Rat attack

I can’t help it. When I look through my front window and see two super-cool-looking young black guys dressed from head to foot in Nike screaming obscenities, it quickens my pulse.

I can’t help it. When I look through my front window and see two super-cool- looking young black guys dressed from head to foot in Nike screaming obscenities, it quickens my pulse. I’m sorry, it just does. No doubt I will be taken to the Equality and Human Rights Commission just for admitting that I find such a sight interesting and exciting. Maybe I need to get out more. In any case, on this occasion, I came out of my house to see what the commotion was.

It turned out the pair were jumping up and down and screaming: ‘Rat! There’s a rat! It’s massive! Aaagh!’ And one of the men all but leapt into the other’s arms. I told them to pull themselves together. ‘It’s just a rat. There are loads of them in London.’ ‘You don’t understand,’ said one of them, pulling the tracksuit jacket off his friend’s back as he clung to him. ‘It’s massive …oh god …there it is again! Aaaagh!’

I told them not to panic, I would see to it. ‘Now calm down and tell me where it is.’ ‘There! It just went under that car!’ ‘OK, it will come out in a minute. It will just be a common or garden r…aaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!’

This rat was the size of a dog. And not even that small a dog. A Sloane would consider it too big to put on a lead and walk around Knightsbridge, and there was certainly no way it would fit in an Hermès Birkin bag. It took me minutes to get my head round the fact that it really was a rat.