Of mice and men and women and Barbie dolls

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It’s not easy for me to write about the news these days without wanting to slit either my wrists or someone else’s–I lean toward the second choice, always–but I can offer you a few wristless bits and pieces. Let’s start with a mouse in Wales.

Yes, the world is indeed going to hell when the best news I can offer starts with a mouse. 

A retired postman in Wales, Rodney Holbrook, noticed when he got to the workbench in his shed, small objects–clothespins, corks, nuts, bolts–weren’t where he’d left them: they’d been gathered up into a box. So Holbrook set up a night vision camera and it captured a mouse tidying away the stuff he’d left out. Holbrook thinks it’s using the junk to disguise its stash of nuts, but to date no one’s asked the mouse, so that’s guesswork. 

He’s named it Welsh Tidy Mouse.

To understand the story fully, you have to understand the relationship between British men and their sheds. I don’t come anywhere close to understanding it, unfortunately. All I can tell you is that there’s some sort of magnetic attraction between the two.

Irrelevant photo: Sunrise

 

I can also tell you that when I say “a shed” I’m not talking about a place outside the house to stuff all your junk but about a workshop. The shed’s roots run so deep in the male side of the culture that when I consulted Lord Google on the subject of men and sheds he led me to the Men’s Sheds Association, which reassured me that I hadn’t made up the connection. The group provides sheds that are “community spaces where men can enjoy practical hobbies. They’re about making friends, learning and sharing skills. Many guys come just for the tea and banter – everyone’s welcome.“

They might or might not welcome someone who isn’t of the male persuasion (they did say “everyone”), but my guess is that they’d be less thrown by a tidy mouse joining them. When they say “everyone,” they could easily mean everyone we’re thinking of. 

 

Speaking of men and women, though

Mattel, the company that makes Barbie dolls and that was thoroughly spoofed in the movie Barbie, is trying to cash in on the film by releasing four new dolls: a studio executive Barbie, a film star Barbie, a director Barbie, and a cinematographer Barbie. In response to which screenwriter Taffy Brodesser-Akner tweeted, “Where is Screenwriter Barbie? Does Mattel not know how to make sweatpants? Does Mattel not know how to get avocado toast on a t-shirt and just kind of leave it there?”

David Simon, who created The Wire went a step further, calling for a grip Barbie, a teamster Barbie, a “key set PA Barbie who has to go into Movie Star Barbie’s trailer and tell the delicate flower to get the fuck down to set because 120 other pissed-off Barbie’s are waiting for her. That film taught Mattel nothing.”

 

Enough of that. Is it safe to talk about politics?

Yes, but not for long or my (or someone else’s) wrists will be in danger. We’ll stick to the peripheral stuff.

When Boris Johnson was mayor of London, he made regular appearances at LBC Studios, which Lord Google tells me is a talk radio station but which uses a camera. Don’t ask me; when I hosted a radio show, we were invisible and free to wear as much avocado toast as we wanted, although this was so long ago avocado toast hadn’t been invented yet, and neither had avocados. Or toast. There wasn’t a camera to be found.

The reason the camera’s important is that Johnson made such a habit of mumbling and sliding his chair out of camera range in response to tough questions that eventually they bolted the guest’s chair to the floor. They called it the Boris Bolt. It didn’t stop him from mumbling when he didn’t have anything sensible to say, but it did at least keep him on camera when he did it.

*

Okay, just a little more about politics. This is from Ottawa County, Michigan, where a group of commissioners affiliated with Ottawa Impact, a right-wing Christian group, took over the county board in November 2022. One of the things they did was try to get rid of the county’s public health officer, Adeline Hambley. She and her department had supported mask mandates and Covid vaccinations, making her an instrument of government tyranny. They’d also offered sexual health tests at a Pride festival, which the new commissioners saw as “encouraging sexually perverse behavior,” according to a Washington Post article. 

Hambley wasn’t about to go quietly. As she saw it, her job was about health, not about serving the board. “I want to work with the commissioners so we can protect the community,” she said. “But I am not their subordinate.”

After ten months of negotiation (fighting might be a better word), both parties agreed that the county would pay her $4 million in return for her resignation.

Then the commissioners discovered that bad things would fall off the top shelf of the county’s financial closet and smack them on their heads if they went through with the deal, because they hadn’t consulted the most important player in the game, their insurers. 

