Last night:  First night for a long time of locking up the house by myself before turning in, since M left yesterday before sunrise (the girls got up to say goodbye, but I didn’t).  I was absolutely shattered from being woken early (girls wanted more entertainment after Daddy left), going to bed late most nights last week, busy week at school and G going down with a bad cold which disturbed his sleep (first signs of it appeared as M was packing for his trip to the field… always the way!)  But I had to make everyone’s food for tomorrow and tidy the kitchen, attempting to remove all traces of accessible food as I am convinced that there are still rats living behind our oven…

 

Well, better way to spend the evening than sitting down to read, in any case.  Recently I have been reading The State of Africa by Martin Meredith – an absolutely incredible book recounting the history of Africa since independence.  I started reading it last year but had to take a break when I realised I was starting to thinking, “Oh look, another corrupt dictator squandering the wealth of his country and trampling over the masses in pursuit of his own security as top man…”  I’m almost getting to that stage again, but I am up to the events of the past decade now, so it’s kinda gripping, too.  (The chapter about apartheid was when I started getting really gripped.  I read it from beginning to end one evening and stayed up till gone midnight to do so.  It wasn’t as if I didn’t know how the story ended!)  I am finding that all the emphasis on hatred and violence and revenge is not the best way to prepare for bed though, and that’s why I’ve decided not to read it before bedtime.

 

So with these thoughts running through my mind, I locked the kitchen and headed through the corridor to the main house.  Shut the door to the kitchen side of the house, thinking how I was trapping the rats the other side… – only I couldn’t.  Shut the door, that is.  Some sort of resistance from the other side.  Something, which from the corner of my eye I had seen moving as I closed the door, was trapped between the door and the step up the other side of the door.  I released the door slightly to allow whatever it was (rat? mouse?  I’d not got an idea of scale from my corner-of-the-eye glimpse) to scuttle off, but heard nothing.  I reapplied pressure, imagining blood, cracked bones… and then retreated for a couple of minutes just in case it could limp off and I wouldn’t have to clear it up/finish it off myself.

 

Feeling of tiredness and wanting to head straight to bed completely gone!

 

After a minute or two I returned and, standing as far away from the door as I could and making no sound at all, peered round the door.

 

It was G’s shoe!