The Blind Swine - an atypical north Yorkshire experience

Day 41 

General status update

Hair: Hair is a bit nervous in north Yorkshire, what with the extreme cold. It is anxious that it might be fixin’ to break off when frozen. 

Nausea demon: still away in Bilbao –  he's fixin' to come back on Tuesday, the Eve of FEC3.

Chemo Muse: she LOVES it here in north Yorkshire, since BigSisFo’s life is so much more interesting than mine, and is lobbying for an extended stay, which deep down she knows is impossible, as we have an appointment with Stan the Oncologist back in London tomorrow 

Chemo Brian: also totally enchanted by my sister’s house, where there are huge leather sofas for him to sprawl on, and roaring log fires on which he can toast marshmallows. It may be quite a job to persuade them both to get on the train back to London on Monday morning..

Fatigue/weakness: Even though I gave most of my cocktails last night to R, it is fair to say that the chemo cannot be held entirely to blame for a certain sense of fragility this morning. 

Sleep, lack of: now building up a sleep bank before the next dose of steroid mania on Wednesday. 

Anxiety level (1-10): We took Hank for a long walk in the snow around a frozen lake this afternoon, and the MC is cooking roast beef and Yorkshire puddings this evening. And, as I sit writing this, he has just brought me a glass of Manzanilla, with some olives and Jamon Iberico, in case I need a little something to keep me going until dinner-time. Life at BigSisFo's is the Antidote to Anxiety.

State of mind: Much improved. Have hardly given a thought to cancer or chemo for the last 24 hours; it’s so good to be out of London,and back in God's own county.

 

 

Previously on Chemo Nights: on Saturday evening disaster strikes as the MC, hanging his poor, beautiful, tragic dead pheasants (not that I’m biased in any way on this matter, obvs) in the wine-cellar, discovers that a frozen pipe has burst in the adjoining outbuilding, and that a fairly major flood is underway.

Now read on:

He comes into the kitchen and informs BigSisFo of this news, in the manner of one who expects her to do something about it, sharpish. BigSisFo, who has had it up to here with dealing with domestic crises recently

 – what with having had to cope single-handedly with the extended and very unpleasant north Yorkshire Rat Apocalypse  while the MC was away in London being corporate far, far away from the terrible, unforgettable smell of decomposing rat -

ignores this very strong hint: after a brief trip outside to inspect the catastrophe-in-progress, she returns and recommences pouring the champagne with which we are just beginning R’s and my early birthday celebrations, saying she will stay here and continue to look after her little sister, WHO HAS CANCER, while ‘you boys’ sort things out outside.

R goes pale, realising he is being called upon to metamorphose instantly from Professor of Bioethics into Man of Action with a sub-speciality in fixing outdoor plumbing emergencies in the dark and freezing cold; however, he rises to the occasion and announces ‘We just need to find the stopcock’, before striding outside into the dark and the snow with the MC and Hank, who is now barking furiously as he realises that something exciting is happening.

BigSisFo and I remain in the kitchen, nestling close to the warmth of the Aga; we drink our champagne and eat olives, meanwhile musing sadly on MamaFo’s long ago, purposeful suggestion that it would really be very helpful for everyone if one of her daughters could manage to marry a plumber.

Much to our surprise the stopcock is located, and the water turned off, within about 15 minutes, and the men stride back in exultant at this proof of their manly skills in aquatic crisis-handling; we are then able to resume the planned birthday festivities, the next stage of which is going out to dinner at a recently opened temple of molecular gastronomy in York, called ‘The Blind Swine’, a place now so popular that BigSisFo had to book 3 months ahead to get this table on a Saturday night.

How to describe this restaurant-slash-cocktail bar which combines the steaming frozen nitrogen flourishes of Heston Blumenthal with a screaming Heavy Metal soundtrack and a chef and brigade de cuisine with more tattoos between them than a convention of Hell’s Angels?

BigSisFo sits down, takes in the scene around her and pronounces: ‘Oh. My. God. It’s Hogwart’s meets Spinal Tap on ACID.’

