Ashamed not to have blogged since July. In fact, I have not really written anything significant since then. I have been in quicksand in literary terms, barely holding on to branches that friends have thrown from time to time. It is strange not to write: distressing, frustrating, alien. Life of course continues and the world is still both evil and wonderful around me.

I also had a rat in my house, under the floorboards, building a nest. To me it really symobolised my lack of action; that another creature had moved into my life and was happily 'getting on with things.' Absurdly, I first thought the scratching behind the wall was mice and researched some gentle mice deterrents. They hate bay leaves apparently and so I picked a dozen, stuffed them into the hole in the air brick into which they had burrowed. I felt a tug and deftly, rather gently, an invisible paw tugged them away from me. So it was a rat, not a mouse. Rats love bay leaves. They are such clever creatures that they use them for natural flea control in their nests.

So I had an intelligent life form living beneath my house that was sharper than me. Or was at least at that time. We baited a live trap and the creature took the food and escaped before the door slid down. Genius. At night a huge owl took position on our roof and hunted it. It still survived and every evening I would hear this hard hard scratching.

I am not afraid of rodents. I have respect for their intelligence, particularly rats. If man died out, rats and cockroaches would remain. Fact. But I could not share my house with one, for all sorts of reasons, mainly that he was chewing through floorboards, then possibly wires. not hygenic either, if he got into the house.

Finally, a bacon bait did the trick and the rat sat there shrieking as I approached. It looked like a frightened wild animal, acclimatised to fear by man's hatred and need to destroy it. But we covered it, took some food and released it in a wood five miles from home. Perhaps it has a chance to survive. It had a large belly.....a very large belly.....so possibly pregnant. Just trying to cope with the usual preoccupations: finding a home, procreating, keeping safe.

Then I saw Lost Land of the Volcano, where a giant and friendly rat was discovered. In fact, all the animals were trusting, loving. They had no experience of man's neurotic need to change, kill or wipe out other species...including his own.

There is a twitch forming, a need to write. An absolute need, like a drug hit.

I wonder how my little rat is doing. I have a rat exterminator coming tomorrow. We booked him as an emergency measure, in case we had to poison them. But now I just want his advice where to block up holes etc. I must resist the urge to tease him though. When his mother gave birth to him, she gave him a fine aristocratic French christian name to go with his equally fine aristocratic surname. I don't think that she dreamed of him as an exterminator, or boasted to her friends that her son worked with poisons for a living. She was proud of him, proud of her son ROLAND.

Mustn't tease......