What sort of bad things am I talking about? They’d lose their insurance, which would lose the county its AAA bond rating, which would drive up the cost of borrowing.

Oops.

At last call, the county was trying to back out of the deal and Hambley and her lawyers were trying to enforce it. 

If they ever do get rid of her, the plan is to replace her with a local HVAC (that’s heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) safety manager who’s never held public office and, I think we can all assume, knows a bit more about public health than the Welsh Tidy Mouse.

Hambley? She’s an environmental health specialist with an MBA in business administration and a minor in government tyranny. 

In the most recent article I found, the mess was still working its way through the courts.

29 thoughts on “Of mice and men and women and Barbie dolls”

  1. Men and their sheds! Made me laugh. Certainly is a thing. So intriguing about the tidy mouse. Why don’t the authorities who determine the motivations of speechless beings ever accept that some animals may not just be motivated by food!? Perhaps that mouse was just so damn sick of the man leaving a mess in its living space!

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  2. I hope Hambley wins.
    I have a shed! It’s where I do my creative stuff, and keep my tools and tiles etc for mosaics and props for photos. No men in there nor tidy mouse, though 4 years ago a family of them lived underneath it quite happily. Mice I mean, not men.

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    • OC? Sorry–I’m coming up with an endless number of possibilitiesj but none of them even remotely sensible. Push me in the right direction, would you? Yes, though, Hambley is impressive. A couple of longer articles that I read give a fuller picture of her than I did and she seems like someone to respect.

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  5. Don’t bet the rent that the HVAC guy would know more than the Welsh Tidy Mouse. My previous experience with public school boards leads me to that conclusion. And if the Welsh Tidy Mouse’s only hidden agenda is hiding his stash of snacks you would also be ahead of the game. Anyone interested in finding more in depth info should google the State of Florida’s Surgeon General and his controversial doings.. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/health-care/article274237135.html

    Would that he were an HVAC specialist.

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  6. Really love all of your tales today. I’m still giggling. My man-neighbor has three sheds. I wouldn’t consider upsetting him by even peeking inside of them. He was a bit discomforted when he saw I have a highly organized tool cart.

    I once had a mouse in my bathroom cabinet. He was more weirdly voracious than tidy. He seemed to think a bar of soap was a delicious delicacy, leaving little tooth marks all over it.

    Boris Bolt indeed. I just learned The Rapist (aka TFG or Trump) walked out of the courtroom while Jean Carroll’s attorney was suggesting the jury make a big award based on Trump’s own boast about his worth. Handcuffs in place of a bolt was needed. He posted his wailing objection to the $83.3 million award while winging away on his big fat plane. Wish that plane had a Boeing door plug.

    Anyway, I’m giddy from your tales and this delicious news.

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    • That’s more than I can respond to, so I’ll settle for saying that i had a mouse under the bed once (a replacement for childhood monsters under the bed) that ate a chapstick. Noisily. Eventually I got it out, although I don’t remember how. Probably one of our live traps, which would’ve offered a better menu.

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  8. Ken has a shed and I wish he had a Tidy Mouse! But maybe we have one in the house and that’s what happened to the mousetrap that disappeared, never to be found. It’s in a little box somewhere in the basement!

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  9. Aaah, King Boris, the first and thankfully last. Didn’t he say lately that the world just needs a second term of the orange Supremo ? Good ole boy Boris, always good for a lick of them old boots.

    I vaguely remember imagines of Barbie on drugs, she seemingly couldn’t cope with the pressure of prefab stardom, but that was already in the Nineties, mind you. Alas, poor soul.

    This Ms Hambley should have been given a medal, handing Johnnies to the pervs is a good thing, no spawning. Tcha, every good deed … But on the other hand, maybe a kind of plumber can enforce public health too, just a question of wrench.

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    • I have no idea what Johnson recently said. Now that the cheesier papers have stopped putting him on the front page, I’m spared most of his idiocies. It’s a small improvement but an important one.

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  10. Regarding the situation in Ottawa County – I’m sure it was all about moral indignation until they realized there was going to be a financial cost. Now they can live with the ethical dilemma. Perhaps they could see if Tidy Mouse can fix up their mess.

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