We look at the drinks menu, which includes a short and learned dissertation on gin, and find cocktails that are named with lines from the book ‘American Psycho’ and have lists of ingredients that stretch credulity:

‘Brandy, hay syrup, port, quail’s egg’.

We decide against that one.

My sister goes for the ‘I like to dissect girls – did you know I’m utterly insane?’ cocktail, which consists of a relatively subdued combination of gin, cranberry, lime, Cointreau and orange bitters.

In a spirit of adventure I opt for the ‘Ziggy Sorreldust’: gin, sorrel juice, apple, lemon, Parma violets and protein lime. Somewhat to my surprise, this turns out to be one of the most divine things I have ever tasted.

I say so, foolishly.

BigSisFo immediately grabs and tastes my drink, whines because it is better than hers, and tries to steal it, whilst I calculate how many hundreds of times similar scenes have been played out during our decades of sisterly co-existence, sibling rivalry, and occasional all-out warfare. R, an only child, looks on, bemused.

The food, and its service, is surreal.

There is no choice about what to eat – the chef, who only cooks three nights a week, and then for a maximum of four tables and 20 people, offers a tasting menu of 8 courses, accompanied by cocktails devised to complement the exquisite morsels of food. You can order wine or beer as well if you wish, but it doesn’t seem appropriate to mess with the chef’s Grand Plan, particularly as whoever devises the cocktails is clearly some kind of crazed genius.

                               photo from the Blind Swine website

There was a time in my life when I regularly went to cutting-edge restaurants, but in those days they didn’t involve spectacular feats with clouds of steaming frozen nitrogen; this is cooking as performance art or religious ritual, each course cooked in full view of the diners and set ceremoniously before you by the rock’n’roll chef and his body art-adorned  acolytes.

The first plate put in front of us contains a thimbleful of carrot sorbet, surrounded by carrot crisps; over this is poured hot carrot soup from an alchemist’s glass flask, billowing clouds of steam.

It is all about the carrots, obvs.

It is essence of carrot, 3 different ways.

It is delicious.

The accompanying cocktail is some kind of mojito, with rum, elderflower syrup and frozen shredded cucumber, which tastes an awful lot better than it sounds.

BigSisFo gazes across the room at the tattooed, muscled arms of the chef and wonders aloud whether he works out.

  Photograph © Mark Ivkovic

‘I expect he does an awful lot of chopping’ I say.

My sister, who after champagne and a couple of industrial strength cocktails is approaching a state which might be described as fairly well-oiled (although nowhere yet near completely rat-arsed) observes that the chef, who sports a startlingly blonde 70s glam-rock hair style, looks like a tattooed all-in-wrestler in a woman’s wig.

Feeling that this is a trifle unkind I point out, truthfully, that he also has the face of a Botticelli angel.

R, our musical expert, argues that the chef looks more like the guitarist Mick Ronson, of David Bowie fame, than anything one might find in Renaissance art,

but adds that his closest doppelgänger has to be Dougal, of the Magic Roundabout.

 

The MC’s expression on hearing this exchange of views is pained beyond belief.

 ‘You do realise this guy used to cook at NOMA?’ he asks, with the sad but resigned air of a man fated to be surrounded by culinary imbeciles at moments of exquisite gastronomic intensity

 

 For those who do not follow such matters, NOMA is a now legendary Danish restaurant regarded as the second best restaurant in the world - after the late lamented El Bulli - by devotees of its intensely seasonal and often foraged food, where each plateful represents its own tiny ecosystem, and hay is often mentioned, although I’ve never been entirely clear in which precise context .

The rest of us, duly chastised,  shut up and apply ourselves with due reverence to the second course, which pays homage to the Spirit of Beetroot in the form of a playful melange of roast beetroot, beetroot puree, millet and pine nuts, decorated with a light dusting of vanilla snow.

It is at this moment that BigSisFo’s phone rings, and it becomes apparent that the as-yet-unidentified person on the other end of it is very upset indeed.

