Recognising the Master.

This is a very small anecdote, but there is something oddly weird about it.

I once lived in another country cottage about twenty miles from here. It had a large open fireplace, with a dog grate in it and a wide, straight flue. Late one night I was sitting alone and watching an old Bela Lugosi Dracula film. My eye was caught by a movement in the fireplace, and I turned to see a small shape emerging from the chimney. It was a pipistrelle bat. It flew across the room and landed on the TV set, where it sat in apparent contentment. I watched it in amazement for some time, but it showed no inclination to move.

‘The children of the night, what music they make.’

Well, maybe. Eventually I had to pick it up and take it outside.

I have regular communion with bats these days. There are several, much larger than pipistrelles, which fly around my house at dusk in the summer and autumn. I go out and talk to them. Within minutes, I can almost guarantee that they will start flying around me, sometimes coming so close to my head that I can feel the air disturbed by their wings. I absolutely love those little guys to bits, and it has me wondering whether I’ve been a vampire all these years without knowing it. If so, another thought occurs to me: maybe all these years I’ve been missing out on the best of all chat up lines, too. Young women like vampires, don’t they? Vampires are sexy. Maybe I could have topped Zaphod Beeblebrox’s ‘Talk to me babe; I’m from another planet’ with ‘Talk to me babe; bats like me, you know.’

Just a thought...