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Dreadful Nonsense

"I've read your blog. it's really funny. you should write a column." - Jon Ronson

On the morning of my birthday, He Who Only… got up and went out to the car, which was parked about a 10 minute walk away from our chalet. I decided, now that I was entering a new decade in my life, was ever so grown up and mature, was staying in the middle of a forest with no one in the immediate vicinity of our windows or garden area, and since I was on my holidays, I decided to waltz about in my pyjamas taking photographs in the early morning light of the views from our chalet.

They’re mainly of trees:


It’s a forest, you understand. That was the view from our bedroom window. It was also the view from our sitting room window, and from both the kitchen and hall window. And also the dining room. The chalet wasn't exactly huge, but by God it was perfectly formed - I could have lived there forever.

So, I was wandering about being at one with nature and at peace with the world, despite my naturally appalled reaction to the fact that I was suddenly so old, so very very old. Just off to my left, I spied a squirrel sitting quietly watching me and nibbling on a nut or something. I decided, while I was on a nature-loving roll, I would try to get some kind of artistically silhouetted shot of said squirrel, and then blog about it a few days later, saying something pithy about how wonderful life can be when you're not in the city, because in the countryside the rats have big busy tails and a way of lolloping that makes them infinitely more attractive and even bordering on the cute. Musing on just how clever I am, I squatted down for a better angle.

The squirrel suddenly sprinted towards me.

I backed off just as suddenly and stepped back in through the sliding glass door.

The squirrel kept running at me.

I shut the door in front of me.

The squirrel kept running at me.

I stood in shock behind the safety of the glass.

The squirrel ran right up to the door and started pawing at the side, as if trying to get it open.

I continued to stand in shock as the squirrel turned his head up to me, looked at me accusingly, and turned his attention to the outside table to see if I'd left anything valuable behind that he could pawn.

I remembered I was holding a camera, and documented my squirrel mugger thus -


Centre Parcs Sherwood Forest is a wonderful haven, a luxurious place to stay, somewhere I would highly recommend to anyone who thinks they might have fun going down waterslides for up to 20 hours a day (AND WHO IN THE WORLD WOULDN'T?!) but I have one sentence of warning:

Watch out for the mother fucking squirrels.

This entry was posted on 07 November 2006 at 7:10 pm. 0 comments

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