Honestly now, my final few weeks in hospital were absolutely crazy! After a string of accidents which saw me go through multiple sets of leg plasters in record time, I hardly knew which way was up anymore, and this turmoil was only increased by the bewildering state of my love life. I mean, did I like Aurora Australis, or didn’t I? She was smart, she was gorgeous, and by outward appearances she was all I could wish for in a girlfriend… but she was also wantonly rude, demanding and insensitive. How was it, then, that I seemed so blind to those faults whenever I was near her?

On the other hand, there was Nurse Glob. Nurse Glob was everything that Aurora wasn’t. She was simple, she was ugly, she was clumsy in the extreme. She was the furthest thing possible from anyone I imagined being attracted to, but she was also thoughtful, kind and caring. When I was near her, she mostly made me cross. Yet when she left my side, somehow there was an empty space that nobody else could fill, and I found myself bored and lonely till she was back again. 

Confused? You bet I was!  But sooner or later all unpleasant things come to an end, and so I was eventually discharged from hospital with high hopes of trading in both of the above for a brand new romantic interest. However – yes, you’ve guessed it, fans! – so far from this, after returning home my misadventures in the love department only went from bad to worse.

It all began after my army friend George McAcker heard my story and offered to introduce me to RatChat, a popular dating app for rodents. Naturally I couldn’t have been more delighted with his suggestion, so I signed up for the service right away. I just couldn’t wait to see the profile pictures of my many potential matches, and sure enough I wasn’t disappointed. But then, oh my, where to start? I hadn’t been browsing through the photos for long before it came to my attention that I was swiping right with almost every profile I viewed, with the result that I had soon ‘liked’ two hundred and twenty seven glamorous lady rats with hobbies and other pastimes similar to my own. (Well I ask you, was it my fault that nearly all of the female users of RatChat were really hot?) With this, in a flash the app launched into action, linking together geographical locations, common interests and mutual friends. Then having apparently deemed me compatible with them all, it lost no time in streaming my personal photos back to the same two hundred and twenty seven RatChat users – of whom two hundred and thirteen then promptly swiped right to ‘like’ me too… and that’s when things took a seriously wrong turn.

Well as you might expect, the prospect of trying to keep up with chat messages from such a great multitude of lady rats was, to say the least, daunting. This led me to think about whittling the number down to a more convenient size, which in turn resulted in a stroke of pure genius! After all, what could be a more effective way to eliminate those who fell short of my requirements than to set them a written test? If successful, this would leave me with a small, eminently manageable portfolio of candidates whom I could then date on a ‘try before you buy’ basis till I made my final choice. So with this in mind I set about compiling a suitable questionnaire, which for your information I have copied below:

Please answer all the following questions fully and honestly:

1.  Are you generally punctual?

2.  What work skills do you have?

3.  Can you cook?

4.  Do you like cleaning?

5.  Are you any good at digging up worms?

6.  How many heavy bags of shopping can you carry uphill?

7.  Do you snore?

8.  Are you an early riser?

9.  Do you sing in the shower?

10. How would you cope with having a celebrity boyfriend?

When I was satisfied with my ultimate version of this form, I sent it off to all two hundred and thirteen of my matches, then settled back with several flasks of black coffee to await their replies. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t blown away by what happened next…

As expected, around three quarters of the recipients didn’t bother to reply, for which I was truly grateful. Those were they who, having recognised their own shortcomings in these matters, had actually helped me by disqualifying themselves from the contest. Then, out of the fifty two who took the trouble to complete the form, a further fifty gave one or more unsatisfactory answers to my questions, in so doing forcing me to rule them out. All this left me with just two contestants still in the running, which you would think would make things pretty straightforward. But as I was about to find out to my cost, nothing is ever straightforward once jealousy has entered the mix.

In the event, from the start the two remaining candidates did not hesitate to show that they were no shrinking violets. One of these, who went by the username of ‘Mad Hatter’, was darkly attractive and appeared over and over again wearing an alluring combination of sunglasses and some very cool peaked caps. She also added an awful lot of ‘skis’ to the ends of her words, a foreign trait which only increased her air of mystery and intrigue. Nevertheless, when it came to beauty, the second candidate was easily her equal. Using nothing but the simple first name ‘Mave’, she was pure white with a blue-grey nose and ears, and posed for her online photos adorned with wreaths of flowers round her head and neck. I can tell you right now, fans, she was stunning! It would certainly be a hard job to pick just one of these to be my true love, which meant I would really have to rev things up if I wanted a clear winner. So to this end, after some reflection I decided to invite them both to a night of Latin dancing with South American food at the local Community Centre. But there was a twinkle of mischief in this proposal. As I was in fact Latin Dance Champion of 2019, I didn’t want to test their salsa skills so much as their ability to laugh at themselves when my fancy footwork left them standing… 

Or at least, that was the plan. 

With hindsight, asking two ladies out on a date to the same venue at the same time might not have been my smartest move, as evidenced by the heated exchange which ensued when they realised that I intended to divide my affections between the pair of them for the duration of the event. However, that was nothing compared to their behaviour at the dinner table. Unfortunately Mave decided that her food was lukewarm, and so made a complaint to the waiter. At this, Maddie (AKA the Mad Hatter) demanded that she be thrown out of the establishment as a troublemaker. But instead the waiter chose a more diplomatic solution and went off to exchange the meal, leaving the Mad Hatter to vent her anger on Mave by pouring a generous portion of salt into her glass of wine. Outraged, Mave then leaned across and tipped the spoiled wine over Maddie’s plate, whereupon the Mad Hatter jumped up in fury and slapped her smartly round the face. And who knows where this all might have ended if I hadn’t intervened to ask one of them to dance! 

