LIFE & TIMES I MUST CONFESS

EDITED BY KATHY CLUGSTON

This month, Kathy fesses up to her most wicked deed, inspired by the play The Four Worst Things I’ve Ever Done.

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?

Unless you’ve committed a deliberate and indisputably evil act, it’s a tough question to answer. The reason I ask is because of a recent episode of a radio show I host, The Ticket. Among a tableful of guests was Katie Shortt, an actor in a play by Ewan McGowan called The Four Worst Things I’ve Ever Done. It’s about a young woman named Erin who confesses to her most wicked deeds. For obvious reasons Katie didn’t want to give away the plot but did reveal that Erin’s crimes got progressively worse as the play went on, beginning with an act of cruelty on her sister’s hamster. “If that’s the starting point,” she said, “you can only imagine what comes next.” This gave me a flashback to an incident in my own life. A truly terrible event…

We all did bad things as children: thwacked another youngster, ingested a toy, perhaps tried to eliminate a baby sibling. These childhood misadventures don’t count. Teenage years are often rife with wrongdoing as we experiment with friendships, relationships and substances, push our parents’ rules and expectations to the limit and possibly help ourselves to the odd nail polish and cassette tape from Woollies. (For all of these things I sincerely apologise.) Then there are the swings and roundabouts of adulthood that we never want to admit to: people let down, lies told, trust betrayed. Most of us have a few skeletons of this kind, memories of which can appear out of the blue and send a shiver of shame creeping over our scalp and down the back of our neck.

So what is the worst thing I’ve ever done, that I care to admit to in print? Reader, I toasted a mouse. Not on purpose, you understand. I was living in a flat in Amsterdam at the time, a city where virtually every home was infested with mice due to the densely packed, full-of-holes old buildings and surrounding canals. As a vegetarian and animal lover, I couldn’t bring myself to inflict a slow death by sticky glue or even a quick one by flip trap, so I bought a little box which, when primed with peanut butter, tempts the mice in and then closes the door on them, keeping them alive and

THIS MONTH’S OBSESSIONS:

able to be removed from the home. I knew they’d have to be taken some distance away. Like slugs, mice have a strong homing instinct. So I would put the box containing one or sometimes two of my furry friends into a holdall and take it with me on the train to work, getting off at a stop several miles away near some fields and releasing its quivering contents into “the wild”. Seriously, I did this. For weeks. Finally one morning I got up and the box was empty. It was empty the next morning too. I did a little jig around my mouse-free kitchen as I made tea and toast, when suddenly there was a flash of light, a high-pitched squeak and a loud “BOOM!” as the toaster exploded. It took a moment for the truth to dawn on me. A wee critter had evidently been having a delicious breakfast of breadcrumbs only to end up in the rodent equivalent of the electric chair. I couldn’t bear to look into the slot. Shaking and sobbing, I donned my rubber gloves and bundled all evidence of my brutal crime into a black bin bag.

Fair play to my other guests on The Ticket for chiming in with their own experiences. A comedian admitted to telling his coworker and girlfriend that their boss had found out about their relationship and was going to sack one of them, a practical joke that went down like a lead balloon. A writer revealed he’d several times bought and written birthday cards in the Post Office and only bought the stamp, never paying for the actual cards. Our actions have consequences. I have never again been troubled by mice. The comedian didn’t fare so well, his girlfriend is now an ex-girlfriend. If it turns out the writer has been arrested for card theft I can only, once again, sincerely apologise.

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