Basement flats....

We are never going to live in one again.

Yes, it's lovely inside, and yes, we have a garden, for which we are very grateful, but being below street-level means we also have unwelcome house guests.

We were woken last night at 5am by a metallic tapping noise from the kitchen.

Whatever it was had excellent hearing, because the second we started whispering in bed, the noise stopped.

We went back to sleep.... and the noise started again.

We have had four mice grace us with their presence before, so we had a pretty good idea of the cause.

After some further whispering, which involved S encouraging immediate manly action, and B responding with 'Look, I am not getting out of bed in the middle of the night to wrestle with a mouse', B got out of bed .... but of course the pesky critter became both silent and invisible.

B returned to bed and immediately began to snore (how can men do this? S was lying there saucer-eyed).

The tapping started again.

B gave up, got up and went to work.

A further investigation this morning revealed that the mouse was having a real party in our baking trays, in the drawer underneath our oven. Just lovely.