Flindt on Friday: Of mice and memories in the attic

We always joke that the mice seem to know when the clocks change, and while we’re all downstairs saying: “Of course, it’s really six o’clock. Or is it eight. Or nine?” they’re packing their little mouse suitcases and making a beeline for the farmhouse attic.

But this year was remarkable. The distinctive pitter-patter of tiny feet started the very next night.

I can just about sleep through it, turning the radio up a bit, safe in the knowledge that a couple of weeks of intensive trapping will do the job. And after a clear-out of some beautiful old skeletons and a mass reset using a new chewy bar, I thought I was winning.

See also: Video: How to take an integrated approach to rodent control

One night, however, the pitter-patter was replaced with a thump-thump, as something lolloped its way across my ceiling.

At 3am, the mental list of potential animals up there can be dramatic, enlarged by some hard-to-digest post-pub peanuts. Rat? Squirrel? Aardvark? Spiny anteater?

Rodent robber

The next morning, in one attic room, there was a mouse in a trap, eyes bulging in comic but terminal shock.

I’d forgotten the chewy bar, so decided to pop up later and reset everything. When I got back, it had gone. Not just the mouse – the trap.

As if that wasn’t enough to scare the living bejeesus out of anyone, I was sure that I could hear, deep among the lifetime’s clutter that fills those spooky rooms, something moving.

I beat a cautious retreat, tiptoeing backwards, poised to repel any attack, with only half a Krunchy Krisp Bar as my weapon.

The time had come (I decided, once I made it safely downstairs) to clear out the attic. Time to stop sheltering whatever fearsome beast has made its home up there.

This is, of course, easier said than done. What do you clear out, and what do you leave behind?

My collection of car and tractor brochures – hoarded over 35 years – can’t go. They’ll be worth something one day.

Mind you, Dad thought that about his magnificent collection of First Day Covers, which you can pick up for pence on eBay.

My uni and A-level exam papers? They’re a reminder of a more academic time, but the finer points of thermodynamics and hydrology seem to escape me now.

There’s aged hi-fi – Garrard decks and Sansui amps – and a few LPs. eBay again?

© Charlie Flindt

Time capsule

Go back further in time, and there’s a file on my big sister’s Mini Clubman; JOT 166L. There are hockey sticks, cricket kit and lacrosse sticks, Victorian samplers, photos of the London Rifle Brigade (including my grandfather) finishing their march from London to Brighton in April 1914.

That’s what Mum said it was, anyway; mind you, she said King Alfred burnt his cakes in our attic. My brother repeated that in a history lesson, and still has the bump from the flying duster.

Once you clear one room, you have to pause and think. Several servants lived up there in farmer John Spencer’s time, descending to the kitchen (and the outdoor loo, of course) via a now-lost staircase.

Mum used to delight in showing us how the men’s sleeping area could be locked from the outside. Harsh but fair. It’s a sad bit of this old house, once busy but used for nothing but storage these days.

The ceiling is quiet now. The attic is bare. The beast has moved on. But if wheat prices go on as they are, we’ll be employing domestic staff by the dozen again, and we’ll refill the attic.

And if the mouse/monster comes back – well, we’ve saved the hockey sticks.