PESTEL

I was walking up to the door of the gaff on Friday morning when I saw our neighbour's cat, Tiggy, in the garden. She's very friendly, so I went over to say hello. As I got closer, I realised something was happening. She was chewing on something, but I couldn't see what. I presumed that she was just eating a piece of food or whatever, but it looked a bit suspicious. So I shooed her away, and found that she had caught a rat - and one of its legs had been gnawed off. I was horrified, and I backed away. Tiggy immediately went back to nibbling at her catch. It was very hard not to wretch at this stage. Before things got even worse, it seemed like a good idea to get rid of it. I went looking for a shovel to scoop it up with, but the only thing I could find was a small hoe. I pushed Tiggy away gingerly before trying to pick up what was left of the rat. I could feel the small little body flexing as I put the blade of the hoe underneath it. My stomach was turning. Eventually I had it picked up, but then I had nowhere to put it. I thought that I could probably throw it down the sewer drain on the road outside the house, but the grates looked a little narrow for a big rodent to fit through, and I didn't fancy forcing it through. I could see the rat's eyes looking at me, unblinking. Tiggy was following me around, keeping an eye on her prey. The only option appeared to put the body in a plastic bag, and dump it in the bin. So that's what I did. It's a better fate than being eaten by a cat, isn't it?

Later that day I had rehearsals with the Penguins for a gig that was meant to be on Saturday night. As we were about to wrap up, we got a call that the gig had been cancelled, but we could do another gig in the Gypsy Rose instead. I was the only one who had been there before, so we decided to have a look at the place before saying yes or no to the gig. And so Tony (the band's drummer) and I headed into town for a bit of reconnaissance. When we got there, the first thing we saw was a table of four biker dudes, head to toe in black leather. They didn't look like they'd enjoy an hour of 1970's German-influenced folk music. We made our way through the crowd up to the stage area. I had my bass on my back, and some guy started trying to make funny remarks about whether I was going to get up and play or not. The stage itself wouldn't have fit our drumkit, let alone all the gear we use. It quickly dawned on us that the Gypsy wouldn't be a great place to us to play. Still, it seemed like a waste of rehearsals not to play, so we found a more low-key gig on Sunday in The Mercantile on Dame Street. It was a hard night. The show was much later than we expected, and we had to deal with the most chaotic onstage sound I've ever heard. I suppose it's one of the perils of having a really complicated stage setup. Still, it was great experience for us. We have a much bigger gig with the HWCH next week and things have to go smoothly. After the gig, I went to catch a Luas home, only to find that the last tram had already left at half eleven - three quarters of an hour before I had gotten there. I wasn't about to pay one solitary cent to a taxi driver, so there was nothing to do but walk home. It was a nice night, at least. By the time I had gotten to my road, the skies had cleared and I saw what looked like a massive star in the sky. I pulled out my phone and my trusty sky map to find out what it was - and it turned out to be Uranus and Jupiter occupying roughly the same space in the sky. It would have been amazing to have a telescope right then.

I got around to giving my room its yearly cleaning yesterday. I'm still not finished (it's a work in progress), but at least I got rid of the bulk of the stuff that was littering my floor. Every time I do it I end up finding crazy stuff - this year I found an empty box of Jaffa Cakes stuffed with Kleenexes. I don't remember ever putting tissues into the box, but if I didn't do it, who did? It reminded me of a passage from one of Don DeLillo's books - White Noise - where the main character roots through his household rubbish and finds a tampon stuffed into a banana skin. I remember reading that section and thinking that the author probably wrote it because it had happened to him at some stage. Where else could you think of something like that? That was the one good part of a book that I hated.