The Wonderful Thing about chiggers

Isn’t the word chiggers great? I love it.  It may be one of my new best favourite words, which is why I have declared today; ‘National Chiggers Day’, and decided that every blog post I write must have the word chiggers in the title.  You don’t realise until you start obsessively thinking about it for hours on end what a versatile and downright flexible little linguistic tool it is.  I decided not to go on to the next line of the song, being as it is: ’is that chiggers are wonderful things?’ because they’re clearly not wonderful things.  Nobody who is having a crap day sits around thinking; ‘What I really could do with now to lift my spirits, is a good dose of chiggers.’  It just doesn’t happen.  The only upside to chiggers is that I believe that though vile, unpleasant and sick making they are in fact curable and one of the milder tropical diseases/parasites that one can get.  This is one of the reasons I have no desire to slog my way through the rain forest in search of the source of the Amazon or whatever it is that people who go to the rainforest do these days.

I expect most of them cry a lot and spent five trillion pounds on an eco holiday which involves them squatting on top of a tall pole with a pair of binoculars watching the natives raze the flora and fauna to the ground to put up Barratt homes with satellite television and hot and cold running McDonald’s cattle farms.  In the midst of all this carnage, somewhere, in a teeny, weeny, pocket handkerchief sized bit that’s miles away from encroaching civilisation are Ray Mears, David Bellamy, David Attenborough and Joanna Lumley with television crews, tripping over each other’s cabling and trying to pretend that they’re the only ones in the forest for hundreds of miles around.  I bet a load of bitch slapping goes on.  That and stealing each other’s biltong. 

My money’s on Joanna Lumley in a fight.  I’ve always been very impressed that she managed to make herself a pair of slippers from a bra in the dark on a desert island.  I expect she went to Roedean.  I hear that making shoes out of your own bra is one of the extras that daddy can pay for along with stripping down an engine without getting grease on your tiara and learning how to make a shit hot Pimms and lemonade (cucumber is the secret ingredient apparently).  I went to a standard high school where they taught you how to skive off from double history by going down the park and how to eat four tea cakes in one go without choking to death.  No wonder the education system is in tatters.

Jason is fending off flung baked beans downstairs, which acrobatics are known in other people’s houses as tea time.  I am upstairs ‘running the bath’, which means turning the hot tap on, flinging some lavender oil in, and scarpering to come and sit here in peace for a few minutes whilst being delighted that I am out of the range of bean juice myself.  Even though he’s had a hard day at work he didn’t have to survive Oscar trying to put masticated shreddies down his vest with a cold teaspoon or listening to Tallulah giving a half hour lecture on the advantages of the Sontarans vs. the Daleks, complete with diagrams and a rather excellent picture of the Tardis at bay.  This is why I am up here and he is down there.  If I hear the word Sontaran again today I may actually rend my hair and weep.

Tallulah’s revived interest in Doctor Who is beneficial only in that it is taking her mind off of counting her money.  As we are all interested in Doctor Who, except Oscar who has to go to bed before it starts, it is not too much of a hardship, and at least we know what she is talking about most of the time.  She is particularly excited at the moment because Rose (A.K.A Billy Piper) has suddenly reappeared.  Tallulah has a massive crush on Rose.  She has newspaper clippings of Billy Piper’s recent wedding which she keeps safe in a special plastic bag, and has memorised everything that Rose/Billy has ever done in a Doctor Who context.  She even has a Rose action figure.  It is a rubbish action figure, as all it does is crouch in a small plastic way with its arms akimbo, looking rather like it needs a pooh, but she loves it anyway. 

When Rose left at the end of the second series I thought we might have to take Tallulah for counselling.  Now that Rose is back it is a mixed blessing.  I think she’s only going to be in one more epsiode and the series finishes, and then she’s coming back next year but only for four episodes, and that is a whole year away.  A whole year is a long time in a small girl’s life, and Tallulah has a peculiar approach to time at the best of times. At the weekend she asked me if she would be six next year.  I confirmed that she would indeed.  She asked if she would be having a party next year.  I said it depended.  She said rather thoughtfully: ‘Yes, ‘acos I spose you might be dead by then, what with being old and everything.’  I said it was more likely that she would be dead from being a bloody nuisance.  She laughed gaily and skipped away clearly thinking: ‘You fool! You, who are old and near to death, while I, I am young and full of life and immortally indestructible. Mwah hah hah haaaah!’  Later on she asked me who would look after her and Tilly and Oscar if Jason and I were to have a horrible bus accident and die together.  It was not in a sad, mournful tone of voice, rather a cheery, practical, a girl has got to make plans sort of voice.  I told her that Aunty Rachel and Uncle Chris would be in charge, at which she looked positively gleeful.  I am now checking the whole house for traps.  Tallulah loves Aunty Rachel quite a lot and can probably see many positives in becoming an orphan which weren’t previously apparent to her.  I expect it’s her that’s given me chiggers.