph is home... We’re not wacky...God: (sigh) Yeah. Good help is hard to find.
Me: Help?…Oh right, christians. I know what you mean. They can be kind of weird; kind of freaky. Scary even.
God: They had a rough childhood, you know. Always getting beat on and fed to the lions and such. But they never stopped feeding the hungry or taking care of the poor in those early years, they made me really proud.
Me: What happened?
God: You know how kids are. They get to a certain age and they start thinking they don’t need you anymore. That they’ve got it all figured out. Of course, I’m supposed to keep providing the blessings: the sun, the rain, cheap labor in the third world. Other than that they just want me to not bother them while they sit in their rooms and talk to their friends about me.
Me: So basically, you’ve got teenagers?
God: Yeah.
Me: Sorry.
God: I know. I forgive you.
I came home last night to find we are now sharing our home with three rats — Pedro, Felix and Orio. A lot of people don’t like rats, but I gather they were terrifically popular in the fourteenth century, and Max the Cat says he likes little furry animals. And they can do such cute things. Pedro does Bubonic Plague, Orio will handle the bins, whilst Felix spreads Weil’s disease. The lads arrived with an accompanying book called How to Care for your Fancy Rat. From it I learn thatIn 1974 Geoff Izzard and Joan Pearce met at a show in London where a few fancy rats were on display. They joined the London and Southern Counties Mouse Club, the only Club in the United Kingdom that still staged classes for fancy rats. They showed fancy rats throughout 1975, attracting more fanciers until, on 13 January 1976, they founded the National Fancy RatI wonder how Geoff and Joan attracted new fanciers in 1975. Perhaps they just left leftovers near the back door. I always planned to overcome rodentophobia in gentle stages, say by way of voles and mice. As it is I find myself an overnight full blown rat fancier. Accompanied by a lusty cockney chorus, à la Italian Job, of “We are the rat appreciation So-ci-et-y,” I now have the facility to discover my inner rat.Society.
