Surprise!

I hate surprises. They come in many shapes and sizes and I hate the lot of them.

Our marriage got off to a rocky start when Hubby refused to tell me where we were going on Honeymoon. He wanted it to be a surprise. I insisted I needed to know where we were going to plan what clothes to take. He told me to ask Mother-in-Law.

Seriously? My soon-to-be Hubby suggested I take fashion advice from his mother? I think on some level he didn’t want to get married.

I swallowed my pride and asked her: “You’ll need a cardigan for the evening,” she said.

A cardigan? Seriously? If I hadn’t already bought the dress, booked the church, paid a deposit for the reception, and bribed the bridesmaids, I’d have given ex-Hubby-to-be one helluva surprise of his own.

A surprise of another sort almost gave me a heart attack one recent Saturday evening. We were watching TV when a humungous spider appeared from nowhere and scurried across the floor towards me. I shot off the sofa to the other side of the room without touching the ground.

“Stop him!” I yelled, but Hubby lifted his feet and allowed the blighter to hide under the sofa. No way was I going to sit down there again, so I dashed into the utility room and grabbed a can of insecticide (don’t tell Animal Rebellion) and squirted it liberally under the sofa. I expected him to escape from the other side, but no. I squirted again. Nothing. He must be dead already. Satisfied, I sat down again. A few minutes later, I saw him teetering towards the fireplace. I went to put my empty glass over him, missed and, to my surprise and horror, he turned round and ran towards me.

“Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!”

I tried again. This time I got him. He was dead the next morning.

A similar surprise awaited me one evening the next week. Hubby had disappeared for a few days (I had waved my witches’ wand) and I was getting ready for bed. I opened the wardrobe door to hang up my blouse and out dashed a mouse, almost over my foot, and into the ensuite.

“Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!”

We had another mouse in the house a number of years ago. We’d brought the skis in from the garage to check them over before going on holiday. We left them in the hall until later and I went to prep supper. While in the kitchen, I spoke to Sis on the phone. I was distracted by a large moth, a really pretty ghostly one. Hope he doesn’t fly into the pasta, I thought. 

Some minutes later, still on the phone to Sis, I heard a rustling sound. I traced it to one of three ornamental pots of dried grasses on the top shelf. Must be the moth, I thought. Pasta almost ready, I said my goodbyes to Sis and grabbed a chair to stand on so I could reach the pots. I picked up one and shook it. Nothing. I picked up another … a mouse flew out and landed on the work surface.

I said something worse than shit I can tell you. We must have brought him in from the garage in the ski bag. I don’t know how I managed it but I imprisoned him under a kitchen bowl when he hesitated near the pan of bubbling Bolognese. I slipped a large spatula under the bowl, yelled at Hubby to open the back door, and deposited him (the mouse, not Hubby) onto the patio. Little bugger then tried to race me back into the house. I slammed the door behind me. He jumped up at the glass trying to get in. Stephen King would have had a field day with that sort of inspiration.

Back to this week’s mouse. He was well and truly hiding, so I set a mouse trap (don’t tell Animal Uprising), one of those where a trap door shuts when the mouse finds the lump of chocolate. I positioned it behind the loo where there’s a hole in the wall and where I assumed he’d fled.

The next morning, the trap had moved, the trap door was still open, and the chocolate had gone. Effing and blinding, I re-set the trap, with melted chocolate this time so it would stick. When I came home from choir that evening, the trap had moved and the door was shut. I scooped it up with a spatula and dropped it in the waste bin outside. Don’t tell Animal Resistance.

Despite being very tired and croaky (I said croaky not cranky) after an evening of top F#s (altos don’t do top F#s!) I checked the wardrobe, all of them in fact, all round the bedroom and every corner of the ensuite looking for mouse droppings. There weren’t any but by then my OCD had taken over and I vacuumed everywhere, even under the duvet, and scrubbed the bathroom floor.

While scrubbing, I dwelled on other surprises I could well have done without: like when I was swimming in the Med and kicked very hard to get away from the shallows. The law of unintended consequences struck, and I struck and took the heads off several spiny sea anemones (don’t tell Anemone Action), embedding scores of spines in my toes. Ouch.

The second-worst surprise ever was when I was driving home from a meeting along a narrow, windy lane. Without as much as a by-your-leave, a rabbit dashed out from the verge in front of the car. Honest, there was no time to brake, swerve, pray or swear before a sickening humpety bumpety as I drove over him, bang to rights. Don't tell Animal Action.

When I got home, I decided I needed a gin, only to be confronted with the worst surprise ever. 

The gin bottle was empty.