Best Friend

I like to sit on my staff's laps in the evening. I stretch out, snuggle down and poke my feet out the back for a massage. They brush and stroke me while I lie there and I can keep an eye on Badger who is invariably in the lap of whichever staff member isn't holding me. Yes, it's a good life being a guinea pig living with these two fruitcakes. I particularly enjoy sitting on my male staff's lap because after half an hour or so of being stroked and watching the utter crap that they like to watch on TV, I get a little bored. If I'm on my male staff's lap I relieve this boredom by biting his trousers as close as I can get to his dangly bits without actually sinking my teeth into them.  Yeeuch! What a thought. This simple action causes some highly entertaining yelping and often spilling of wine. For some reason this same biting behaviour has little or no effect on my female staff. Ah well, no brain, no pain I guess.

Anyway, sometimes while I'm on my male staff's lap he tells me stories. Yesterday, for example, he told me that when he was about four years old (Jeez, that's middle aged for a guinea pig.) his family moved to a bungalow in Oakham, England. That first day he was playing in the front garden - probably eating worms or whatever four year olds do - when he spied the lady next door pruning roses. He immediately dropped his worms and went around to introduce himself. He crept up behind her and loudly announced "You're my best friend." This naturally made the poor woman jump and she stabbed herself savagely on one of the rose thorns. Furiously sucking the blood from the dripping wound she turned and stared at the snotty nosed little horror who'd caused the injury. "You're my best friend." He repeated. And so it was. The lady next door was forever known simply as "Best Friend." My male staff would disappear into her house at every opportunity for the next four years to play shops, watch the wrestling on the TV or simply to sip sweet milky tea and eat great chunks of cake. Best Friend passed away a few years ago, but before she died she taught my male staff a poem which he fondly remembers and which he recited to me with, I'm almost certain, a little tear in his eye.

How can a guinea pig show he's pleased
When he hasn't got a tail to wag?
All little animals you will find
Have got a little tail stuck on behind.

If they'd only put a tail on a guinea pig
And finish off a decent job,
Then the price of a guinea pig would run right up,
From a guinea up to thirty bob.

Now if you think that's soft, listen to this. Remember my recent post "The Killer Ibis" wherein that poor Singaporean solicitor's ham sandwich was brutally attacked by a vicious ibis? So savage and determined was this attack that the poor legal eagle had to stomp on the bird's neck and head several times in order to save his lunch from a fate worse than...........being eaten by a solicitor. Well, now there is the story of the Singaporean soldier who got his maid to carry his rucksack for him while on a military exercise. Good grief! What sort of men are they breeding in Singapore?  Yep this hero was pictured in The Straits Times newspaper marching along in his fatigues while his diminutive maid trudged along behind lugging his pack. This man is obviously a member of the SAS. (Singapore's Armed Sissies). This elite and secretive regiment is sent into areas of armed conflict in order to sabotage the enemy's make-up supplies, steal their nail clippers and covertly replace their tissues with sandpaper so that they get a really sore nose. If Lee Kuan Yew were dead he'd be spinning in his grave right now.