James and a Mouse...

There is one clear error on the front of this book.  The xenophobic English refer to 'James I' even though the author himself states clearly he is called 'James the VI & Ist.'  This is the type of English contempt that James himself suffered from the English parliamentarians and their nobles.  

That said the author does a reasonable job with this book.

While stating he never liked Jams he looked into him and found much to admire, and there certainly is much.  James remains a mixed up character.  His upbringing was cruel though he became well red, speaking Latin, French and much else by the time he was 5 or 6.  Too many beatings from a tutor who constantly criticised his mother, Mary,Queen of Scots, had run away not long after he was born in Edinburgh Castle.  This meant he was pronounced King before he was weaned.  The nobles took care of him, mostly however those that did tended to die, either in war or mysteriously.  Being Regal was a dangerous occupation in the 1500's.

Being a short book we hurry through his squabbles with the Scots Kirk, his tendency towards Bishops never went down well, his move to London where he was welcomed and greeted by all.  His early success in ending war with Spain and in Ireland although he did tend to find it easy to spend money he did not possess.

His marriage to Ann of Denmark was not a great one, seven children arrived somehow yet most died before they were two. years of age.  Henry, who was destined to be King died aged 18, Elizabeth and Charles survived though Charles did lose his head of course.  While James could negotiate and be patient Charles could not.  James wrote many academic works including justifications for the 'Divine Right of Kings.'  How much he believed in in practice is debatable but certainly Charles fell for it and it cost him.

James wrote much in the way of theological works yet managed to spend his days hunting, sharing the coarsest of jokes and drinking far too much for a 'man of the cloth.'  Indeed most of his life was spent hunting, alongside a few chosen friends, mostly male and their behaviour was far from pure.  His youth may have been responsible but his bible reading, good though this was, failed him here.

This continued throughout his life.

His hunting may have been to keep him away from his ministers, however the work followed him wherever he was hunting and his duty was observed.  Possibly the peace of the country was preferable to the business of London, certainly less people to bother him and Parliament was a trial to him, as indeed it is to anyone who wishes to rule by themselves.

While welcomed at first James soon fund much resentment from Englishmen that Scots, 'foreigners,' were running their Parliament.  Such xenophobic emotions have never left the 'English' Palace of Westminster.  Proof, as if it were required, that Scotland must be independent from this grasping southern kingdom.

This is an ideal book to get a grasp of King James VI & I.  Other books will be of more depth and a differing impression possibly received but this is a good starting point.  

Whether he died grasping his last boyfriend is however is debatable...

  

Running behind time today as a visitor arrived before I was half awake, it was just after nine after all.

Then I had the household stuff to do while also discovering where the mouse had come from last night.  The brute had found a weak point and pushed his way through the wire.   I wonder if he has been reading about 'Colditz?'  Anyway, another bag of wire has gone in, more spaces blocked up and nothing edible will be left out tonight.

It would certainly be better if I had a cat.  However such a place as this, plus a main road outside my door, does not make that a sensible idea.  No nearby cats to borrow either.  I wonder if 'catnip' would put him off?  Either way I noticed small square chunks of poison in the shop and may well be baiting him with those  soon!

Lousy Mousey

Another mouse trauma has arisen.
While some have the joy of Boa Constrictors, Tarantula's and other poisonous beasts here in the cold wilderness of Essex mice and pigeons are out lot.
The pigeons have been thrown out and often sit glaring from the neighbours rooftops into my window, the mouse however has yet to learn his place.  His place is elsewhere!  He will learn it soon.

A few days ago I was irked by scratching, not me but the mouse scratching at the carpet.  It took a  day or two to actually discover what he was up to and keeping a light on all night chased him away. 
Two days later the neighbour knocked on my door asking if I had mice.  
The cheeky chappie had gone next door looking for nesting material, he had taken no food from me, and just chomped portions of his girls clothing.  He called in the Rat catcher who did his thing, sent in a bill, and left.
Two days later I noticed the mouse had returned to me.
Thanks a bunch!
Yesterday saw me moving heavy furniture so I could get down to the skirting floor under the old wall heater.  Do you remember those things filled with bricks?  The idea being they took in heat at night and released it during the day, total failure and costing a pound a day at that!  Under here the skirting board bends away slightly.  Aged houses have several such faults.  The mouse had increased the gap thereby avoiding the 'steel wool' I filled the gap with a while ago.  Yesterday I put the rest in place and suggested he try getting through that lot.  Other areas he had been chewing at were also dealt with and that night I went to bed content in his removal.

