A quiet Sunday between an energised Saturday and a (likely cold) Bank Holiday Monday, with the prospect of the Sunday newspapers all to myself for once as I’m home alone.
In recent weeks, the paper has been successfully delivered into our front porch. There’s no external porch door, but it is a large covered space, just perfect for leaving parcels or other material too large to squeeze through a normal-sized letterbox. Not today. Whoever delivers the Sunday paper – very early – has clearly reverted to their “chucking it from the street” technique and it had not quite made it all the way up our path. “Never mind,” I thought, “it’s not actually raining this time.” Last time this happened, the larger parts of the Sunday paper spent several hours draped over the radiators before they were just about functional, despite the thin plastic wrapper.
It was only when I got today’s package into the kitchen that I realised it had been sitting in a small puddle after all. And, by the smell I suddenly recognised, this had been a small puddle of fox wee. Oh joy.
I think I have got rid of every trace now – aside from a couple of drips and my hands (aaaaargh!) the paper had not been contaminated. The familiar aroma certainly surprised my cats though, who made themselves scarce quickly, thus avoiding the customary game of pestering me to feed them before totally ignoring my generosity and begging me to open the door for them to raid the rest of the house instead.
Now I think about it, we should really campaign to get rid of the plastic wrapper anyway on environmental grounds. But a paper wrapper would have failed completely today and the whole publication would have reeked irretrievably of fox. First world problems eh? I know, I know, I should walk to the corner shop…