Indeed, so explosive was the atmosphere that I scarcely had time to notice which of the two it was, till at length I found myself on the floorboards with Mave, whirling and twirling her about in step with a rather steamy samba. To be fair she might not have been the most athletic of partners, but what she lacked in agility she more than made up for in passion, as became plain shortly after we started, when I spun her around so fast that she fell headlong onto the floor, pulling me down on top of her — and, oh my goodness, WHAT a kiss that was! 

Surprised and delighted by her initiative, I was just snuggling closer for some more of the same, when like a red hot comet on a collision course with Earth, into our midst plunged the flaming mad Mad Hatter!

‘Just what do you think you are doing with Grump-ski? Get your big, fat, oversized bum-ski off him NOW!’ she cried, grabbing Mave by the neck and hurling her forcefully across the room. With that, my unlucky dance partner landed on her rear end and then continued her forward momentum on the polished floor, all the way out of the door and into the arms of Brute the Bouncer, a burly black rat hired to eject hooligans from the premises. And that was the last we saw or heard of her for three months, until by and by her updated RatChat page showed her smiling bravely at the camera while wearing an orange jumpsuit.

Straight after this, and despite my most vigorous protests, Maddie seized my arm and dropped me onto my back. Then with all the skill of a world class bowler she sent me flying between her legs, swiftly turning to haul me up again as I came out the other side. Next she took me by both hands and made me lean backwards with my feet touching hers, following which we rotated at breakneck speed to the pounding beat of bongos. But just as I thought I was going to be sick, I was abruptly set free and sent reeling down to the floor, only to be hoisted back up with less than a second to go before impact. Then for her pièce de résistance, and to the huge delight of the onlookers, the Mad Hatter lifted me high in the air and whizzed me repeatedly round her head till, with my skull pointing earthwards, she unexpectedly released me. And after that, the next thing I remember is waking up in a room with a strangely familiar smell…

Oh, surely not!

As I blinked in disbelief, here I was again: in bed on a hospital ward, with the ever dutiful Nurse Glob at my side, her look of concern now morphing into a happy smile.

‘Oh my dear Lord Grumpkin, I see you’ve been in the wars again, you poor thing! But I’m going to take great care of you, so don’t you worry, we’ll have you up and about in no time. Now I was just going to the kitchen to get Aurora a cup of tea. Shall I get you one, too?’

‘What, is Aurora on duty as well, then?’ I asked in surprise, aware that the two of them normally worked on different shifts. But I was quite unprepared for the nurse’s reply:

‘Oh, no, Aurora is here as a patient, Lord Grumpkin. See, there she is in the bed next to yours,’ she told me, pointing to the one on my left. ‘Sad to say, you both seem to have had some sort of accident on the dance floor last night. You have a concussion after falling on your head, and she apparently tripped over her shoe and broke her ankle in three places. She only came back from the operating theatre an hour ago.’

‘She did…?’

As incredible as that sounded, a cursory glance at the bed in question confirmed that the sleeping patient was indeed none other than my physiotherapist, Aurora Australis. But something about her face didn’t seem right, and I couldn’t work out what it was. Was it her ears? …her nose? …or maybe she just looked different with her eyes closed? I was on the point of giving up when, roused from her slumber, she suddenly turned and fixed me with a lingering gaze.

‘Hello, Grump-ski,’ she murmured seductively in an unconvincing Russian drawl, ‘and how is the head-ski today?’

Then at long last it hit me like a blast of dynamite:

What, you mean SHE was the Mad Hatter?

And now here she was, acting just as if I was flirting with her too! Did she seriously think she could woo me with her fake foreign accent, those fancy caps and sunglasses, and the cheap brown hair dye which barely masked all the white patches on her face and body? If that’s what she believed, she was really deluded! By now I was so angry that my thoughts were going off like fireworks in my brain and I couldn’t even speak. Aurora, however, had no such difficulty…

‘Oh, and by the way, sorry I dropped you yesterday,’ she went on. ‘Someone cut in just as I was about to put you down, and well, I couldn’t say no, could I? He’s quite a catch you know, very handsome and a much better dancer than you are, Grump-ski. Once the ambulance took you away we danced together all night, then just as we were getting ready to leave, my shoe-ski came off and I fell over. After that they brought me straight here for surgery.’

‘Well, poor you!’ I said sarcastically, snapping my eyes shut to block her out.

‘And guess what, he’s coming to see me later,’ Aurora carried on happily. ‘I expect he’ll want to say hi to you, too, if you’re awake.’

‘Oh, and why would he want to do that?’

‘Well, he says you two are friends, actually.’

‘I doubt that very much, none of my friends are Latin dancers,’ said I, snorting with derision. 

‘Well this one certainly is, and he says he’s a neighbour of yours,’ she insisted. 

‘A neighbour who’s a Latin dancer? All right then, who is this guy?’ One of my eyelids cracked open just enough for me to scan her for more funny tricks.

‘Well, obviously we have our own pet names for each other: he’s my Romeo and I’m his Juliette,’ she whispered confidentially,’ but I’m sure you’ll know him by the nickname that all his mates use: it’s ‘Mac the Hacker’, of course.’

Hearing this, my mouth opened very wide for several seconds. And then I fainted.