Away from home

I rocked up at 1am to mum and dad's, who live on the edge of Ashdown Forest in Sussex. Right on the edge. They have a track down to the house which sets them well off the road. Now imagine if you are a right little townie, and had never seen proper dark. Frank wouldn't get out of the car. I think he might have been torn between the lesser evil of the car and the sound of nature at night. I carried him in. Dad had waited up for me and was disappointed when I chose tea over whisky, but I did have to get up in the morning. Frank paced around the house miaowing in a concerned way. I went to fetch some more bags and remembered I'd bought a new scratching post, as Frank's is torn to pieces, and I fancied dad would have something to say if Frank started scratching the upholstery. This one, however, required some construction. "What's that?" Dad asked. I told him, and he took it upon himself to construct it. He handed it to me, and said "Will it stop him from miaowing?" I love finding out what is motivating dad.

Anyway, the parents' house is almost entirely open-plan, which was clearly upsetting Frank, but there is an annex room, actually outside the house. I moved me, him, his litter tray, and his food and water into it. It seemed to work OK, he got happily enough onto the bed and settled down, but he didn't like country noises, and spent a lot of the night poking my face to check and see what I thought of it all. The next day, he came outside, he had never heard a dawn chorus like it - I might as well have dropped him in a Peruvian rainforest. He was doing OK, although still miaowing a fair amount, when 5 fallow deer ran through the garden. It was the end of the line. He ran back into the bedroom and hid under the covers for the rest of the day. This was not altogether inconvenient, as I had lots of stuff to do. I checked on him at tea time, and brought him into the house, where he seemed a lot calmer (oxygen deficiency, I'm thinking) and left him on the sofa while I went for my run.

The good thing (well, one of the many good things) about the parents' house is that it is right by Ashdown Forest, so it is ideal for a bit of bare-foot running. Although, you can take "soft underfoot" a bit too far. By the time I went running, there had been a slight rainfall for a couple of hours, and it was extra-soft. It looked like this: 


In truth, though, not for long. Just round the bend, it was much drier; then I had to decide whether Wealden clay was too hard, and find some grass. It was a good run, although I was still taking it reasonably slowly (not just for the mud, which I was taking very slowly indeed), I picked the pace up a little from last time I'd run barefoot, and I think it hurt less.

When I got back, my feet looked like this:

Nice! But they wash off ever so easily. Even the shoes hose down no problem. Dad was psychoanalysing Frank when I got in. He had been amazed at the way Frank responded to me talking to him, and mum told me that she had overheard dad saying "Now, I'm going to sit here, Frankie, is that OK?". She said, apparently it was, because Frank didn't reply. By the time I got home, Dad had pronounced that, Once a victim, always a victim, and furthermore, that he thought Frank had Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

Frank did a tour of the house with me, in daylight, and I thought his general expression was "Yes, I'll take it. As a second home, of course".