WILDLIFE

I'm not good getting up at 5 a.m. and worse at 5 p.m. after helping mother at her craft market all day. I feel sorry for Costello, it's hard work separating people from their money although I do it with a smile and genuine poverty. My knees give up and my spine has enough snap, crackle and pop to qualify for breakfast cereal. Sorry Bracksie but a two minute shower doesn't do it after one of these days.

Shower followed by new perfume and deodorant, non aluminium brain destroying but herbal neroli. Hopefully not tested on freshly shaved fluffy bunny nether regions. I need deodorant, it's bad enough looking old, I don't need to smell like I'm decaying. I use a roll-on because I have bad aim with a spray but roll-on is sticky so I usually go to bed and hold arms in the air, contemplating the great mysteries of the universe (why are Bush's eyes like a cornered rat's?) while neroli dries.

I always check the ceiling before turning out the lights, huntsman spiders love my bedroom but only a moth tonight. Why does everyone say moths flutter? They flrrrrrrrrp not flutter and in the dark, the flrrrrrrrrrping sounds like Mothra coming in to land on Japan. Flrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp, flrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrp, flrrrrrrrrrrrrp, flrrrr................oh for grief's sake, I have a moth struggling to unglue its feeties from my Le Brea arm pit. I don't remember Care of Magical Creatures saying anything about how to get a moth out of an armpit without dismemberment. Holding one arm in the air and frantically searching for anythng to rescue the flrrrrrrrrrping idiot, I finally settle on combing it out.

I know they only live a short time but it wasn't using me as a moth graveyard and the last I see of it, it's crawling under the bed to be a Christmas feast for all those dust mite things that live in beds and pillows and eat skin scales. Given my skin size I must be supporting a sizable population. Not to mention the fungal ecosystems which inhabit pillows which I know about courtesy of scientists who say we are sleeping on 16 different species which get nourishment from the aforementioned skin scales and faeces from the dust mites. Uneasy lay the head the night I read that information.

With moth gone, I go back to contemplating the mysteries of the universe but this time I'm wondering if there's a George Bush dust mite gathering the forces of good to fight the evil axis of fungi. No wonder I have nightmares, I really have to get a life.