First things first... when I'm not living the student dream in Nottingham I live in Wales. For those of you who aren't quite sure where that is, I've attached a map. It's the bit in bright red. To make it worse for people who think that Wales is still the land of Magic and Dragons I don’t even live in “The Vaaaallleeeeeeys” – which seems to be the only alternative to living in Cardiff [or as I like to call it... Little England]. No ladies and gentlemen... I live in Aberystwyth – two hours drive away from any cinema with more than once screen or even a HMV. It’s a lovely little place but when you've spent 3 months living in a city the size of Nottingham, coming back is like a scene from Back To The Future made with a budget of £75 and a Mars Bar.
Aberystwyth’s the kind of place where everyone knows everyone [cliché I know] but it’s true. In true coming home tradition I took a quick trip up the high street past the charity shops, Poundland and up towards the little corner shop at the top of town whose owner still glares at me for putting 70p worth of pick and mix in a bag and trying to claim it was only worth 50p. That extra jelly snake has proven costly in the past 7/8 years. In that five minute walk I saw an old school teacher, two people from school and an old work mate. The only problem is, with the exception of my old work pal I couldn’t for the life of me remember their names. Smooth work Dave... just fake a phone call or find something of great interest in a shop window to avoid eye contact. I went for both. Outside a lingerie clad mannequin in the window of New Look. God wasn’t smiling on me that day.
It’s not all bad though, it’s been nice to have next to no responsibilities – where feeding the dog is the most important thing that happens in the day. The problem is that not only is feeding Barney the most important thing, it’s also the only thing I need to do, leaving my semi-devious yet active mind to its own devices. I’ve even unpacked everything from bags and tidied my room [all hope is lost]. Fortunately, our next door neighbours still have their cat which means I can have something to hate. And plan to kill.
DISCLAIMER: The remaining portion of this blog is written with tongue firmly in cheek. I like animals, even cats. Most of the time.
This all started after I came across this infamous video of a woman from Coventry dumping a cat into a dustbin. An event that shocked maybe 30% of the UK into hammering on the phone to the RSPCA, while the remaining 70% sniggered and passed it on to a friend [no prizes for guessing which category I fall into]. Now I'm not sure why exactly this cat has become [in my eyes] public enemy number one, maybe it’s the brazen look it gives me that just screams “this is my estate” while it’s sat on the roof of my car or the fact that our massive golden retriever is terrified of it. Either way, this menace is now top of my hit list.
Now armed with the Wallace & Gromit DVD collection and my Book of Bunny Suicides, I’ve been coming up with a variety of ingenious contraptions with which I can dispose of said cat and with the amount of time I have on my hands, it promises to be quite a spectacle. My favourite will have to wait for Guy Fawkes’ day and involves smothering a small remote control car in tuna and catnip and making the cat chase it into a pile of fireworks. Paint the town red you say? Not quite.
With that off my chest I can get back to normal small town life for the next couple of months, make every effort to remember people’s names and actually talk to them in the street [if I have time or even remotely like them] and use this time of relative freedom to play guitar loud enough for our deaf neighbour to hear it and write a few more of these. It’s going to be a hell of a ride.
Now where’s that cat?
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