Completing the kill…

I am a very pro-wildlife sort of chap. I'm all for listening to the birds chirp chirping and is there anything more joyful than watching rabbits and their on-steroids cousins, the hare, frolicking about in distant fields? And what sort of world would it be if we didn't have lions and tigers and badgers and scousers and mountain gorillas complete with nerdy types tracking them all over the place? It would be a duller place let me tell you. But one has to draw the line somewhere. I mean we can't allow the place to be overrun with hedge dwelling critters now can we. But still, there is a time and a place.

Sunday evening and we were all in a happy and quieter place following the forced expulsion of the darling kiddies and their apologist parents. I had just dropped some starters off at table eight and was weaving, with the confidence of a waiter who knew his shift only had less than an hour left in it, through the restaurant and back to the bar when I was called over by the lady on table four.

"Waiter! Oh waiter...!", that'll be me then.

"Yes madam?"

"I've done you a favour, you're going to love me for this"

You had better have next week's lotto results because I only really have love for pies and the red shirted heroes of Manchester United Football Club, thought I as I wondered where this journey down bonkers lady avenue was heading.

"Look", says she and did a twitchy eye thing. I assumed she was pointing at something that she wanted me to see but she had a face that was twitchier than a coke smuggler all jacked up on their own product trying to navigate their way through airport security.

I just smiled and quickly scanned the table and then her husband and then the floor for something, anything, that would give me a clue as to what the hell she was on about.

"Sorry, you've lost me...eh..." I had no idea what she was mithering on about at all and as I couldn't see a sack of gold I was pretty sure I wasn't going to, as she had suggested, love her for it. Whatever it was that is.

"LOOK, HERE...", exclaimed the woman clearly upset that I hadn't seen it, the dead wasp.

"It's a dead wasp" , I replied sounding every bit as confused as any waiter when faced with a woman grinning like a fat lad who has just managed to lose a stone in weight (that's me btw) whilst pointing at a dead wasp in a pool of average house plonk. Now I was worried, as one might be, that she had discovered the aforementioned dead wasp in her salad. I was close to getting home, so very close and now this.

"Oh my, I'm so very sorry about that madam. Let me replace your salad or get you something else. It will be on the house, obviously. I'll get the manager to pop over to apologise personally. I cant imagine how that got in there. I'm so very sorry."

Christ was I in a tizzy. I was babbling uncontrollably. Like how else would one babble? Sake.

"What? Don't be daft, it wasn't in the salad."

Turning to her husband who hadn't said a chuffing word through the whole episode I said, "Sir, was it in your eh..." and then I realised he hadn't had a starter due to a rather terrible case of the, "thrupenny bits". His words, not mine. Sometimes I feel I need to work in a classier environment. Somewhere where the guests don't use rhyming slang to describe the state of their bowel movements. Or bowel movements at all.

I stood upright and looked down on the two of them so completely unsure as to what the fudge was going on.

"No, no, no you silly boy..."I let that slide "I killed it! It was annoying Kenneth [her husband I assume] so I thwacked it with the sports section of the Sunday Times which just stunned it so I completed the kill off with a drop of my wine"

Oh you completed the kill did you? Oh crikey, this was an interesting choice of words and in no way frightening or slightly melo-fucking-dramatic. I expect their house is shrine to the Terminator movies and what have you. And instead of crocheting and darning of an evening she plays Manhunt on a games console. "I just stamped on his throat Kenneth. Another kill completed. Get us a nice cuppa tea will you love"

It was queer and no mistake. But there was more to follow.

"I'll just take it out of the way then shall I?", says I reaching for the poor blighter.

"Don't you dare! Leave it there..", she was gripping the rolled up sports section like she was ready to pounce so rather than be the next completed kill I withdrew my hand quick sharpish like.

"Eh, okay then"

I made a hasty retreat back to the bar from where I could watch the killer on four. She spent the rest of the meal scanning the air space around her table for other wasps. She ate with a fork in one hand and the rolled up killing paper in the other.

Odd. I was delighted to get home on Sunday evening.

Home, to The Cousin.

FML...