Real life: Melissa’s away and the mice will party

Such a tiny creature would not be any trouble, I decided. And so I got the idea, at the beginning of the winter, that it might be all right to leave a mouse in my garden shed. It was such a cute mouse with the twitchiest whiskers. It had burrowed into a sack of Chudleys Original dog biscuits and was also making use of the bale of Easy Pack straw I had stored there for the rabbits.

It was perhaps naive of me to imagine that this creature intended to live a monastic life of splendid isolation, feasting on dog food, sleeping the sleep of the righteous in the chopped straw and perhaps, for diversion, browsing through some of the newspapers lining the plastic recycling box holding the dog biscuit bag.

But it was on this basis that I granted him leave to remain while the weather was inclement. I distinctly recall spelling out the terms of a shorthold winter tenancy agreement as I pulled Cydney the spaniel out of the shed one evening where she had been ferreting with murderous intent.