The floors were completely bare, lacking any covering. Dark stone for the long, dank, narrow, hallway and wood for the square kitchen, in the corner of which, on the floor, next to a coal burning stove, was a large bird-type metal cage with a spinning hamster wheel inside. The trouble was there was no hamster in there. Instead there was a big, white, ugly rat on top of the wheel! It must have been him that I smelled on entering.
“Make great pets, you know,” she said when I looked somewhat shocked, to which all I could do was reply, “really.”
“I made a huge mistake sixty-eight years ago, in marrying a man who was a no good lazy drunken rat. When he died I decided to keep them as pets so I could imagine him running around in circles chasing his own arse. Gave ratty there, I call him Freddi
