RATS!

I'm sure you've seen many 'horror' films over your lifetime*.
Every now and then a new one comes out that breaks with tradition and adds exciting and scary new elements to the genre but good directors like Alfred Hitchcock, John Carpenter, Ridley Scott, Stanley Kubrick and William Friedkin are few and far between.

Among other 'tricks' in classic 'horror' films are the little plays with light.
Expect your scene to be dark with fleeting or insubstantial light partially revealing the 'horror'.
Mandatories are:

• Ancient electrics preferably 1920's style with light bulbs on long dangling cords.
• Old style light bulbs of extremely low wattage.
• Flickering light bulb.
• Light bulb inexplicably failing.
• Thunder and lightning storm outside with occasional flashes momentarily highlighting something either innocuous or scary.
• A flashlight (if found) being dropped and breaking or inexorably failing.
• DARKNESS

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So where's this going you ask - you my 64.5 year old reader with  not a lot of spare time on your hands? 

Rats!

Yes rats. It seems that a cousin of the rat or rats I eraticated (a little spelling joke there) a few months back has moved into the attic. We heard it scuttling and scratching yesterday. This always worries me as we have an old wooden villa and the idea of rats chewing electrical fittings and cables  is scary as it is a fire risk.

This morning I went through the palaver again of getting up into the roof space via a cupboard and narrow chute See: TUESDAY

I hate doing this as its difficult, annoying and slightly scary (the ladder doesn't go all the way and it requires a bit of 'chimney climbing' to get to the top. As you would expect it's dark up there. The new roof we had installed a few years back has eliminated the nail hole inlets of light and other apertures (but not enough to deter rats obviously) but there is still some filtered light in rays here and there. Creepy. 

I take two torches with me when I do this climb as it is possible to drop one down a crevice between walls. As I neared the top of the chute one of the torches went out. It had been getting dimmer but I thought it would last. I've dropped this torch a few times so must have damaged something inside it. Anyway it failed. "Not to worry" I thought "I've got another" and finished my climb laden with rat bait, gloves and bait containers. I laid out all this on top of the snow-like insulation and started to fill the containers and position them about.

The second torch failed. Just like that. It didn't flicker or dim it just went out leaving me in sudden darkness. Fortunately I was on the last container and had the tongs in the rat bait tub so was able to fiddle about and pick up a couple of bait tabs and, by touch, fill the last container.

That's when thought of classic horror films came into my mind. I've seen many films where someone is in a dark attic when their torch fails and they sense something or someone up there with them.

Nothing happened. I climbed down, removed the ladder, refitted the shelves and closed the cupboard doors. Job done.





* An unofficial survey revealed that the average age of our readership is approximately 64.5 years.