Tails of the Church Mouse – Ruining the roof
The sun was out and the house was all calm, when a human came to do a quinquennial survey of our home. A quinquennial survey seems to involve stamping all over the place poking and prodding where humans have no right to be. Mrs Mouse was very upset as the children were nearly caught coming home from school.
The human used some binoculars, whatever they are, to look at our roof light, which gave light for the children as they played in the roof. Then he said in a loud voice ‘Oh dear, Oh dear, what have we here? You will need to fix that and the bill will be quite dear’. ‘Ridiculous’ said I. ‘The roof light is closed by moving a tile. The children just forget most of the while.’
Then a roofer came and prodded and poked. He looked in the hole and then he spoke. ‘Here is a problem, quite large to be fair. Let me take off some of the tiles and see what is there.’ He took more and more tiles, and kept shaking his head, and tutted and clucked that the timbers were dead. Then he said ‘The slate for the tiles is special from Wales and the valley was rotten from the head to the tail.’ Now I got angry. I shouted in vain for nobody listened as I tried to explain. If the valley’s all rotten, all its slate is bad too! Stop what you think you are going to do. Stop, go away, just leave us alone! The children were crying and the wife she did moan.
More and more tiles were stripped from our home, a valley created, new timbers were honed. A membrane was fitted and batons and nails. Then up went the special slate tiles from Wales.
Now its all finished, all the tools packed away. The qinqilly man’s gone and the workmen are paid. The roof has no skylight but no wind and no rain. And the children can play in the roof space again.
At the end of the day was it worth the expense? The humans say ‘yes’, but mouse sits on the fence!
