Perhaps if I were smaller, and furrier, the children would want to cuddle me more often. They certainly lavish lots of squeezy hugs on the poor little guineas, who’d rather be foraging happily in their marvellous new enclosure, pretending to be wild and free.
But when it comes to cuddles with Mummy all I get is…
“Get off me, I’m busy.”
“You smell Mummy.”
The writer Joanna Trollope once said in an interview,
“The tragedy is that men love women, women love children, and children love guinea pigs.”How true. Except for the first bit.
Well, he probably does love me, once he gets past Lincoln City and vintage board games.I suppose there are similarities between me and the mouldy old sub-subuteo games he’s picked up at car boot sales. We’re both missing a few counters, and some bits don’t work as well as they used to.
Like my right knee – fine while I’m enduring my 22 minutes of jogging three times a week, but stabbing with pain when I’m walking home afterwards.
The guinea pigs are well though. Their enclosure is finally finished – costing just 20 euros in wood, chicken wire and nails, but almost six hours of Mike’s time.
Still, at least he’s proved he’s not such a useless townie after all.
When we put the little creatures into it they wouldn’t come out of their box for minute upon minute of anxious waiting.
“They’ll get used to it, eventually,” I say, willing the pigs to venture out of their hidey-hole.
“Why don’t they like it Daddy?” says Hannah.
“If they don’t like it, they’ll be on a plate tonight, next to a portion of potatoes and some lightly steamed spring veg.”
We are in France after all. Guinea pigs are food.They do get used to it eventually, and love it. It’s great to watch them foraging in the grass and sniffing the air like proper animals.
We feel so enthused by their bold investigation of a new environment that we let them wander about the garden, remaining vigilant in case they try to head for the hills.
We needn’t have worried. They panic at the unaccustomed wide open spaces, and cower under the deck chairs, following each other back to their enclosure as soon as they spot it.
And then they run around and around it, trying to get back in.
We take pity and lift up the wood and wire prison, and they scuttle inside, thoroughly institutionalised.
Do the French eat Guinea pigs? I spent wellnigh half my childhood in France, but never encountered one on the menu. They certainly don’t figure in my Raymond Oliver. Google was also not forthcoming with any recipes, and this is one area in which Google never lets me down.
I should imagine they would taste very rodenty.
Is Mike going to give you permission to tell us how he drove the car off the wall?
Our Breton friends tell us guinea pigs are eaten in France but not much, and generally in the south. They apparently taste like squirrel, if that’s any help. This information about the taste was in an English language newspaper called French News which we bought while we were there.
As for Mike, he’s resigned to being blog fodder. He claims he just cut the corner due to being bleary eyed and, of course, ill with man flu… a slight cold to you and me.