Saturday 19 November 2011

Shedding

I do not like engaging with the outdoors.

Walking is all right, as long as it leads to a pub.  But things like gardening are just hideous.  Whatever happened to pouring concrete on everything and having a small herbaceous border?  I have just dismantled a shed.  Let me tell you the instructions don't work in reverse.  And since I put the shed up, various kinds of wildlife have claimed it.  I thank God in his wisdom for my electric screwdriver but what was he thinking of with snails?

As I'm giving the shed to my brother I thought it best to pick the snails off first.  It seems polite.  Snails just make the most awful sound.  Whether you are picking them off something (a sort of snotty sucking) or inadvertently killing them (snotty crunch), they can't seem to make any noise that isn't like snot.  And once you've stepped on them (I could not help it, they were having a sort of meeting right where I was standing), you have to avoid them because you end with dead thing all over you.

In order to get the shed into packable pieces I had to employ:
  • a hammer
  • a blunt carving knife
  • a cardigan
I would like to say that no snails were harmed in the making of this post.  But that would be patently untrue so, in memory of all those snails who gave their lives:





    4 comments:

    1. And since I put the shed up, various kinds of wildlife have claimed it.

      Good for them! Your house is your domain and the outdoors is their domain! Stop trying to colonise their habitat!

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    2. Thank you for your comments and the keen use of exclamation. I'm happy for them to have the garden and actually I don't even mind them indoors. I had a snail on my bed for ages.

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    3. Your bed? Well, it appears I misjudged you. Not even Davy Attenborough would share his bed with a snail. In all honesty, I don't think bedsheets or duvets are a suitable surface for a snail to move around on. Perhaps you should invite the next one to stay in your bathroom.

      ReplyDelete
    4. I'll bear it in mind. Perhaps the one on my bed was really lonely.

      ReplyDelete