A Rude Awakening

As I’ve mentioned before, a good night’s sleep in London should be considered a luxury, and last night I almost had one. After coming home from work at about 17:30, I greeted the other housemates, dumped my bags, and got rid of the suit. About 20 minutes earlier I had bought a packet of chips (crisps to non South Africans), nik-naks to be precise, of course they were bought at the SA shop, as London’s sorry excuse for Simba is called Walkers, think ‘no-name’ chips and you’ve got it.

So after I’d greeted and shed my work clothes, I slumped onto the bed, ate my nik-naks while thinking of my beautiful country back home, and then feel asleep. The time of falling asleep? 18:00.

I slept pretty much straight through until about 03:30 only to wake up to a rustling of a packet, my first thought was ‘who the hell is in my room?!’, I thought it may have been one of the housemates playing games again, and I’m sure most people would agree with me here, waking up against your will does not leave you in the best of moods. But I then realised that it was the empty packet of crisps I had left on the floor that was making the noise. So very disgruntled, and quite annoyed (the same thing, but I’m trying to emphasise my mood) but slightly amused I switched my reading lamp on only catch a glimpse of a little brown tail forcing the much larger body mass in front of it through a gap under my door that was way too small to fit through. I watched for a few seconds and in my heavy-eyed daze was quite amazed to see how the mouse struggled persistently but successfully through the gap. Of course I could have just grabbed it by the tale and thrown it in my bin, but I hate killing animals, even those considered to be professional pests.

So even though the little bastard interrupted what would have been one of my best sleeps in ages, I awoke feeling quite inspired by the tiny rodents persistence. The moral of the story? With great effort, comes great results, or in his case another day of freedom. :)