As we commence the third course - pea sorbet with a sliver of Iberico ham, aged for 15 years (the ham not the sorbet) with smoking hot pea and ham soup poured over the top, accompanied by Pain de Campagne with whipped black garlic butter – my sister says things like ‘He did WHAT?’ and ‘Oh my God, that is appalling behaviour’ and ‘I’d like to string that little bastard up by his BALLS’.

This conversation goes on for some time, and we are drinking our next cocktails – Sorrel Sours, AWESOME – and digging into veal sweetbreads with black garlic puree and what is possibly a poppadum made of dried white cabbage, by the time she finally rings off and explains to the rest of us what is amiss.

It transpires that a young female friend is undergoing an acute emotional crisis in  Texas, involving a travelling musician who has turned out to be a devil with the ladies as well as his bull fiddle. We all sit aghast as BigSisFo relates this tale of woe, and I reflect that it as well for the Good Ol’ Texas Boy in question that the Atlantic currently lies between him and my big sister.

Happily the next cocktail -  the ‘Chipotle Swinereiser’ a confection of rum, lemon, chipotle bitters, and blond beer with an orange twist  - arrives in the nick of time to take the edge off her ire, followed swiftly by more food: a king scallop atop a slice of boudin noir, resting on a tiny pillow of cauliflower puree and a slick of curry oil. The food has been getting better and better with every course, and this is just perfect.

It is perhaps unfortunate that the MC chooses this moment to observe that anyone who chooses to enter into a relationship with a young, good-looking male musician who spends most of his year on the road touring must surely be aware of the unlikelihood of such a union turning out to be of a monogamous and enduring nature.

BigSisFo turns on him, eyes flashing:

‘WHAT’ she hisses - she hisses magnificently, my sister, like a female cobra on steroids- ‘do you mean by that? Are you suggesting that this is in some way HER fault?’

I will draw a veil over the ensuing conversational carnage, and the response to my own suggestion that being done wrong by a bull fiddle player in Texas must surely count as a splendidly authentic blues experience, even if your name does happen to be Xanthe.

No, let us move swiftly on, as we do in the restaurant, to the next course: hanger steak topped with gremolata, accompanied by herbed gnocchi. My notes have become rather illegible and a little bit sticky by this point, but I think it may well have been accompanied by a cocktail, name unrecorded, composed of Chartreuse, Cointreau, gin and lemon juice.

Next, a playful take on egg on fried bread: a tiny piece of French toast, with a round white slice of Jerusalem artichoke topped with a little yellow dollop of lemon curd,  served with raspberry ketchup. This course is presented without cutlery, and we all end up licking raspberry ketchup off our fingers.

Just as I’m thinking that this was a delightful finale to the meal, the insanely delicious Beurre Noisette Ice Cream on a bed of yogurt cake scattered with shards of cinder toffee arrives, followed shortly afterwards by the final round of cocktails: espresso martinis made of God-knows-what, drunk with a straw poked through a hole in the layer of cling-film covering the glasses to trap in a layer of smoke.

I think.

One of the lesser-tattooed wait-persons has assured us, earlier in the evening, that the strength of the cocktails accompanying the meal is only half that of those on the bar menu; it is, nevertheless, a sign of the stamina of the Fo women and their consorts that as this extraordinary meal draws to a close we are all still sitting more or less upright in our seats and capable of conversation, of a sort.

It’s a very good thing that none of us is driving home, though.

The taxi takes us home safely though the snowy lanes of north Yorkshire, and Hank’s excited barking greets us as we slither and slide over the frozen snowy gravel towards the back door. On entering the kitchen we find Hank in his customary place on his special fake-fur blanket next to the Aga.

As I walk towards him Hank gets up, tail wagging, with some kind of large purple rag clenched between his huge, slavering jaws. 

