Chapter Nine: Springtime for Weevils

“Well,” I said to Alfonso – the small grey beetle (or weevil to be precise) who has made his home on my desk - the following morning, over our customary breakfast of boiled sausage and grilled eggs, “ that was quite an adventure.”

“Hmm”, he said, ruminating behind his well thumbed copy of "Shelley", by Shelley Winters, “they were a bit Jim Henson for me.”

I couldn’t help but smart a little, as if I had been flicked in the face with a wet towel.

“I’m not entirely sure what you mean, Alfonso” I said, stiffly.

A large fly slowly made his way across the dining room window. On the mantelpiece, the hands of the carriage clock busied ever on, and briskly cut their way through the cloak of silence which had suddenly descended upon us.

“You know perfectly well what I mean” he snapped, uncharacteristically, and promptly disappeared into the crack that had begun to climb like a creeper across the far wall, in between my unrivalled collection of photographs, all depicting World War II airmen stepping into their planes for the last fateful time.

For the rest of the day I felt ill at ease and out of sorts. Outside, in the garden, the natural and ordinary processes of early spring became freighted with some deep, imponderable sense of gloom and impending misery. The fat rain drops rolling off the broad leaves of the potted palm, the first pink sprigs of blossom appearing round the cherry tree, and the patches of bright sky which occasionally broke through the thick boluses of gunpowder coloured cloud above; all of these things seemed designed to grind away at any sense of peace; and I paced restlessly about the cottage, leaving half-eaten plates of food and various books strewn unhappily all over the floor.

I was about to resort to re-arranging the gallery of toby jugs on the bathroom shelf, perhaps turning them all to face the wall as some kind of retribution against the fruitless hours, when the oppressive silence was shattered by the sound of metal being violently crunched and torn apart in the street.

Rushing outside, I saw what appeared to be my Cortina slowly re-taking shape as a messy cube of steel and crushed glass, in the jaws of some vast contraption. A contraption that was being operated by Alfonso, badly disguised as a traffic warden with a false beard, jerking about with a radio remote control.

I began to shout and wave my arms about in the air, but Alfonso silenced me by removing the beard and grinning.

“It’s not really your Cortina”, he said.

I looked puzzled.

“Watch out, Weevil’s About!”, he chortled, and did a little jig.

It took only a matter of moments to hoist and cast him into the chomping jaws of the device, and his little screams brought some sense of closure to the day.

But he’ll be back tomorrow.