Sometimes when I am asleep, I hear everyday sounds so close and so loud that they wake me up. They are not there, they are only in my head. But they sound immediate and intense. It’s always two things: the sound of our doorbell, or a child saying “Mum”.
And then, the other night, while I tried to sleep in the stuffy bedroom of a Devon self-catering cottage, a new sound - the close and very loud fluttering of wings. It woke me up at about 3.30am and I thought “Weird.”
But then, fully awake, I heard the sound again. What could it be? Not a bird, because birds are stupid and crash about, hurling themselves at windows and flapping and shrieking and crapping everywhere. Perhaps a moth, then. I switched on my iPhone torch and scanned about the room. But there was nothing there. So it was a phantom sound?
And then a black shape darted across the ceiling. It was a bat.
I am not scared of bats, but it was a bit alarming. I crouched down low and went to open the bedroom door to let it out. Everyone else’s bedroom doors were closed so I was not releasing a beast unto my family, (although by this stage in the summer holidays I probably, like, totally would).
The bat skittered noiselessly through the door and flittered about in the corridor. I closed my own door on the bat and went back to bed, lying awake for a good two hours as I wondered how it was going to find its way out of the house. Then I had some unhealthy visions of the bat morphing into a vampire. Then I started thinking about Buffy. Perhaps it was three hours I was awake.
In the morning I said to my husband, who had been sleeping in another room (the beds were too miserly to co-sleep), “There is a bat somewhere in this house.” I was rather looking forward to finding a little upside-down, fast-asleep leathery little parcel. Or, better yet, David Boreanaz hiding in the utility cupboard.
Alas, we looked everywhere but it had vanished. I had, sluttishly, (drunkenly) left a window open in the top room - she must have silently and conveniently found this exit. Yes, I’ve always thought bats were pretty great.
In other news, am not enjoying the second series of The Bear. It’s too… it’s too… something. I don’t know what. Too self-conscious? The most recent episode I saw, Fishes, was as genuinely dull as being stuck at someone else’s boring Christmas Day - the fighting felt forced, unrealistic and silly.
But there was one line that struck me as extremely profound. Jamie Lee Curtis, the put-upon matriarch who has just cooked a giant meal for her family, weeps and says, “I make everything beautiful for them, and no-one makes anything beautiful for me.” And I really do think that this is why I love shops like Anthropologie or Selfridges so much, or gazing at things on Glasette or in the Conran Shop, or Instagram Reels of ladies with manicures putting beige-coloured things into beige-coloured bags or re-stocking their fridges. I feel like someone has made something beautiful for me.
How about you? How is your summer (silent scream face).
I am particularly interested in: new packing/gadget strokes of genius, horror stories, product recommendations and, of course, unexpected encounters with wildlife.
Please leave a comment to distract us all from the nightmare of yet another unstructured day, in the handy box below.
I have just got back from a cottage where I slept in the spare room all week due to space (on a mattress that made my back hurt). Upon arrival, my husband found an enormous red slug in the garden and moved it so he wouldn’t tread on it. It curled itself and started rocking from side to side for about ten minutes and I knew how it felt.
Went to Rutland water and saw Ospreys!
This made me and my children very happy. We have become avid twitchers and along with a Marsh Harrier hunting and about a gazillion cormorants in trees pretending to be crows made for a fantastic day. Throw into the mix spending time with a good friend who I only see annually now and it became pretty much perfect.