Seconds later I recognise the shredded purple rag as what used to be my cardigan, left carelessly slung over one of the kitchen chairs when we went out earlier; as this realisation dawns I hear, as from a great distance,  the sound of my friend Danielle (aka @Pochyemu), whose American passport was eaten by my dog Freddie in Ayvalik three years ago, laughing and laughing and laughing…

 

They seek him here, they seek him there: The North Yorkshire Rat Apocalypse Revisited

Day 36:  

General status update 

Hair: 36 days into chemo and I haven’t yet lost any hair – whichever way you look at it, it’s AMAZING. A big thank-you to the Paxman Cold Cap Company – even if it all falls out tomorrow , you’ve made the first 5 weeks of the Chemo Nightmare a hell of a lot easier to bear. I’ve even forgiven you for making the damn thing that particularly lurid shade of neon Day-Glo PINK. 

Nausea demon: Very subdued. I’ve only had to take one lot of meds so far today, and have discontinued the third anti-emetic, Ondansetron, for the time being. He’s keeping himself busy with his OU work and his romantic adventures. So happy not to be seeing very much of him at the moment. 

Chemo Muse: She’s struggling to make herself heard in the face of the fatigue – her voice is still strong, but the chemo is making me so tired now that I can’t achieve the Stakhanovite work rate I exhibited during the giddy steroid madness of the first cycle of FEC. She’s very much looking forward to the early days of FEC3, in 9 days’ time, when I will once again be hopped up to the gills on Dexamethasone and raring to go. She did suggest, tentatively, that maybe I could ask Stan the oncologist for a bigger, longer dose of steroids next time – then we could really have some fun. I said I would think about it.

 

Chemo Brian: He’s found my not-yet-attempted ‘knit your own nativity scene’ kit by the side of the sofa, and has decided to have a go. He learnt how to knit AND weave on a commune in Vermont at some point in the 70s, apparently. Not quite sure how good he’s going to be at following the pattern, but he’s totally engrossed, and says he is perfectly capable of knitting and watching Wallace and Gromit videos at the same time. To each his own. 

Fatigue/weakness: no change – no longer quite so debilitating, but my batteries are very, very flat.  

Sleep, lack of: n/a 

Anxiety level (1-10): Sitting here watching the snow falling is very soothing. 

State of mind: It’s snowing! I love the snow! Especially as I don’t have to go anywhere just now, and can sit and look at it out of the window.

News from North Yorkshire: worrying – see below.

My sister calls, and I share with her the exciting news that today has been yet another day when I have NOT woken up with hair shed all over the pillow. We muse together on how the wondrous Cold Cap might have been invented, but after my horrifying research last week into the origins of chemotherapy, I decide not to trouble Google with that particular topic just yet.

 

It has been a while since we discussed my sister's rat problem and, mindful of the fact that if all goes well R and I will be spending the coming weekend up in north Yorkshire chez BigSisFo, I ask her if the rat thing is now completely over.

‘Ah’ says my sister, ‘funny you should mention that…’

A week ago, the MC came down to breakfast ashen-faced.

‘There were noises, last night – noises coming from the attic.’

BigSisFo was deeply engrossed in the Killer Sudoku and, initially, not overly concerned.

‘It’s an old house, darling, there are always noises.’

‘No, DARLING, the rats are back, and last night they were stomping about on the attic floor above my bedroom ceiling.’

Do not, gentle reader, worry yourself as to the reason why BigSisFo and the MC do not share sleeping quarters – it is no way a reflection on the state of their relationship (although Hank is in therapy, obvs). When you have a house big enough for your own Red Room of Pain  with so many huge bedrooms, it makes sense to confine snoring to the privacy of one’s own private domain.  I’m not saying which of them snores, but it’s not Hank.

My sister looked up, not overly thrilled to be interrupted at the very moment  the Way In to the Killer Sudoku had just manifested itself in her brain.

‘It’s probably bats, not rats. Really, I have a nose for them now – if there were any rats in this house I could smell them. You’re just being neurotic’

‘You’re good at smelling dead rats, not live ones. I’m telling you THERE ARE RATS IN THE ATTIC. I spent half of last night listening to them. Stomping. Above my ceiling. Something needs to be done immediately’.

My sister sighed. The MC gets to take clients to London’s finest restaurants on a regular basis; rat-management in north Yorkshire is her bailiwick.

