Of Mice and Moles
“The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” - G. K. Chesterton
I was going to write about my rekindled relationship with potatoes, after almost developing a phobia towards them after a childhood in Denmark. A girl can only take so many spuds. Especially if come January, they’re old enough to vote. But I just wasn’t feeling the potato, and besides I was missing Bagpuss. Not the actual Bagpuss, of course, but my hot water bottle incarnated as the old cat for the extra cuddle factor. Bagpuss has faithfully being keeping my toes at the optimal temperature for years, and now he is gone, packed away in a box and stored away in a warehouse in London. So are most of my earthly possessions actually. This is rather upsetting, which frankly puts a crimp on my modern nomad credentials. Bagpuss and I had a history together. Now I’m surrounded by unfamiliar objects - my sofa is an acquaintance, my microwave, despite best efforts, still a stranger, and the washing machine downright antagonistic. My domestic atlas is gone.
All that tat I accumulated over the years, all those material memories I collected and clung onto are not present in my new habitat. There are few more sobering experiences than witnessing five guys putting your life into boxes in less time that it took you to assemble those damn Ikea shelves. They might just be Billy, but they were my Billy shelves. Silly little me - I will hang onto anything that might promise to anchor my insignificant presence on this planet. I’m feeling rather rootless at the moment, like an ivy without a wall. And I always think of that passage in Wind in the Willows, when Mole, swayed by the delights of the river neglects his own little subterranean manor. And then one day, on the way back to Ratty’s abode, he smells his little house:
Poor Mole found it difficult to get any words out between the upheavals of his chest that followed one upon another so quickly and held back speech and choked it as it came. “I know it’s a—shabby, dingy little place,” he sobbed forth at last brokenly: “not like—your cosy quarters—or Toad’s beautiful hall—or Badger’s great house—but it was my own little home—and I was fond of it—and I went away and forgot all about it—and then I smelt it suddenly—on the road, when I called and you wouldn’t listen, Rat—and everything came back to me with a rush—and I _wanted_ it!—O dear, O dear!—and when you _wouldn’t_ turn back, Ratty—and I had to leave it, though I was smelling it all the time—I thought my heart would break.—We might have just gone and had one look at it, Ratty—only one look—it was close by—but you wouldn’t turn back, Ratty, you wouldn’t turn back! O dear, O dear!”
Well, so I’m getting a bit sentimental, but I’m a bit of a territorial mole too, and I’m suddenly missing my unnecessarily twee hot water bottle. I’m aware this is not often covered in Condé Nast Traveler.
In case you were wondering, or haven’t read Wind in the Willows (Philistine), the story has a happy ending. Our two heavily anthropomorphized furry friends return to Mole’s humble abode where Ratty admires a bust of Queen Victoria in the underground front court. Then he sends some poor mark mice, who have come round to sing Christmas carols, to fetch him and Mole some food. Because water rats are apparently above mice in the social hierarchy. What a smug rat.
P.S: Bagpuss and I will be reunited in January.