Very early this morning, around 8:20, I arrived in the East Wing.  A glance around revealed no sign of 'Mousey Mouse' so I burned my toast and cheese in the normal fashion.  I then looked through the grubby papers, Facebook, Twitter and my empty emails.  This of course takes time.  
As I returned my mug for refill I noticed the yellow container with several small potatoes within lying there empty.  "Empty?" Thought I?  Empty indeed!  The brute had got through the prison fence and gone off with seen small potatoes!  All of them were now lying down by his gap, the failing steel wool brushed aside!
Grrrrrrr!  Thought I.  This means wandering up the road again.

Breakfast was somewhat hindered by this revelation.   I stared out awaiting an easy answer, there was none.  So, soon afterwards I was off up the road, on a Wednesday when the market draws in the crowds, hoping not to bump into people who talk all day and say nothing just like I do, and was delighted that while the temperature remained low the sun did decide to reveal itself.  
Having wandered around the usual shops I finally fell into the 'ironmongers' I suppose we call it, one of those shops that sells almost everything, and found my way to the 'steel wool' piled in the corner. There was until recently a similar style shop run by an Asian family, possibly Bangladeshi.  This was a great shop, filled with the products of Chinese plagiarism it contained many things you needed and lots of things you did not realise you needed until you saw them on the shelf in front of you.  Cheap and cheerful friendly family with very little English between them, I loved that shop!  Then B&M opened nearby and killed them off.  They could compete with the popular local 'ironmongers' up the road but not with a big store also and sadly they moved away.  Now we also have a 'Poundland'  come to the town, and while they have the basics they are not like the Asian shop.  Still I give gift cards at Christmas, I hope 'Poundland' do them! 

Armed to the teeth with wire wool I spent some time face down filling in gaps, then cleaning the other new found spaces that the brute uses and finally, having hoovered up the mess, I was satisfied.
A trap is set, if he comes he has only one place to go for his potato, one of which is set before him, ad if he gets through the 'Hindenburg Line' I may have to either obtain more wool or obtain rat poison.  For myself!

I suppose it livens up a bored life.  But I was not bored!  I suppose it keeps me busy.  But I was busy, not actually doing what I ought to do but I had plenty to do if I had done it.  Instead my day has been wasted with this brute.  Of course if it works then he will be off next door again.  They are young, they can do the caring for the mouse, not me.   
Now with that attended to, my dinner burnt, all else pushed aside I can turn to watching the football undisturbed except by women on facebook demanding my attention for small things.  These women have no care do they?

    
  

Too Busy

Too busy moving furniture to fond the mouse hole and fill it with steel wool.
Too busy exercising to get fit.
To busy making stew.
Too busy praying.
Too busy writing up some of the area's 1918 war dead.
Too busy considering writing up a 1917 war dead who is coming into the museum, well one of his descendants is, he is unavailable.
Too busy to have a noon nap.
Too busy to write....

Mouse, Theresa and Money

Mugmania

This is a small bag of chocolate coins, the type that appear every Christmas to overcharge the parents and vainly satisfy the kids.  These are popular, these are just chocolate wrapped in gold foil, and these were stolen by the mouse!
To combat this menace I have taken obvious action.  Food is hidden, bins removed or sealed, nothing left making it easy for him, and holes searched for.  This however is not perfect.  On my bookcase I
have a cup wrapped in paper which will soon wend its way to the birthday girl on the appropriate date.  Inside that mug, just to keep it somewhere, was a bag of gold chocolate coins.  On the shelf beneath were coins, fivepences, tenpences etc that I take into work to use in the till.  Yesterday morning I came into the east wing and found coins on the floor alongside other detritus, all of which had been knocked from the shelf.  Collecting them I noticed the gold coins had gone, the metal ones to hard on the mouses teeth I suspect, and no trace to be found.  
Eventually I found the hole where he had taken them, only one item of gold paper to be seen, alongside a scouring pad, backed by foam, that disappeared the other day from the sink.  Last night, having moved heavy items of furniture, stacked with books, I shoved the scourer into the hole in a vain effort to seal it, it had been pushed aside this morning, and decided to buy some 'wire wool' as I have heard this deters them as their teeth don't like it.  Now I have some of this steel wool I will spend tomorrow morning filling holes with it and see how mouse likes that.  I may even find the rest of the golden paper.  The cheek of the brute!

Indy

Theresa has done it again.  She may it clear a shuffle of her cabinet was under way to prove she was in charge and she would get her personal manifesto put into action.  She failed.  Her Health Secretary refused to move and added another bit to his kingdom, the Education secretary refused the poisoned chalice of the DWP (where sick and unemployed and put to death) and this was later filled by another hard hearted type much loved by 'Daily Mail' readers and lots of nobody's took positions nobody cares about (including our Boris fan MP).  In short it was an abject failure.

The press, especially the ones that hate immigrants, and announcing a 'diverse' cabinet as if they cared while they really want a white, right wing, male cabinet to satisfy their ideas of superiority.  All this while pretending to support the women while striving to have her removed.

