Lynne Truss - Making the Cat Laugh

But I still managed to overshoot the mark in other ways. At the age of ten, for example, I went to a party where a game of forfeits was played – you know, where you are given a task, and the penalty for failure is to kiss a boy. When my turn came (and I had been led back to the games room by a kind but firm Mrs Robinson, who declined my wild-eyed offer of silver-polishing) I was informed that my task was to recite a poem. A limerick would have easily sufficed. But I was nervous, and desperate not to kiss a boy, so I launched into ‘The Highwayman’, a long, galloping poem which unfortunately galloped off with me clinging on to its back, bouncing and helpless. In fact, I had got as far as ‘Tlot-tlot in the frosty silence!’ before the exasperated kids finally flung themselves bodily in front of my runaway poem, waving their arms, to make me stop.

Overshooting the mark in Elizabeth Bowen’s sense is actually quite difficult these days, now that we have followed America into a more kissy-huggy way of life. Saying merely ‘Thank you for the absolutely wonderful LOVELY party!’ sounds tame, actually; it raises suspicions that you didn’t enjoy it. In 1978, when Woody Allen’s film Interiors came out, I remember that it seemed genuinely peculiar to see women greet each other with ‘Hey! You look great! Your green is perfect!’ while planting smackeroos on one another’s ear-rings. Nobody I knew behaved like that. But now I don’t know anybody who doesn’t. In fact nowadays, if someone neglects to applaud my green, I actually worry about it afterwards.

But what Elizabeth Bowen’s essay brought to my mind most horribly was not the thank-you-for-having-me thing; or even the social smackeroo. What it made me think of most was Selfridges. Because one day, when I was in the basement there, I quite unwittingly overshot the mark, and I still feel embarrassed about it. It happened quite by chance; I had only popped in for some diamanté cat collars. But then I noticed this poor old bloke on a carpet-tiled plinth demonstrating a cordless travel iron, and I’m afraid it was ‘The Highwayman’ all over again.

The trouble was, his little crowd was so unresponsive. ‘Now, you see this?’ he said, without much enthusiasm, producing a bone-dry knotted lump of cotton velvet. Nobody moved, or indeed acknowledged his presence, so I piped up, I couldn’t help it. ‘Gosh,’ I chuckled encouragingly, ‘I wouldn’t want to iron that!’ He gave me a look, then gravely un-knotted the velvet and flourished his little iron over it – to amazing effect. Suddenly the cloth was smooth and lovely! Again, nobody clapped, or even murmured. So I said quite loudly, ‘Well, I think that’s quite remarkable. I’ve never seen anything like it. What an extraordinary device. I only came in for these cat collars and a whole new world has been revealed.’

And I got increasingly voluble, I don’t know why. ‘That’s amazing,’ I said flatly, as his crowd started to wander off. ‘Do that again. Wow, I can’t believe how those creases are coming out.’ I felt I was doing him a useful turn, although I couldn’t help noticing that by the time the demonstration ended I was the only person left. ‘Thank you,’ I said warmly, ‘that was marvellous,’ and went off to pay for the cat collars. And when I looked back, I noticed he was pointing me out to a sales assistant, who was patting him gently on the shoulder.

Only when I got home did I realize I had overshot the mark so badly I had sounded like a ‘plant’, by which time it was too late to apologize. I often wonder how close I got, actually, to being clocked over the bonce with a miracle travel iron. It would have been such a pointless way to go. Whatever the merits of this extraordinary velvet-smoother, it was hardly so wonderful as all that.

One of the more obvious advantages of childlessness is that you never have to do the business with the school hamster. We all know the syndrome: it starts with ‘Can we have Raffles at home this weekend?’ and ends when after forty-eight hours of love and attention – feeding, watering and changing straw – the motley, beady-eyed ingrate suddenly kicks the bucket on Sunday night when all the pet shops are shut. Stiff-legged on the floor of his hutch, the hamster peers through its straw with a great eternal question in its lifeless gaze. It appears to be thinking, ‘Get out of that. You can’t, can you?’

But unfortunately single life does bring its own version of the Death of Raffles routine. Since you tend not to take holidays at peak times (such as the first week in August), you can find yourself cheerfully agreeing to be pet-servicer, plant-waterer and fish-food-sprinkler for such a large number of lucky neighbouring holiday-makers that you would certainly bend under the burden of responsibility if the weight of all the flipping door-keys didn’t stagger you first. Currently my key-ring is so heavy with other people’s Chubbs, Banhams and Ingersolls that I am permanently reminded of the great clanking whatsit dragged around by Marley’s Ghost.

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