13.04.2020

I resisted the urge to name and assign gender to it. These are human constructs that have no place in the flower beds and gutters, in the chicken shop bins and down the drains of Shadwell, where mice belong, nameless and free.

It took a bit of trial and error to get the tactics right. The first things we tried were simply inviting the mice out of the house by leaving the balcony door open and bidding it farewell, and the humane mouse trap, neither of these worked, so I had little option but to face my adversary one on one in direct combat. My main concern was stressing the mouse out too much, because it must have been an awful experience already. It spent the afternoon trapped behind a mighty rumbling washing machine with all its escape routes blocked, every mind can only tolerate so much terror. I didn’t want to prolong the hunt, nor did I want to bungle the capture and maim the beast, only for it to slink off to a slow, painful, regretful, lonely and senseless death. Better to be decisive, trap it as efficiently as I can, if not honour it with a swift death. The mouse was my enemy but I did not hate it.

First of all, I pulled the washing machine out depriving it of its main source of cover and forcing it into a pitched battle. The mouse had the advantage of speed and size, it could get into the smallest holes, but I had prepared the battle field by blocking the exit routes, and I had the inverse advantage of size. I was large, I could move furniture, depriving it of more and more options. On top of that I had a brave hunting Yorkshire terrier who flushed the mouse out its holes and crannies. After a few fruitless chases round the perimeter of the room, I knew I could never out run this mouse, especially in such tight conditions, I had to out smart it.

I managed to goad the mouse into a three sided quadrant where the fold up dining table sits. The mouse was hemmed in by three walls. To my flank, the mouse’s portside, was my noble hound, I was to its starboard ready to pounce with a large Tupperware box to catch it. The mouse could either face a ferocious, bloodthirsty brute, bread specifically for generations to hunt its kind, or a giant of sickening proportions, an angry god, destroyer of worlds. Checkmate. In the split second it considered its options I pounced. The Tupperware box landed safely over the mouse. It was scared but unharmed. We put a tea towel over the box to calm the beast down before releasing it into the wild.

Mouse was gracious in defeat, as I was magnanimous in victory. I slipped the board carefully under the box to take the mouse outside. The mouse was terrified, so I had to strike a balance between speed and efficiency and care not to hurt it. But once outside, just before I released it, the mouse looked into my eyes and I knew we had an understanding. Go friend, I whispered. Live your life!

Back inside, sated by the thrill of the hunt, masters of our own domain, we put the room back together and watched an episode of something, during which we noticed an apparition. Another mouse.

I knew what to do. I knew that with a barrier I could guide the mouse into a corner quicker and trap it. So I used a Labour Party (to whom I am beginning to doubt my allegiance, more on that later) placard to manufacture a similar tactical in the last hunt. This mouse was sly, it eluded my first attempt and seemed to evade detection thereafter. It wasn’t where I expected it to run to. Rather than make a break for it, this brave mouse held its nerve and hid in the curtain. Once I knew its tactics it was easy to defeat, or so it seemed. I quickly had it trapped under the box, but there was one significant difference this time. It was on a rug, so there was a gap of maybe a centre meter when I attempted to slide the placard under the box and mouse squeezed through. I admired its tenacity, but before long I had it cornered again. The balcony door was open and I had it on my placard, rather than risking another escape, or injury from the box, I flicked it out onto the balcony, where it disappeared into the night. Godspeed you young mouse.

So yeah, the Labour Party. Fuck man. We were let down so badly by saboteurs in our own party. That old adage that centrists always prefer fascism to socialism because it doesn’t threaten standing power structures has proved to be so painfully true once again. In the 2017 election, in which Jeremy Corbyn stunningly deprived the Tories of their majority with the most exciting manifest in a generation, members of the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party, including Ian McNicol, the general secretary, were actively undermining the party, frustrating efforts by Jeremy to tackle anti-Semitism, creating false claims, bullying, doing everything they could to stop us winning. At that time Diane Abbott, who should have a statue dedicated to her in Parliament Square for paving the way as the first black MP, was being mercilessly bullied and racially abused by the press and public was crying in a toilet. Labour members of staff, instead of helping her, told journalists where they could find her in this state. This is all detailed in whatsapp messages and emails in a report that was intended to be the nail in the coffin for Corbyn has actually served to exonerate him. Party lawyers intended to submit it as evidence to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, but are not.

I am sickened by this. I knew the centrists hated Corbyn, not because he wouldn’t win an election but that he might, so they did everything they could to stop him. Including our new leader Kier Starmer in the coup of 2016. Their constant sabotage, and false allegations were repeated over and over again until they became the accepted truth, which resulted in us losing the 2019 election too. I am so let down, I was out knocking on doors, because I knew we had a once in a generation chance to turn the country round and achieve social justice, and a country worth living in, but these people threw it away out of bitterness. I actually respect the Change UK lot a lot more for leaving the party when they did. They all should have joined the Lib Dems. Unless every single person implicated in the report is expelled from the party I’m out. Fuck that lot.

Now look where we are. It's heartbreaking, to think of what could have been. 

The strange thing is how conspicuously quiet most of the media is about this, I suppose because they were all complicit. 

We went to bed late. Partly because we were wired on adrenaline after the mouse hunt and partly because we wanted to sleep better. She was next door watching the Paddington film while I was researching grimoires, unholy magic books, to see which infernal spirits have the power to make mice disappear. I got The Grand Grimoire: The Red Dragon on my kindle for 99p. No one really knows when it was written, but probably in 1410. Apparently the full copy is kept in a secret vault in the Vatican, only the ‘safe’ chapters have been published.

The demon Fleurety has “the power to do whatever thing one could want at night time.” And Neberus, the infernal inspector general, has the power to teach “the qualities of minerals, vegetables and of all the animals, pure and impure” (I suppose this is where the idea of the left hand path of Satanism, questioning illumination and a personal code of morality rather than the blind faith of Christianity comes from, Neberus sounds like a demon of science) and he can “go anywhere and inspects all of the infernal militias.” Either of these guys could theoretically help with our mouse problem, the trouble is summoning them. I don’t know if I have the stomach to boil a black cat alive, or where I could find a quiet spot to slit a goat’s throat while reciting unholy prayers, skin it and burn its body to ash, or where to find four nails from the coffin of a child that recently died. It’s hard enough getting loo roll at the moment. The strangest thing is these blackest invocations are done in the names of the holy spirit and the Adonay, in Jesus’, Jehovah, and the Elohim’s names. People were fucking weird. Still are.

I also had a flick through ‘Demonality: or Incubi and Succubi: A treatise wherein it is shown that there are in existence on Earth rational creatures beside man, endowed like him with a body and soul, that are born like him and die like him, redeemed by our Lord Jesus Christ and capable of receiving salvation or damnation.’

The book was written by one Father Sinistrari of Ameno during the renaissance and details the habits of and unusual lifestyles of various entities and claims demons can mate with humans and create offspring using corpses as surrogates, and claims that copulating with demons is akin to bestiality, but the human is the animal, because demons are fallen celestial beings and therefore of a higher order than man. Strange for a Catholic book to claim demons are superior to humanity.

Happy nightmares.