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.

Chapter Six: A Wedding

This weekend, I took Alfonso, the small grey beetle (or weevil, to be precise) who has made his home on my desk, to a wedding in the country.

It was the marriage of someone I didn't like particularly to somebody whose name I could never remember. I brought down out of the loft an emerald green smoking jacket which I had carefully removed from the still warm body of my late step-grandfather, all those summers ago, according to his very strict instructions. Alfonso made himself comfortable behind the tangerine carnation we had unfortunately been asked to wear, and off we set.

We arrived early in the small village miles from anywhere decent to stay where the couple had thoughtfully chosen to have their nuptials, and I found a space right by the churchyard, behind a red van which I could have sworn I had seen before.

I poked around the moss-covered gravestones of some people whose names you could no longer read, who had been there a very long time, listening to a solitary sparrow singing in the yew tree. Very occasionally the peace was disturbed by Alfonso tricking his Speak & Spell into saying undesirous words such as "fuckwand" and "breastpump".

The service committed the cardinal sins of being both predictable and uneventful, although Alfonso fell asleep, and I had to carry him out when he started snoring the theme tune of MacGyver.

At the reception, we were on the leftovers table, next to a couple of aunts, the vicar and a dull couple who's sole claim to fame was a university kayaking trip with the groom in 1992. Alfonso not only drank all the white wine, but when the wedding cake arrived, he rolled the dessert spoon over an upturned pepper shaker, creating an impromptu catapult with which he sent most of the ill-advised tiramisu style concoction flying directly into the cleavage of the bride's mother.

During the speeches, the effect of the amount of wine consumed in ratio to the size of a weevil's body was revealed, and he began to heckle. As the best man struggled through a seemingly endless anecdote about the groom and some missing golf clubs, Alfonso called out

"What do you think this is, New Faces of '86?! Bring on the fat man with the talking dog!"

We were asked to leave shortly after, and it began to rain. By the time we found our car, were sodden and dripping with mud.

As we crawled back along the motorway, trying to shake a red van driving right up behind us, I said to Alfonso-

"God I hate weddings"

He replied

"Which is why I've accepted invitations for us to go to one every single weekend between now and Christmas"

So, I squashed him in the Cortina's ash tray. But he'll be back tomorrow.