Weaseling

Shark is out all this week. She is weaseling with the Woodcraft Folk.

I am not even making that word up. Shark tuts and says Don't you know what weaseling is? She adopts the scornful and contemptuous tone you might reserve for anyone you wanted to cut off socially, forever.

So I learn what weaseling is. It is squeezing your face, gut, and bum through tiny cracks between rocks and hoping you don't get stuck or explode. Apparently it is very popular. Except with the morbidly obese and pregnant ladies. They don't find it so much fun.

I tell Shark I could be quite good at weaseling. Only yesterday I had to worm my way through your father's office. I had to reach the fireplace without getting stuck between the accounting pile (1986-1987) and the pile of manuscripts submitted by the academic elite living in the world of commas (2005-2006).

Shark lets out a little snort.

What does she know! Last time she visited papa's office was 2010, and it's got a lot worse since then. Excavating a two metre mountain of rock-hard paperwork, concreted together by a solid mix of mould, spider steel, petrified dust and inertia is no mean feat. And when I did arrive at the fireplace, guess what I found? A bookcase! It contained stuff like Tre Utomnordiska Perspektiv, the 7010CT User's Manual, and a folder of letters from an increasingly shouty publisher about a boring arse of a book (print run 250) only promised for December 1987.

Shark says she thinks I have a point. Indeed I have! Papa says he hasn't time to do the deep pile excavation because he has to look at it and decide. Well, it might come to court. Hmmm. I suspect he is merely driven by Mr Trebus psychology to pile everything up, floor to ceiling.

Shark says maybe we could all set out for a weasel in daddy's office when she comes back. I think that sounds like an excellent idea. I could set the weasels going at one end, and see if they make a complete circuit to come out alive! Shark is quite enthusiastic about that. She says she will have learned some techniques for extracting her left leg from the gap under the table and her backside from between two chair legs.

Yes, I say, let's do that! Wouldn't it be a lovely surprise for papa when he comes home, to know that we have been resourceful in his absence, solved all his problems in one fell swoop, and turned his office into a lucrative theme park, Weaseling Wonderworld!