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Authors: Lynne Truss
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motley, beady-eyed ingrate suddenly kicks the bucket on Sunday night when all the pet shops are shut. Stiff-legged on the floor of his hutch, the hamster peers through its straw with a great eternal question in its lifeless gaze. It appears to be thinking, ‘Get out of that. You can’t, can you?’
But unfortunately single life does bring its own version of the Death of Raffles routine. Since you tend not to take holidays at peak times (such as the first week in August), you can find yourself cheerfully agreeing to be pet-servicer, plant-waterer and fish-food-sprinkler for such a large number of lucky neighbouring holiday-makers that you would certainly bend under the burden of responsibility if the weight of all the flipping door-keys didn’t stagger you first. Currently my key-ring is so heavy with other people’s Chubbs, Banhams and Ingersolls that I am permanently reminded of the great clanking whatsit dragged around by Marley’s Ghost.
I am quite happy to do it; besides, they do the same for me. I am just terrified that something will die, like Raffles, and break somebody’s heart. Take the Herbs. For the past fortnight I have tended some little potted herbs, which evidently blossomed and thrived until I came along, but have subsequently withered on the stalk, and are now succumbing in heaps, like a herbaceous equivalent of the last act of Hamlet. Each time I pop my head around the door, a basil plant whispers ‘I die’ or ‘The restis silence’ and collapses; it is ghastly. To my returning friend it will look as though Agent Orange has swept through her kitchen on a pale horse. Twice a day I creep in, ostensibly to do more hopeful watering, but mainly to confront the horror and measure the devastation. I shall never be able to look a plate of pesto in the face again.
Latch-key duty is one of those rare things in life (operating the red button in a nuclear silo is another) where the sense of onerous responsibility is out of all proportion to the teensy effort required. Perhaps that’s why it worries me so much. Feeding fish takes precisely fifteen seconds, but the fear of forgetting such a tiny thing gives me sleepless nights.
Also, I feel awkward letting myself in to someone’s house: I don’t look around, I don’t breathe, and the sound of my own voice (‘Hello fishies, ha ha, still alive?’) gives me the creeps. The whole operation being so brief and automatic, I assume at midnight I must have got it all mixed up. Perhaps I sprinkled fish-food on the curtains. Perhaps I watered the cat.
Of course, some people must do it differently. Keys give them the run of the place, and they love it. They let themselves in, light a cigarette, put the kettle on, and start rummaging in your sock-drawer for interesting ticket-stubs, so that they can startle you a week later by asking ‘How was
Night of the Iguana,
by the way?’ Obviously this is the sort of fish-food-sprinkler to avoid, but sometimes you don’t recognize them until it is too late. Once, a friend of mine asked a chronically inquisitive chap actually to reside in her flat for a week while she took a holiday; and rashly ignored the warning signals when, immediately on hand-over, he whipped open cupboards and drawers in the manner of a professional burglar, saying, ‘Anywhere you don’t want me to look?’ and ‘Oh how very interesting. Fond of pink.’
Pretty loud warning signals, really; but she was late for a plane, so took a quick mental inventory of sexually incriminatingmaterial and decided to risk it. On holiday (with me), she fantasized (with my help) that her house-sitter was currently waltzing around the living-room dressed in her most expensive evening-frock, boozing direct from the bottle and leafing through her teenage diaries. She never discovered whether this alarming picture had any basis in reality, but when she asked him ‘How was your stay?’ he replied, ‘Well, it did fill a few gaps.’
Having just popped out to see the
But unfortunately single life does bring its own version of the Death of Raffles routine. Since you tend not to take holidays at peak times (such as the first week in August), you can find yourself cheerfully agreeing to be pet-servicer, plant-waterer and fish-food-sprinkler for such a large number of lucky neighbouring holiday-makers that you would certainly bend under the burden of responsibility if the weight of all the flipping door-keys didn’t stagger you first. Currently my key-ring is so heavy with other people’s Chubbs, Banhams and Ingersolls that I am permanently reminded of the great clanking whatsit dragged around by Marley’s Ghost.
I am quite happy to do it; besides, they do the same for me. I am just terrified that something will die, like Raffles, and break somebody’s heart. Take the Herbs. For the past fortnight I have tended some little potted herbs, which evidently blossomed and thrived until I came along, but have subsequently withered on the stalk, and are now succumbing in heaps, like a herbaceous equivalent of the last act of Hamlet. Each time I pop my head around the door, a basil plant whispers ‘I die’ or ‘The restis silence’ and collapses; it is ghastly. To my returning friend it will look as though Agent Orange has swept through her kitchen on a pale horse. Twice a day I creep in, ostensibly to do more hopeful watering, but mainly to confront the horror and measure the devastation. I shall never be able to look a plate of pesto in the face again.
Latch-key duty is one of those rare things in life (operating the red button in a nuclear silo is another) where the sense of onerous responsibility is out of all proportion to the teensy effort required. Perhaps that’s why it worries me so much. Feeding fish takes precisely fifteen seconds, but the fear of forgetting such a tiny thing gives me sleepless nights.
Also, I feel awkward letting myself in to someone’s house: I don’t look around, I don’t breathe, and the sound of my own voice (‘Hello fishies, ha ha, still alive?’) gives me the creeps. The whole operation being so brief and automatic, I assume at midnight I must have got it all mixed up. Perhaps I sprinkled fish-food on the curtains. Perhaps I watered the cat.
Of course, some people must do it differently. Keys give them the run of the place, and they love it. They let themselves in, light a cigarette, put the kettle on, and start rummaging in your sock-drawer for interesting ticket-stubs, so that they can startle you a week later by asking ‘How was
Night of the Iguana,
by the way?’ Obviously this is the sort of fish-food-sprinkler to avoid, but sometimes you don’t recognize them until it is too late. Once, a friend of mine asked a chronically inquisitive chap actually to reside in her flat for a week while she took a holiday; and rashly ignored the warning signals when, immediately on hand-over, he whipped open cupboards and drawers in the manner of a professional burglar, saying, ‘Anywhere you don’t want me to look?’ and ‘Oh how very interesting. Fond of pink.’
Pretty loud warning signals, really; but she was late for a plane, so took a quick mental inventory of sexually incriminatingmaterial and decided to risk it. On holiday (with me), she fantasized (with my help) that her house-sitter was currently waltzing around the living-room dressed in her most expensive evening-frock, boozing direct from the bottle and leafing through her teenage diaries. She never discovered whether this alarming picture had any basis in reality, but when she asked him ‘How was your stay?’ he replied, ‘Well, it did fill a few gaps.’
Having just popped out to see the
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