Omar's Diary for the rest of March 2021

The last to weeks of March have not been too bad.

Mitzi has fully recovered, Man Servant has recovered from his first COVID vaccination and we are waiting to see what side effects Lady Servant will develop overnight following her first vaccination late this afternoon, 26th March 2021. Hopefully they won’t be as bad as Man Servant’s reaction as he did rather suffer. Part of me thinks he may have been hamming it up a bit.

THE HOUSE GUEST

The highlight of my month was to bring in a new friend with the name of “Mus Musculus”. He was very shy and spent most of visit underneath the chest of drawers in the main bedroom. I so wanted to be sociable and make him welcome. I sat near the gaps around the chest of drawers hoping to say “Hello”. My Servants thought there must have been a degree of dissonance between my intentions and his welfare. To prevent contact between us they put a couple of books in each of the gaps to stop me from having anything to do with Mus. I knew the Oxford Collection of English Prose would be useful one day.

They made sure he had provisions and water to keep him comfortable for the duration of his stay.

Man Servant was sent into the nearby town to procure a humane mouse trap.

At the first emporium he visited he asked for one. He was told there were none in stock but if he really wanted to get rid of the visitor there was another way. Man Servant was advised to buy some chocolate, no need as there is always plenty in Omar Towers, and some special poison. Melt a small amount of chocolate and add the poison.

“Snuffo and the visitor will be deceased……never fails, works every time in minutes, they love chocolate” the proprietor said.

How inhospitable?

Somehow, I don’t think the proprietor of the shop was very good at reading his customer’s needs and has consequently lost a potential customer for good. I shall continue to buy my supplies elsewhere while I can.

By now it had started to rain. Mitzi and I were enjoying the warmth of the house and listening to Mus fussing about under the chest of drawers. As for Man Servant he had to trudge through the rain to another emporium. There they could not have been kinder nor more efficient and he came home a trifle wet but in full possession of a humane mouse trap.

The trap was baited and set at 1700 hours. Like all good hunters Mitzi and I waited patiently for the sound of the trap door clacking shut. Truth be known we both fell asleep. At 1805 hours it clacked and woke us both up. Man Servant took the contraption out to the garden where he released Mus. Apparently, he looked a little bewildered but once he got used to the darkness and the cold air, he scuttled off into the night none the worse for being a very welcome guest here at Omar Towers. He was no trouble and will always be welcome back.

INTERNATIONAL TRADE

I know there have been problems getting goods into this country since it left the European Union. Those problems will only be exacerbated by the huge cargo ship that is now blocking the Suez Canal. Fortunately, neither of those events seem to have disrupted the import of humane mouse traps yet as the one Man Servant came home with was from a place called Germ

I don’t think my own supplies come via the Suez Canal as they are sourced from Amazon which I understand from the map of Paddington’s travels is across the Atlantic. That is most fortunate as the Suez Canal is possibly closed for two weeks.

TRADE

Yet another relaxing morning was disturbed most when "trade" came to clean the windows. Once again, the Servants did not give Mitzi and I any warning about this encroachment on our lives. It was a most rude awakening seeing equipment appear at the windows and hearing water cascading outside. What made the situation worse was that there were two of them. One worked the front windows while the other worked the back. There was no escape.

Such a pane.