Liz Truss Killed My Hamster!

Okay, well, to be fair she didn’t come into my house and PHYSICALLY preside over his demise. (Wouldn’t put it past her, mind).

But the absolute disaster of her government’s policies has meant – like so many others – I’m pretty worried about money right now. And steadfastly refusing to put on any heating.

So she is DEFINITELY responsible for the fact my house is colder than it’s ever been, and I therefore couldn’t be 100% sure he wasn’t hibernating, and thus had to sit with a gently warming corpse under my desk on a hot water bottle for an entire day JUST IN CASE.

(That’s not the kind of mistake you can come back from. Certainly not if you’re a hamster).

Although there are no long queues around the block to see him, or any national periods of mourning, Mr Tulip’s death (Chewy for short) has hit me pretty hard, because he was a KING amongst hamsters.

And I loved him as I am apparently fated to love everything – all consumingly and slightly unhingedly.

He was – and this is true – the favourite of my dependents.

This is because unlike any of the others he was incredibly easy to care for, easily pleased, endlessly accommodating, consistently kind, endearingly self-entertaining and unrelentingly cute. It was simply not in his nature to object or grump, in his physical abilities to whine or scream (or indeed to purr alluringly and then attack me).

He was a Nice Critter.

But he was more than that too…

We got him as a little beacon of fluffy hope in the midst of lockdown horrors. He gave us something to love, something to laugh at and something to glue us back together. He ended strife with the magic wiggle of his little Syrian shelf-butt.

He was a tiny, soft, sweet and good thing in a big, hard, cruel and bad world.

And his going has somehow let all of that dark pour in – the dark that pours into my soul every October – this year through a small rodent-shaped hole, the black of shiny bright eyes.

And my while my sadness is hamster-shaped, it is not hamster-sized. Because I’m crying about more than Mr Tulip.

I’m crying for the end of a mini-era; for a tiny light in a very broken world that’s no longer there to brighten it; for all losses my own and others’ – big and small, past and present; for the deaths I know are coming round the corner; for the inevitability of future abandonments; for the futility of love with nowhere to go; for nice things taken away; for powerlessness; for all the cold places and for all the awfulness all around.

And the other bad Things and bad Thoughts I have been holding at bay flow in as fragile walls crumble into sawdust, and roll around on an endless wheel behind my eyes. My seed-ball head cannot hold its shape under their onslaught and I am scattered – tiny pieces covering the floor.

Mr Tulip would have known just what to do about this situation.

I can see his little cheeks now.

They say January is the most depressing month of the year, but for me it always October. And I traditionally spend the month berating myself for my low mood, running away from the looming, nameless things chasing me, and trying to pull myself together with varying degrees of success.

But this year – this year I’m just going to embrace being sad about sad things. However small they are. However huge.

Sometimes you have to acknowledge the dark before you can leave it behind again.

Sometimes it helps.

And sometimes, so does blaming Liz Truss-ed-us-all-up-good-and-proper.

xxx