A normal evening chez Chateau Midden

Fester has been away for a couple of days so it has been fairly peaceful.

This afternoon I decided I’d been wishing for sunny weather for so long that I should take full advantage of it.  So, after I’d finished hanging out the washing (including a duvet), I put a blanket out on the lawn and lay reading a Dick Francis (Slay Ride) and sipping orangeade. Both cats took turns to lie next to me, and on the book.  Starlings and blackbirds chattered at me from the apple trees wondering why I hadn’t refilled their feeder.  A frog in the pond made a strange piping sound.  Sun caressed my back and thighs and a large straw hat shaded the pages.  Bliss.

Thunderthighs went to the takeaway for tea and I ate my burger and chips lying in the sun reading.

When it started to get chilly I came in, put on my dressing gown and was scrolling through facebook when there was a knock at the office door.

“Come in.”

Thunderthighs stood there with a feather duster in his hand – this is what we use to remove insects from the velux in the kitchen roof.  You stand on a stool, shove the feather duster at the bee/hoverfly/wasp until it gets annoyed enough to grab it, then shake the duster out of the window and off it flies.

“What is it and where is it?”

“A wasp in the light well.”

Even though his father is an entomologist every flying thing from a gnat to a bumblebee is a wasp to Thunderthighs.

I sighed, took the feather duster and went down stairs with “I don’t know why your grey haired aged mother has to clamber up the step stool and deal with these sort of things when you’re tall enough to reach.”

“Well, frankly, I chickened out.”

I had to admire his honesty.

The step stool was brought forth and the window opened.   

I climbed up and started shoving the duster at the waspy thing, which kept crawling into the crack between the glass and the frame.

Half way through these proceedings I heard the front door slam and a “Oh hello” from Thunderthighs as his father returned.  Fester was completely unfazed to see his wife in her dressing gown, on a step stool, wielding a feather duster.

Eventually I got the thing on the duster and shook it out of the window and watched it fly away.

As it flew off Teddy the Ginger Git cat came in through the window, onto the kitchen table, grabbed the feather duster in his mouth and jumped down.   

Sadly for him I still had a firm grip on the handle so he hung by his teeth for a moment before slithering off.