★ The Mouse Who Came to Dinner

Previously, at our house

So my girl­friend and I are watch­ing Last Chance to See when she spots some­thing mov­ing across the room. It’s a mouse. Not a ger­bil; Erich, Dotty, Elvis and Snoopy are tucked up safely in their hutches. This is a wild, rough-looking, street-wise mouse. A mouse what is keep­ing it real, if you will; who is ‘down with it’; who eats wet lib­er­als like us for breakfast.

The moment my girl­friend and I stand up, the mouse runs away behind the book­shelf. It spots the power cable lead­ing to the light at the top of the shelf and shim­mies up to avoid our fin­gers, which can’t quite get to him through the books.

At the top, he stops near the light and looks down at us.

He is about as long as my thumb. His fur is a rather — ahem — mou­sey and he has tiny, semi-transparent ears. His belly is grey and he is hanging onto the power cable with one fore-paw and both hind-paws.

He is bril­liantly swash­buck­ling. I half expect him to laugh heart­ily and swing away.

‘He’s lovely!’ I say.

Britta gives me a sharp look. ‘He’s not lovely. He’s a bloody wild mouse.’

‘Perhaps we can tame him.’

‘What? He’ll chew the power cables!’

Britta knows how to motiv­ate me: threaten my Apple products.

We set about try­ing to cap­ture him. Imagine the Keystone Cops if there were only two of them and there was no chase music and no real story.

‘This isn’t work­ing,’ Britta says after a minute or two. ‘Shake the cable. Let’s see if we can get him to fall into the fish tank.’

‘Hmm. It’s quite far to fall…’

Britta looks at me as though I’m an idiot.

‘Right,’ I say, lower­ing my voice.

At this point, the mouse is a ninja-like shadow on the mesh at the back of the ger­bil hutch.

I must record that the ger­bils — Elvis and Snoopy — have been called upon by their human over­lords to help (some­how), and they have respon­ded to this call in their own, gerbil-like way: They’ve sniffed each oth­ers’ gen­it­als briefly, walked in and out of their food bowl, and gone to sleep com­pletely ignor­ant of the fun­da­ment­als of the situation.

I hook the cable and give it a tug. Then, warm­ing to my theme, I pull it all the way over to the side of the shelf, pre­sum­ably tak­ing the mouse with it. I look at Britta in tri­umph. She returns a look of indif­fer­ence; I press on. I give the cable a shake. If the mouse is still hold­ing on, he’ll be get­ting jostled.

Suddenly, the air is filled with the cutest dis­tress call I’ve ever heard. The pathos is all too much for me. The mouse — once swash­buck­ling — is now wail­ing with hope­less­ness. This is like Bambi’s mother get­ting shot.

‘Sorry, mate!’

I let go and the mouse rap­pels to obscurity.

Today

It is 7:30 a.m. We’re both in bed. We’re woken by the sound of a mouse scrab­bling. This is not unusual. Over the past couple of weeks, the mouse — whom we’ve christened ‘Tarzan’ — is heard to stroll through the wall spaces, through the attic, across floors at night, and gen­er­ally treats the house like he owns it. So far, he has not eaten any food from the kit­chen — though the dried wheat ker­nels in the microwave­able hot com­press Britta keeps in the ward­robe are look­ing some­what depleted.

I open my eyes.

Scrabble. Scrabble.

I smile.

This sound is a spe­cial, new one. It sounds rather like a swash­buck­ling paw on metal. It sounds — dare we hope — that the little bug­ger has wandered into the trap we set for him.

Peanut but­ter: didn’t like it. Too greasy, per­haps. Chocolate? Too much effort to chew. Muesli? Mmm. Just right.

The goldilocks solution.

Britta and I jump out of bed like it’s Christmas.

On the way to the woods at the back of our estate, we won­der what life will hold for the little chap. He will have gone from the lux­ury of the hot water cup­board to the some­what try­ing cir­cum­stances of pred­a­tion, rain, and a conker diet.

