The menace that is Dennis.

Dennis The Menace is sitting behind me cushioned in the armchair. He squirks and purrs, lets himself be held for the length of a song, and has started exploring upstairs.
I boiled some chicken thighs for three minutes and he wolfed it down, we tried giving it to him raw but Dennis played with the chunks of food like it was a mouse.
He doesn’t hide behind the settee anymore, but he is being confined to barracks for another two weeks and then he will go out and play in the garden – and hopefully come back home – he will sleep in the sun behind the swing set next to the Brugmansia, the common name is angel’s trumpets, or he’ll nestle in between the bell flowers and grasses. Or sit on the bench under the apple trees or even squash himself up behind the potatoes.
Dennis makes me feel lazy. I spray my hands with expensive perfume then stroke him so he smells delicious, I hold him close, his purring amplifies, until it makes my eye lids heavy, which is not difficult at the moment as all my glasses are out of date. This required a trip to the opticians with the old git. Masked and socially distanced Rachel, the optometrist told me my prescription had substantially changed, so in the blinking of an eye 682 pounds was shelled out for new lenses, new frames and new reading glasses. ( Whaaaat! I hear you…. ) To be honest I have been struggling with my latest reading choice, ‘The House in Paris’, by Elizabeth Bowen, the writing is lavish, her style quaintly dated but the print is so small, and my readers so out of date, that I have been holding her at arms length, squinting up close and finally resorting to a huge magnifying square that is hung round the neck and balanced on the decolletage. If the delicate balance is upset, like reaching out for a cup of Turmeric milk, or re-setting the alarm, in one hapless moment the heavy plastic lens realigns itself with a smash on the nose ( twice ) or a bang on the lip (twice) or the forehead ( once ). Who’d have thought such a slim book could cause such damage.
So I write this wearing an old pair of bins until my new ones are ready. The ‘oosbind has just brought in a handmade scratching post, for Dennis, although he needs to go to the hardware store – that’s The Old Git not the new Puss – to buy some rope for Dennis to scratch until he’s let out into the wild.
I watched the lunch time news with a masked Potus swaggering with his band of grey advisors, all covered up and supportive of the new tone that the cock womble is now using. As November hurtles towards him he knows that he’d better try and stem the death toll if he is to come anywhere in the polls. I dont want him to be a better man, I dont want him to be saner and more generous, I want him to keep revealing what kind of wanker he is so that he can be consigned to the dustbin of time.
Wednesday is still shining through the window, I’m about to make a Korean saucy dinner, then settle down to Mrs. America with the head of the house, whilst the off spring is upstairs starting on her new project. I’m finding the walk up to the attic and my writing like a pilgrimage from here to Camino de Santiago, or more accurately Knock, since I am on my knees trying to break the deadlock of writing, creativity, Covid and ‘The House in Paris’. I am, however, dedicated to a morning routine of meditation, Wim Hof breathing, ice cold showers and yoga. Doing yoga outside in the sunshine is lovely, but then the day gets in the way and my writing suffers.
Dennis is asleep, the other two are outside and I’m left with any bag of Basmati and bottle of Chinese rice wine wondering whether to put the news on again or whether to play Chet Baker. The smooth horn player wins out over the buffoon blowing his own horn as he dismantles life as we know it.
Enjoy Mercredi soir.