Spooky

I had one of those evenings last night, you know one of those evenings where everything is full of sinister danger. Outside was a howling torment of wind and rain, inside was all a rattle and a tattle of doors and window frames. It was a bit like being at sea in a big, dark creaking galleon.

So I decided to watch Spooks series one on DVD. Now I'm not the bravest of watchers, it has to be said. I'm okay with things like the Tellytubbies and In the Night Garden, but real proper horror, such as Eastenders and Casualty, scares me witless.

Odd, then, that I should have developed a passion for Spooks. Odder still that I should choose to watch Series One completely on my own while Brian suffered a late shift at work.

So, there I was, crouching terrified on the sofa, half hidden behind a cushion as hero Spook Tom and his attractive blond colleague had their husband and wife cover blown and were in mortal peril. To non-Spooks watchers, said pretty blond then comes to a sticky end courtesy of a deep fat fryer (face first) and a hand gun (which, after the frying incident, was probably the kindest thing to do).

All pretty shocking really, at least for the easily shocked such as myself.

So, I was already in a pretty sensitive state when suddenly my peripheral vision caught sight of Something Nasty walking along my leg in a very furtive and particularly creepy fashion. In a nano-second a blood curdling scream had issued forth while I swatted the beast off.

Once I had restarted my heart and ceased the screaming business, I thought it sensible a) to check exactly what the foul beast had been; and b) to establish whether it was alive or dead.

So I followed its elegant trajectory and found: a shrimp.

What?

Yes, a real, live shrimp, or, to be exact, one of the algae eating shrimps from the fish tank.

"You bastard!" I yelled unkindly at the tiny crustacean.

"Boing," it did back.

Now we paused for a moment of the heebie jeebies, probably on both parts, before I pulled myself together, fetched the goldfish landing net from the cupboard and recaptured the beast. It took three goes, the shrimp being of a bouncy persuasion, but I finally had it in custody and returned it to its tank in the dining room.

In the dining room?

Oh yes. Said shrimpy was a whole room away from home, the wrong side of a closed door.

How?

Now that's a very good question indeed. To get from the tank in the dining room to my lap in the living room is the shrimp equivalent of walking from here in the Preselis to the tip of Everest in Nepal.

So he/she is back in the tank again after his/her adventure. I had a good look to make sure that his/her wife/husband/life partner was also still in the tank too. He/she/it was. After all, one shrimpy shock during an evening of Spooks is enough for anyone.