Home demons

I have decided on a new upper limit for time spent on in my parent's home. From this autumn forward, I will never shack here for more than two weeks at a stretch.

My parents have decided to escape to the island of Barbados, leaving their menagerie in my hands. It has taken on the qualities of a number of my worst nightmares.

I don't think I'm alone in saying that my nightmares don't sound that scary, and in fact aren't that coherent in any case. Suffice to say the one feature that is 100% verbatim from real life is a cat that lives here, and goes by the name of Ivor.

For some reason I've never divined this animal is perpetually sickly, with streaky fur and dribbling nose. It has a habit of following me wherever I go. Apart from sneezing, it never makes a noise and it can only move at a slow shamble. I think that's a large part of the terror he takes on when he, or a toad-like avatar, invades my dreams. Maybe it's also the way he carries his head low to the ground, or meows without actually making any sound while staring right at you. I toyed with the idea that he wanted something, like food. Presenting him with food causes him to sniff it, sneeze, then stare at me and meow silently.

For all that they sometimes creep me out, the cats are at least easy to look after. Poultry can drive me to depths of frustration only possible when your protagonist has a brain the size of a kidney bean.

It's been blowing mist all day. The ground is crawling with slugs. The yard here is also studded with the kind of filth you can only achieve with a farm's worth of animals. The finishing touch comes from a spate of mowing or something that was done just before I came home. Now dead grasses, just on the point of decay, seem to line all the hedges.

I'm really not having a ball down here, is what I'm saying.

It's probably the case that I'm not the only young person who leaves home and finds it hard to come back.

I think I might be rare in that my old country, for no good reason, now revolts me.

Every time I make a post like this I'm glad that none of my family read the blog.

Tomorrow: A Happy Post about, um, Ross Noble, Or Something!

aluminum tastes like fear