‘Sweetheart, the rats were underneath the floorboards on the ground floor, and they are now ALL DEAD and disposed of.  I counted the corpses out, by the side of the Pest Control man. The rats are OVER. And even if there were any more rats, how on earth could they have got up into the attic?’

‘Haven’t you ever heard the expression ‘like a rat up a drainpipe’? It exists FOR A REASON’.

‘Oh, for goodness sake… how could a rat climb up inside thirty feet of smooth plastic drainpipe? They’ve only got tiny little legs and arms, and there’s nothing for them to dig their claws into. They’d have to spread out their arms and legs and inch their way up like a mountaineer inside one of those rock chimneys. Unless you’re suggesting they’re using actual crampons.’

‘They could have climbed up the outside of the house, on the wisteria.’

BigSisFo paused at this, struck by the horrifying image of the Mutant Ninja Super Rats of north Yorkshire, swarming up her wisteria. It didn’t bear thinking about. She gave in. 

‘OK, I’ll call the council and get the Pest Control bloke out again.’

 ‘No, that’ll take too long. I don’t want to wait a week this time. Get  someone private in.’

My sister giggled at this point, unable to help herself.  ‘Ratbusters?’

The MC failed to see the funny side. ‘Whoever. Whoever will come today’.

 The Ratbuster, like the council Pest Control man before him, was a bluff north Yorkshireman deeply versed in the ways of rodents both great and small. His on the spot diagnosis was: ‘ Can’t tell at this stage if it’s mice or rats. We’ll know after we look at t’traps. Rats have to eat t’ cardboard to get at t’ food inside, mice are small enough to get in t’ little hole’.

The bad news for BigSisFo was that it is perfectly possible, and not uncommon, for rats to find their way into an attic. She was so appalled she forgot to ask how the rats got up there.

Worse, the Ratbuster has clients with a rat in the attic so hard to get rid of that he has recently visited them for the fourteenth time. Their attic floor has been covered in traps with poisoned food, and pieces of cardboard covered in some kind of superglue designed to stick to rats’ feet, thus rendering them immobile, but to no avail. The clients have even installed video-cameras up in the attic, and now have extensive footage of their rat deftly evading every obstacle put in front of him in what is now, effectively, a large poisoned assault course for rats.

‘He’s a nimble little bugger, I’ll give him that’ the Ratbuster concluded, before laying more traps outside BigSisFo’s house and leaving, with a promise to return this coming Friday to check the state of the attic and make a full diagnosis of the nature of  its new residents, whether rats, mice or ….. could it be the ghosts of the dead rats from under the floorboards, come back from the grave to torment the MC in revenge for their grisly end? 

At this stage, I don’t think we should rule anything out.

 

 

This song is a very special dedication to BigSisFo and The MC, who endure my merciless mocking with the greatest good humour, and still keep inviting me to stay… can’t wait to see you guys, and of course Hank and his Humongous Balls, at the weekend xxx

 

 

The North Yorkshire Rat Apocalypse

Day 11

General Status Update

Hair: no change and, because I’m afraid to brush it, looking pretty ratty.

Nausea Demon: Increasingly cross. Claims the powerful and disabling cocktail of anti-nausea drugs he is now being administered every day is breaching his Inhuman Rights. Threatening to take me to an employment tribunal.

Heightened sense of smell: should you come within 10 yards of me on the street eating KFC or a kebab, I WILL KILL YOU.

Anxiety level (1-10): but enough about me – how anxious are YOU now feeling, after reading all this? I bet you’re checking yourself for strange lumps on a much more regular basis now, aren’t you?

State of mind: best observed through a glass, darkly.

 

The first I knew of the North Yorkshire Rat Apocalypse was a few weeks ago, on one of the coldest, darkest and stormiest nights of the year, the night 2 months’ worth of rain fell on the north of England during the space of a few hours.

 The phone rang, and on the other end was Big Sis Fo, babbling:

‘They’re outside, they’re outside’ she cried ‘they’re BANGING ON THE WALLS, and they’re TRYING TO GET INSIDE THE HOUSE!’

