With alarming consistency, I woke up at the same time as I had done a few weeks earlier with the Cephalumpus Buy Day. (A bit like a birth day but the day you buy your pet)

‘I’ve been naughty’. I whispered.

‘What’? said Keith with a resigned tone of voice as if he was thinking Oh God, what now?

‘I’ve rescued The Donkey’. I said in a Why on earth doesn’t he understand me’ kind of way.

‘What donkey and where from’? Keith responded.

‘From the church tower the Spanish were going to throw it from’.

‘Pardon’? Keith said. (He is good at short questions)

‘They were going to throw it from a church tower dressed in a jellyfish costume during the festival and I just HAD to save it, the poor thing’. I offered as a way of a sane answer.

‘What’ said Keith (Here we go again he must have thought?)

‘They were teasing it and were going to sacrifice it’.

‘Why?

‘Because the Spanish are strange like that’.

‘The Spanish are strange’? said Keith.

‘Yes!. Just look what they do to potatoes’? I offered.

‘What on earth do they do to potatoes’?

‘They do Patatas Bravas’. I answered.

An incredulous silence hung over Keith.

‘Yes, they take the ordinary potato and make it interesting instead of just bland jacket potatoes or chips’.

‘Hm, I see’?  Said Keith, not really seeing at all. (Nor me for that matter)

‘And pray tell, where are we going to keep him’? said Keith.

‘Oh we can keep him safe in the garage’.

‘The garage’?

‘Yes. He’ll be safe from the Spanish and the end of the world too’! I emphatically replied.

‘The end of the world?

‘YES. The end of the world, and he’ll be safe and we can put the Cephalumpus in there too when it comes; and I’ll need to get one of those little tube heaters to take the chill off the air so that they are warm’.

‘Of course. It all makes sense’. Keith said in a sarcastic and quizical sort of a way.

‘He’ll be no trouble at all and he can be a good friend to the Cephalumpus and we could hire him out to shoppers to carry their shopping home in an ecologically friendly way instead of them using their cars’. (I do tend to talk a lot and fast and not breathe in between very very long sentences because I get so excited and carried away with myself)

‘OK. I’ll go get more food, though it’s going to have to be different from the Cephalumpus’s tidbits and morsels we feed him’.

‘Ok sweetheart’. I said very very happily and promptly feel back to sleep.