Chris Sykes's Blog: some bits and bobs - Posts Tagged "mouse-in-milk"

Morning Zombiefication

... a mouse.

Adults of a certain age can suffer from Morning Zombiefication, which means that their brains take a lot longer to wake up than their bodies do. When you see an adult, of a certain age, awake in the morning they may not be fully coherent and may be moving in a fashion akin to a zombie. Signs to watch out for include: yawning, eyes half closed, the smell of coffee, messy hair, not being dressed in a fashionable manner, gazing woefully into space, smelly breath, smelly feet, smelly arms, smelly hands, smelly legs, smelly hair. Adults generally smell a trifle iffy when they suffer from Morning Zombiefication. A sponge cake closely stalking them is also a good sign to watch out for.

The most embarrassing symptom of all (and it even gets its own paragraph) is dribbling. A line of saliva forms at the corner of an adults mouth and gradually drip, drip, drips down until it is about to fall from their chin, when an arm automatically shoots up and wipes the evidence away. One must be extra vigilant in the morning to spot an adult dribbling. All sufferers do it and all sufferers deny being sufferers at all.

Mrs Lambsbottom was no different, which meant that whilst dribbling and gazing woefully into space, she threw a mouse into her terribly large pan on her preposterously large cooker, instead of a handful of oats.

The poor mouse stood aghast. He wanted his breakfast too and most definitely did not want to be in a terribly large pan. He did not know that he was also on a preposterously large cooker but if he had known, he most definitely did not want to be on one.

Before he could utter a word of annoyance he was doused with a splash of milk. To make porridge, milk is essential, mice are optional. In fact, mice do not go well with milk at all and so mice are no good with porridge. They become strangely erratic and somewhat angry if milk is poured on them and this mouse was no different.

“Excuse me, excuse me,” shouted the mouse, rather angrily. “You can’t throw a mouse into a pan and pour milk on him. It’s not on, it’s just not on.”

Mrs Lambsbottom could not hear the mouse because she was deaf. Even if she was not deaf she would not have been able to understand him because they did not speak the same language. She may have been able to understand the general gist of some of what he was saying because an angry mouse sounds a great deal like an angry Mrs Lambsbottom. But, she was deaf and so, could not.

What she would have heard, had she not been deaf of course, would have been a series of irritated little squeaks followed by an irate loud bang. The mouse had launched himself against the side of the terribly large pan; which tippled and toppled and eventually fell from the preposterously large cooker, after spinning around twice for good measure. The irate loud bang was thus created when the mouse, in the pan, met with the shockingly hard floor.