 After pausing for an instant to draw breath, she continued:

 ‘And the internet has gone off and it’s been raining non-stop for 24 hours and the beck is going to overflow any minute and then we’ll be flooded and then we’ll never be able to sell this house again NEVER NEVER NEVER, and we will have to live here FOREVER!’ 

‘But I thought you loved the house so much that you never want to move again, and intend to be carried out of there in a box, feet first?’

‘That, Caroline’ replied my sister, a touch tersely, ‘is BESIDE THE FUCKING POINT’.

 I made soothing noises, and suggested that she pour herself a Weapons Grade gin and tonic, for medicinal purposes, and tell me exactly what was going on.

At this point I should give you a little background info on Big Sis Fo, the oldest of the Fo Sisters - there are five of us in all, including my two lovely step-sisters (who are not genetically Fos and therefore much saner, generally nicer and incomparably better-mannered than the rest of us). We are like the Bennet sisters, only middle-aged and with iPhones. And without the lovely frocks. I like to think of myself as Elizabeth (delusional, much?) and my younger sister, aka L’il Sis Fo, to whom you have yet to be introduced, is Lydia. Very Definitely Lydia.

 

Big Sis Fo is thus, obviously, Jane.

Like Jane Bennet, Big Sis Fo found a Happy Ending with her true love (only in her case, second time round), and they live together, with a truly demented Hungarian Visla called Hank (think Scooby Doo on crystal meth), in an exquisitely restored 18^th century farmhouse (pure property porn, it’s even been featured in one of THOSE magazines), with a stream (in local parlance ‘beck’) running through the grounds, in a small hamlet on the north Yorkshire plain, on the edge of the Howardian Hills (the geological significance of this location will become apparent later). 

 

 

By the way, as always with stories of Fo family members, please be assured that I am not making anything up (a friend suggested me to me recently that the Fo family motto should be ‘Ultra parodiam’ i.e. ‘Beyond parody’, and I think he may well be right).

So, Big Sis Fo lives a truly enviable life in her rural idyll with a man who

a) is utterly devoted to her,

b) is 13 years younger than her,

c) earns a quite ridiculous amount of money as a partner in one of the big management consulting firms (so let’s call him the MC from now, for ease of reference),

d) not only insists on doing all the cooking, but does so to pretty much restaurant quality standards (his pink grapefruit granita is to die for),

e) has converted the stables into a wine cellar to house his ever-growing collection of rare and precious vintages, including a world class selection of vintage champagne, and finally – 

and this is the one which is going to make women everywhere want to HUNT DOWN AND KILL my sister 

f) insists on doing absolutely everything related to Christmas.

 

I will repeat that, the MC does Christmas. Every single bit of it.

 

Christmas is his hobby, for goodness sake; he takes two weeks leave every year in December to devote himself to the whole enterprise, from presents to decorations (I’ll leave you to imagine the Christmas tree) to the seven course Christmas lunch extravaganza, accompanied by the kinds of wines that the likes of you or me are highly unlikely to get to drink in this lifetime (unless we happen to be related to him, that is, which happily I am).

You’re beginning to hate Big Sis Fo now, aren’t you? I don’t blame you – it’s almost impossible not to. The rest of it you could just about take, but the Christmas thing is the absolute killer. I keep thinking she must have done something amazingly wonderful, in karmic terms, in a previous life, to deserve the one she has now. Maybe she was Mahatma Gandhi, or Mother Teresa. She’s very fond of curry, come to think of it – but no matter, you’re going to start feeling a whole lot more sympathetic towards her when we get to the full horror of the Rat Apocalypse, which will be very, very soon.

Rats apart, the only other less than optimal feature of my sister’s fabulous existence is that the MC, who likes to go shooting and salmon-fishing when off-duty, has landed her with the daily care and maintenance of his dog Hank, a Hungarian hunting dog with major behavioural problems, despite having being sent away for training at the gun dog equivalent of Eton. Although, to be fair, his education was cut short, rather abruptly, after he urinated all over the dog trainer’s feet, in an attempt to assert his dominance, something which no other trainee gun dog had ever had the balls to do. Hank’s balls, by the way, are enormous, and the fact that they are still attached to him is a continuing bone of contention between Big Sis Fo and her partner… but I digress. We will return to Hank and his humongous balls another day.

