Mass-Murder

It is the Sunday morning service and we are gutsily singing 'For all the saints who from their labours rest', while above our heads is a painful sizzling sound, like ripping Sellotape, as a myriad cluster flies are zapped by an ultra-violet exterminator.

As, in the musical climax, the saintly deceased reach the 'calm of paradise', our voices are drowned by a long and mighty fizzing. Something large and airborne is having trouble shaking off the mortal coil. Even the Vicar, in his gold-trimmed chasuble, looks uncomfortable. My peaceable husband has a warrior outlook when it comes to the lower links of the food chain. On summer evenings he leaps gymnastically about the bedroom, swatting midges with the Church Times until the walls dribble blood.

This morning's violence is inevitable. Cluster flies have colonised the church in readiness for winter. Their whine gives an Amazonian flavour to the chancel, and they are dropping dead into the Jammy Dodgers. There is something Not Right, though, about mass murder during Mass.

But mass murder is worryingly infectious. Later I'm vacuuming the stairs and spy a tiny spider crouched on the skirting. Usually I liberate spiders through the window, but this one is too small to grasp and after a squeamish hesitation I aim the nozzle and suck it into oblivion. And suddenly a mad thrill of power seizes me and I patrol the house with the Miele, eliminating unwanted lodgers.

My house is now cleaner than it's been in a long while, but my conscience is not and it occurs to me that church may purify the soul, but it doesn't do much for my character.

Comments

  1. Lynn C Schreiber1 November 2011 at 10:26

    I have to admit that flies and spiders are exterminated in this house. We get a lot of them as the house backs onto fields and I am less squeamish than I used to be.

    Thanks for linking to the bloghop.

    ReplyDelete
  2. A Little Light Work1 November 2011 at 11:57

    Flies are fair game; does anyone seriously believe they have souls?

    ReplyDelete
  3. mother on the edge!!1 November 2011 at 19:00

    all things bright and (Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz) all creatures great & small (tzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anna Jay1 November 2011 at 23:31

    Flies are fair game I say ... my daughter won't settle for the night if there's a fly anywhere in her room even if it's tiny and doing no-one any harm. Spiders? Well that's another story - in the deep country where I grew up if you killed a spider you had to throw salt over your shoulder to ward off bad luck. Get out the Saxo!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Rebecca English7 November 2011 at 21:45

    I'm fairly relaxed about most bugs. they don't bother me at all. Hubby however, has pitched a one man war against all things creepy and crawly. He tells of epic battles against spiders which turn out to be smaller than a 5p piece.

    Fantastic post. I love it!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous19 March 2013 at 14:46

    Tremendous things here. I'm very glad to peer your post. Thank you a lot and I am having a look ahead to contact you. Will you please drop me a e-mail?

    Feel free to surf to my weblog; http://chatclimax.com/live-sex-chat/cam-girls/soHotn2sexy - chatclimax.com

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous7 April 2013 at 09:08

    I wanted to thank you for this excellent read!
    ! I definitely loved every bit of it. I've got you saved as a favorite to look at new things you post…

    My web page talktome.vanillatracksuit.net

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous7 April 2013 at 15:00

    No matter if some one searches for his required thing, thus he/she
    wishes to be available that in detail, therefore that thing is
    maintained over here.

    Here is my blog - visit website

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anonymous12 April 2013 at 09:30

    And while investigators say the murder victim is linked to a "feud," they are not sharing the details
    about that part of the investigation. Also,
    keep in mind that the ingredients for the mix should be bought
    from a home improvement store to insure quality. * Not Ideal
    For Floors: While this is a great option for the walls, it's a less-than-impressive option for the floors.

    Also visit my website :: concrete

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anonymous12 April 2013 at 12:32

    Here is the complete guide to create custom keyboard shortcuts for Google Chrome which you can start browsing websites on rapid speed.
    You must know the different points that you want from a
    gaming just before you acquire 1. The latest version, Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, is produced by Atari and
    can be purchased at most retail outlets. There were a few problems with
    setting the game up, but once we went through the manuals, these were mostly explained.

    3) Physical parameters: The simulators are almost real, but actually
    they are on the ground, I mean around the sea level.


    Look into my web blog :: simulator

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Daily Mail Columnists Should Wear Burkas

Daily Mail columnist Liz Jones has provoked the ire of Twitter with by declaring that mummy bloggers are blinkered dimwits whose lives are spiced by Napisan. I'm afraid I have to sympathise with her, for all of her prejudices echo my own: Writing about my life has pretty much ruined it. Supper last night was an elderly carrot glued to the fridge shelf by a pool of brown mucus and the floor was flooded when I left the bath taps running because Blogger has diverted me from domestic essentials. I've had to shut the children in front of the television when a new post has assailed me and some family members no longer speak to me because Twitter interactions leave me no time to reach the telephone. But there is a big part of me that thinks writing should be hard: you should cringe whenever you press that 'publish' button. Artists – and I'm sorry, I do consider myself an artist – have to wrench the dirtiest, most disgusting part of their inner soul and show it t...
Read more

The Various Uses of Rubber

I have ordered a new pair of wellies from Amazon for the daily walk to school. My current hardly-at-all-old pair has developed a fissure along one toe. I only noticed this when I was wading along the stream that flows brownly past bobbing Argos bags en route to the afternoon pick up, and I was not pleased. They are a glamorous pair with pink spots and white swirls, bought to ease my daughter's pain in ackowledging a wellie-wearing, stream-paddling mother in public. I now distrust wellies with spots and swirls, so order a safe-looking green pair. Better to be waterproof than glamorous. Royal Mail gets them as far as my door, thrusts through a 'Sorry you were out' card, and promptly loses them. Amazon is sympathetic and dispatches a replacement pair. This also makes it to my door and again a card is left. This time I decide to pick them up in person from the Royal Mail depot. The man behind the glass screen makes off with my delivery card and probably has a cup of tea and...
Read more

A DIY Guide to the Middle-Classes

I wonder sometimes what I am. I have lived the last decade on an inner city council estate, amid Oxford academia, in a remote country town and in London suburbia. In the first we were, with our relentless consonants and sagging bookshelves, regarded as aristocrats. In the second, as the 'squeezed middle'. In the third, as city sophisticates and now, sometimes, isolated in my tweed amid the Ralph Lauren and the hoodies, I feel myself a bumpkin. Class should no longer matter. Nowadays, for most of us, it's more a question of perception than birth. But the perception matters. My daughter battles to adjust speech, habits and dress to blend in with each new environment; the political parties compete to woo the amorphous throng they deem Middle England and Melvyn Bragg has started a television series on class and culture. The British, he decides, no longer define themselves by class, but by the music they listen to, the books they read. I listen to Dolly Parton and Beethoven....
Read more