parking, mousetraps and worm pills

Arriving at work I remembered to park my car as bait in the middle of the car park, to give customers a clue as to where they should park.  The car park is covered in gravel, which is picturesque and cheap, but means we can't mark out parking spaces.  You would think it was fairly obvious that, once the row of cars along the edge of the car park nearest to the entrance was full, you should start a second row parallel to the first row, but it turns out it's not.  Our customers are masters of free-form parking, and will start new rows at right angles to the first line of cars, given half a chance.  (Tarmac is useful, but not lovely.  In my long-distant student days the college authorities, for reasons best known to themselves, elected to resurface the garden quad with black tarmac instead of gravel one vacation.  The result looked about as dreadful as you would expect, and a short while later during the night a zebra crossing was painted across the full width of the quadrangle.  The next vacation the tarmac disappeared again).

One of the manager's row of mousetraps contained a very dead squashed mouse.  I didn't know how to open the thing, and didn't honestly care to fiddle with it, so I removed the trap, mouse and all, for him to deal with tomorrow, and put it in the border outside the tunnel.  While I was at it I covered the corpses of his two previous victims with leaves, as I didn't think the sight of a growing pile of dead mice raised the tone of the establishment.

I called more people to tell them their (sometimes long awaited and maybe no longer wanted) plants had arrived.  One man I spoke to said he would just need to consult his wife, and I think he meant it, but another customer's 'I'll have to tell my husband' sounded rather like a version of the 'I'll see what your father says when he gets home' gambit for fobbing off small children.

When I came downstairs this morning I found a pile of cat sick at the bottom of the stairs.  I knew the cats needed worming, and had even got as far as buying the worm pills.  As my life's partner is about to disappear to Cheltenham for the week I thought we'd better do the deed tonight.  It's probably not ideal, for those looking to keep the sparkle in their relationship alive after nearly thirty years, to announce as they get in through the front door on coming home from work that we have to worm the cats, now.  (Our vet taught us a very useful trick.  Get a 5ml blunt ended plastic syringe, and fill it with water.  After popping the pill, syringe water into the cat's mouth.  It has to swallow, and this is much easier for both parties than the traditional technique of massaging the creature's throat for ten minutes while you implore it to swallow, and it rolls the pill to the corner of its mouth ready to spit it out when you finally let go.  Don't squeeze too hard on the syringe, or you will end up waterboarding your pet).