 

 

Where was I? The night of the storm, and my sister on the phone, swigging back almost neat Bombay Sapphire on ice to calm herself as she began to tell me how she and the MC had, a few days previously, become aware that they might have a problem with vermin.

 When you live in a big house, especially a very old and very cold one in the bracing climate of north Yorkshire, you inevitably end up spending most of your time in one or two favourite rooms; such is the case with Big Sis Fo and the MC who, of an evening, are usually to be found in a tiny little room off the kitchen known, inevitably, as ‘The Snug’; this little den has barely enough room to hold a small sofa, an armchair and the 42” plasma TV the MC had installed above the fireplace, the better to watch the Cooking Channel non-stop from a horizontal position when he is not out at work, or otherwise engaged.

One evening a few weeks ago Big Sis Fo, the MC and Hank were all sitting in front of the fire, watching Yotam Ottolenghi disassemble a large squid, when they became aware of noises coming from – underneath them. Hank immediately began to run round in circles, quite difficult for a dog his size in a room that small, barking his head off. The MC muted Yotam for a moment, and they all continued to listen. Yes, something – or rather a number of somethings – was moving around under the floorboards. Stomping in fact. Quite loudly. It was evident that there was a party going on down below to which the official occupants of the house had definitely not been invited.

‘OMG’ said my sister ‘we’ve got mice. I’d better get some traps’

‘I dunno,’ said the MC ‘it sounds a bit loud for mice. Maybe it’s badgers.’

‘I don’t think they sell badger traps,’ replied Big Sis Fo ‘and aren’t they protected? If it’s badgers, they won’t let us touch them. It’s like bats. Hell’s teeth, we may end up being forced to run a badger sanctuary.’

The next day my sister put down mouse traps. The noises from below continued, however, and grew louder, as the new occupants started asking their friends to drop by; by the end of the week they decided that there nothing else for it but to call in the council Pest Control man.

When the Pest Control man walked into the snug, he just sniffed the air and said ‘’Ey up*, love, you’ve got rats. I can smell ’em’. Big Sis Fo was mortified to hear that her house stank of rats, but the Pest Control man hastened to assure her that in his line of work he had developed a heightened sensitivity to the very faintest traces of rat odour, quite undetectable by the average person.

After examining the exterior of the house, the Pest Control man found the hole where the rats had tunnelled through the base of the wall under the bay window in the snug. He laid poisoned bait in various places around the exterior of the house, assuring Big Sis Fo that, once poisoned, the rats would head out from under the house to seek water, as poison makes them very thirsty. As my sister stood at the open door waving him off, she heard a noise and looked down. A large black rat was sitting just in front of the doorstep, looking up at her, as if waiting for admittance.

 

 

(picture posed by model - that is not the actual rat). .

The wall through which the rats had tunnelled inside was repointed; within a few days they had eaten their way through the new mortar, and were back inside, continuing to party. The new breed of Giant Mutant Ninja Rats - and these ones are particularly hard, coming from Yorkshire - just love mortar with a side of rat poison. And the reason they were continuing to invade the house, as on the night of the storm, when my sister could hear them scrabbling around just outside, banging on the wall, trying to get in, was - the weather.

The massive rainfall experienced this year has meant that the Yorkshire plain is SODDEN; black rats have a particular aversion to getting their feet wet, so have been coming out of the fields and hedges looking for warm, dry places of refuge. North Yorkshire and, for all I know, the rest of the country, is genuinely facing a plague of black rats, a lot of whom found their way chez Big Sis Fo.

In the end, the ONE THING that prevented any more rats getting in was, strangely, Brillo Pads. Rats will eat anything, up to and including actual walls, but they won’t eat Brillo Pads. The texture and taste of wire wool covered in caustic detergent doesn’t agree with them, apparently. Please note this useful tip for future reference in case the Rat Apocalypse moves into your neighbourhood next.