We choose not to release him in a field because he might be invited for break­fast before he’s got his bearings.

We find a hedge.

The trap com­prises two metal boxes: the smal­ler slides inside the lar­ger. For some reason, I decide to open the trap about six inches off the ground.

I give the halves a shake.

‘Hello?’ I say. ‘Still in there?’

‘Don’t tell me he’s escaped.’

‘Hmm, might have.’

Britta groans. ‘He’s prob­ably still at home, back­strok­ing through a bowl of Crunchy Nut.’

Scrabble. Scrabble.

‘No, wait. Look.’

I raise the smal­ler of the halves and peer upwards into it. Tarzan is inside. An arm is hooped non­chal­antly over a metal catch. He looks like a dia­mond thief hanging in the roof space of a museum. Just as I’m admir­ing the rak­ish angle of his ears, he lets go, lands in the leaves, and takes off through the under­growth in a man­ner that can only be described as a furry bul­let fired in anger.

‘Look at him go,’ says Britta. She is ruin­ing her hard­line image by scat­ter­ing muesli about the place. ‘Will we see him again?’

‘Are you kid­ding? He’ll be back at the house before we are.’

We both laugh. What a funny idea!

The laughter peters out.

‘Well, we should prob­ably get back anyway.’

‘True. You know what? I might jog. It’s a nice morning.’

Neil Ayres: The New Goodbye

Neil Ayres, co-blogger of Aliya Whiteley, writer in his own write, and all-round nice chap, is mark­ing the arrival of the Kindle on these shores, and tak­ing advant­age of Sony’s recent tie-up with Smashwords. He’s brought together some pre­vi­ously pub­lished short stor­ies (includ­ing Before Midnight, the flash piece I pod­cas­ted here) and released them as an ebook.

The book is free, and down­loads are avail­able in HTML or PDF and pretty much all e-reader formats: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/4783

A Publishing Event of Electro Proportions

Today’s Guardian Review con­tains an essay by the journ­al­ist Jenny Turner about the upcom­ing pub­lic­a­tion anniversary of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (novel).

On 12 October, the first Hitchhiker’s novel will be exactly 30 years old. That appar­ently is why the Adams estate has chosen the date for what it’s call­ing “a pub­lish­ing event of elec­tro pro­por­tions”: Eoin Colfer, the author of the Artemis Fowl books, has writ­ten an author­ised sequel, to be called And Another Thing (Penguin).

Turner makes an inter­est­ing point about the impact of the British class sys­tem on H2G2. Arthur Dent is a mis­placed, upper middle class radio pro­du­cer whose breed­ing and polite­ness mean noth­ing in the con­text of plan­ets blow­ing up and fail­ing to get the girl. The replace­ment of Simon Jones by Martin Freeman in the Hollywood film — effect­ively swap­ping out the upper middle for lower middle class — was crit­ical in the weak­en­ing of the mater­ial. (The other mis­take was the impos­i­tion of a three-act nar­rat­ive structure.)

Frankly, I find any dis­cus­sion of Adams’s work depress­ing. I don’t think that any other author has had or will have quite the same effect on me. What to make of Colfer’s new story, I don’t know. Can it be for any­thing other than money? How can he pos­sibly come out of this with bet­ter than a feel­ing that he hasn’t screwed up?

► Does the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy still answer the ulti­mate ques­tion? | Books | The Guardian

Interactive Fiction, 2009

Craig Smith, author of the free Frotz Z-machine inter­preter for iPhone and iPod Touch, is inter­viewed by Cult of Mac.

These games were primar­ily text-based, with you solv­ing puzzles via verb-noun pars­ers. As time went on, adven­tures gradu­ally became increas­ingly com­plex and elab­or­ate, with Infocom argu­ably lead­ing the genre to its height.

► Craig Smith Interview: How Frotz Brings Interactive Fiction to iPhone and iPod touch | Cult of Mac