This is too much of a coincidence surely: I have, over the past few weeks, been mulling over various ideas for my first blog of 2018 –  but I’m afraid ‘the mulling’ has had to compete (mainly) with Netflix (yes I’ve been ‘binge watching’!),’phoning to keep in touch with the sick and the walking wounded, preparing for and cancelling ‘get togethers’ (see previous excuse) and generally ‘pfaffing about’ dodging the dreaded ‘lurgie’ while all around have been falling like foxes…..I mean flies.

So, here is the coincidence to which I refer. Last night, I had just tucked myself up in bed, crossword in hands, when I heard this painful screaming. A cat? Dog? Rat? Wait a minute……I knew that sound… but it was so close that I was too apprehensive to pull back the curtain and look for myself. It eventually stopped. I eventually went to sleep.
I had completely forgotten about the ‘midnight screaming’ till ‘The Good Fairy’ reminded me of it next day.
‘Did you hear it?’
‘Well of course I did but I couldn’t ‘cluck up the purrage'( thanks Daddy!) to look out and see what it was…..’
‘It was a fox!…. and it was sitting just yards from your bedroom window… mum, were you wearing your foxie onesie….!!!?’
…. and yes I do have a foxie onesie (a Christmas present received last year from my youngest granddaughter – the vixen!!) complete with *’heed an’ feet ‘an tail an’ a’,’ which I was wearing when The Good Fairy ‘phoned, late one evening, to ask for some help with an electrical problem. I saw no need to change into something less comfortable so I trotted over to her door…. and knocked. Imagine her greeting when this big rampant, russet fox sashayed into her hallway….

‘What the fox!!!!……is this Hallow-bloomin’- e’en????…. Mum, did anyone see you??’…… her voice ‘tailed off’ as I ‘brushed’ past her…..

‘Fantastic Mrs. Fox and Box at your service – no job too small – just give me a call…..’

Well of course I wasn’t able to help with the problem ( for laughing !… and being that I was relying on the contents of Hugh’s pristine tool box which (still) contains only three cotton buds, some hearing aid batteries and a tuning fork) I was about as useful as a one-legged man (oops… sorry… I meant ‘person’!) in a bum kicking competition! Nor did she want me to hang about for any great length of time (in case I was spotted and peppered with shot by a startled neighbour!) so I found myself back in my own den before you could say  ‘John Peel!’….(D’ye Ken John Peel?)

Now, here’s the thing, my ‘foxie onesie’ hangs on my bedroom door which is opposite the window. So, what I want to know is this. Has it been ‘clocked’ by the philandering foxes of Motherwell and are they out to exact revenge for, what appears to them,  a blatant and callous exhibition of a dear departed member of their crafty community…..hm…..
That screaming the other night – was it a warning? A friend who spoke with some authority about all things foxy, said the screaming was a mating call…. well, Fred, your crafty mates have sent you on a wild goose chase…. you’re in the wrong neck of the woods for a romantic encounter….so foxtrot off and let all us urban chicks get an uninterrupted night’s sleep……

……… in the meantime, I’m still trying to work out what to write for my blog…. x