Writer's Notebook

Ham felt himself the luckiest mouse alive. It wasn't every day that someone came into the shop and bought a mouse. Hamsters, yes; guinea-pigs too. Even rats would have ranked higher on the pet-shop's best-seller lists than mice. But for Ham - he had taken the name in a bid to try and persuade the customer that he was more like a hamster than a mouse - that had changed that very morning. He was chatting away with one of his neighbours who had gone into a sulk over the dwindling food supplies the new help was giving them, when she came into the shop and straight up to the mice cages. She, young, blonde, with a pretty face and such hypnotic, blue eyes that you could forgive any self-respecting mouse for falling in love with her. She wanted a mouse, she explained to the shopkeeper. She had always wanted a mouse, but her mother had never let her have one. Now, she had her very own flat and she was going to buy a mouse, nothing else would do. The words sent the mice into a flurry of activity. Each one wanted to look its little best, in particular the males. And obviously Ham managed to make himself look his very best, for after a brief moment of despair when it seemed the girl might, after all, go for the little pink mouse, she asked the shopkeeper to give him that cute, little white one in the corner.

That was now over six hours ago and Ham was still floating somewhere between the sixth and seventh heavens. As soon as she got home the young lady took him out of the box the shopkeeper had given her and put him in a delightful little cage she had prepared just for him. Not that he had found much rest, as yet. Several times that afternoon she had lifted him out and cuddled him in her tiny, cupped hands. She would carry him into the kitchen and hold him up to the small so that he could drink, promising that tomorrow she would buy him a proper water drip. Once she even lifted him up to her face and stared at him with her bright blue eyes. It was obvious they were made for each other and Ham remembered a story he'd once heard his mother tell him about an animal who had been changed into a handsome prince upon being kissed by the prettiest girl on earth. Well, he had the prettiest girl, now if only... And that was when it happened. Ham wasn't quite sure how or why, all he knew was that he was standing there tall and proud watching his beloved turn and flee in fear at the unusual turn events had taken.