I begin to feel sorry for the hard hearted bint.

 

The media, run by men, are making a big deal of Carrie Gracie's publicity stunt of the last few days regarding men being paid higher salaries than she was.  She has 'stepped down' as the BBC China correspondent to return to a sea on the BBC newsdesk.  This she did as a complaint regarding BBC men being paid more than women.
She forgot to mention how much she is paid (just under £150,000 I suspect) and she does not lose any of this by moving to another department.  She does however get to spend more time with her family which she claims to have missed though taking a job 5000 miles from home would probably lead to that happening I suspect, and now she is better of than 90% of the population and grumbling about it not being fair.
The phrase 'aye right' goes through my head.
Why is it that the best paid women, doing fewer hours than most, grumble about a 'gender gap?'  
I have never had a job where I got paid more than the women!  Secretaries simply by being secretaries get paid far more than men who have to work.  Office girls are well paid unlike men working on the job and yet grumble about cash.  Media stars have an inbuilt right to more money than anyone else but there appears to be no reason for this.  If you don't like the conditions, which you signed up to, do what a man has to do and find another job.  Then we will see if anyone thinks you are worth what you think you are worth.
Oh and as you are paid a s a 'company' I suspect you pay little tax on this money.

Christingle Sunday

Christingle, whatever that is, occurred today.
This is one of those Anglican advent things that I have never seen before coming here.  
The symbolic side represents Christ as light and that explains the candle on top.  The kids love it and are allowed to stand there with lit candles in hand, not something they can do often!  The vicar informed us he had to do a Health & Safety appraisal for this because candles were involved!  Just how we survived without insurance companies insisting on such daft precautions I do not begin to understand.  No accidents happened, nothing burnt down and all as usual enjoyed the day.
Symbols are often used in Anglican churches but in my mind they are not required.  Just say what you mean and get on with it is my way, too many symbolic candles, symbolic this and that and none are actually required however they like them and it gives the kids something to make them feel involved.  

An early morning frost and fog covered us this morning.  This was better than the smell of burning plastic that filled the air about this place when I came back at lunchtime.  Quite what was burning I know not but the neighbours will not be happy!  

There is still a moose loose aboot this hoose and he is annoying me. While all foodstuffs are unavailable he has now got into my plant and spread much everywhere during the night.  I again can hear him chewing at inaccessible places making it difficult for me to block him.  Two 'humane' traps have been ignored and if they continue to be ignored less humane ones will be employed. 
Happy Christmas!

There's a Moose Loose

I enjoyed a packet of cheese and onion crisps the other night.  These are things I rarely eat now but I was glad to have a few packets lying around in the box where I kept the new very large bag of Sainsburys tea and all the packets of seed for the bird feeders.
Yesterday evening I went for a second packet and too my surprise the bag was burst.  Not only burst but so were four of the other packets.  Someone had got into this box that sat happily for months at the side of the fridge.  On inspection the mealworm bird seed was bitten into also with several packs of that chewed.  A mouse has intruded on my solitude and eaten my resources.

It is a long time since a mouse was found in my house.  Around twenty years ago I was on the phone when one ran across the floor near my feet.  This was a surprise and he never returned, I long ago discovered that food left out attracts mice.   When in my Swiss Cottage slum the skirting boards were a good distance from the floor and a mouse found his way into my unprotected foodstuffs.  I suspect he and many other mice fed well in that place, I learned my lesson.
In Bayswater I also had a lesson in faith taught me by a mouse.  In the back door hovel that wherein I dwelt a mouse appeared happy to chomp in my rubbish bin.  I put prayer to work and soon he disappeared.  However I knew that faith would accept he had gone but later I found myself looking to see if he had returned.  I realised if I did that he would but I continued to check and so he returned.  Several times he came out squeaking at me and rummaging in the bin.  He ran back to his hole and always looked at me as if to say "This is your fault!"  I accepted my fault and got to like the beast but one day I retuned home, lesson learnt and found him sadly dead.  I missed him. 

I had no intention of striking up a friendship with another mouse today.  I remember that the first one that arrived here appeared when the flat downstairs was vacant and once again the downstairs flat, much improved, is vacant and the mice are not getting fed by the previous owners crumbs so he is up here looking for mine.  Poor lad he will not be happy as I heard him this afternoon and chased him away, hoovered all around and have ensured he will find nothing here next time.   While I am happy not having anyone making noise below I am sure a decent sort would ensure mice don't run free.  I suspect that in Australia and Costa Rica such things are minor pests while dirty great beasts hover daily but in this freezing cold country mice and rats are one of the biggest pests round here.  
Not counting politicans that is...