So, things were looking up: the rats had either been poisoned, or couldn’t get inside any more, and gradually the noises underfoot stopped. Problem solved.

A few days later, the smell started.

My sister, when asked to describe what the corpse of a dead rat decomposing under your floorboards smells like, was both clear and concise:

‘It smells like liquid death – SWEET liquid death. It is unspeakably vile and even just thinking about it makes me want to vomit.’

So the carpenter came, to take up the floorboards in the snug, now rendered uninhabitable by the awful, terrible-beyond-imagining smell that was wafting up from below; the Brillo pads, of course, had not only prevented more rats from getting in - they also stopped the poisoned rats from getting out. Underneath the floorboards they found the decomposing corpse of one recently deceased rat, and one mummified rat; problem solved.

But a few days later the smell reappeared, first in the dining room and then, bafflingly, in the snug. And so it went on. By the end of last week all the floorboards in the entire ground floor of the house had been taken up, and a total of 4 fresh rat corpses, and 3 mummified ones, removed. The carpenter insists that there are no longer any decomposing corpses in situ, but my sister swears he is wrong – she thinks there is at least one left, somewhere inside the old, thick stone walls, which cannot be got at. 

‘I know the smell of dead rat by now’ she said, darkly ‘I’ve lived with it long enough, and there’s still at least one there. I KNOW THERE IS.’ 

Christmas is coming, the highlight of the MC’s year, and there will be a number of guests around the dining room table for his command performance. All Big Sis Fo can do is hope that the smell will finally have dissipated by next week – but she isn’t holding her breath. Although she will be on Christmas Day, quite possibly.

She’s asked me to give her a flame thrower for Christmas.

So that, my friends, is the true story of the North Yorkshire Rat Apocalypse.

On the whole, I’d prefer to have the chemo.

 

*People do actually still use this expression in Yorkshire dialect, it is not a comic myth - it comes from Old Norse. I have heard it myself.

Coming Attraction: The Rat Apocalypse

Day 10

General status update:

 

Hair: still attached, but it’s starting to look a bit worried.

Nausea Demon:Confined to his room until the next dose of Chemo on Jan 2^nd, and very unhappy about that; he is thinking about signing up for an OU distance learning course to use his down time productively.

Enhanced sense of smell: It has been suggested to me that I should take advantage of this new super-power, and hire myself out as a truffle hunter. I may go and test this out amongst the trees at Kew.Must be some truffles there.

Anxiety level (1-10): I just looove sedatives.Why don’t they just sedate you for the whole 100days? It would be so much easier on everyone.

State of mind:  Fragmented. Of which more later.

 

The first week of my first chemo cycle has been one of exhausting, distressing  and unremitting horribleness, as those of you who are by now regular readers will already know; you might expect to find me today, then, lying on the sofa, having a little weep and feeling very, very sorry for myself.

Wrong.

I have absolutely no time available to lie around feeling sorry for myself, because I am far too busy feeling sorry for my older sister, aka BigSisFo, who, whilst I have been trudging wearily through the foothills of the Chemo Mountain, has been experiencing something far, far worse:

The North Yorkshire Rat Apocalypse. 

The story of the North Yorkshire Rat Apocalypse is one so horrifying, so terrifying, so gut-wrenching in every visceral sense of that expression, that I must do it justice; it would be to diminish BigSisFo's very real suffering were I not to transmit to you the story in properly detailed fashion and that cannot, sadly, be accomplished by the end of today.

This post is, therefore, by way of a trailer for tomorrow’s big attraction: 

 

The North Yorkshire Rat Apocalypse

‘A spooky old house – a cold dark night – the storm of the century, with the river about to flood  - a woman alone, but for her faithful though demented crack-crazed hound – and an ARMY of GIANT BLACK RATS, seeking shelter from the storm.’

 

 This is a story guaranteed to make you feel better about your own circumstances, however wretched they may be  - be sure to log on about this time tomorrow night…