Our house has a slug problem

Our house has a slug problem. Or our kitchen does, at least. And when I'm the last one awake in the house and I go into the kitchen to do whatever I do at the end of the night, I catch them there—once they think they have the place to themselves—on the lino in front of the fridge, hoovering up food scraps and having a gay old time. I've never seen anything like it and have no idea how they get in.

Our back garden border is made from beech bushes. And, just like the slugs, the beech leaves have figured out a way to get inside the house and end up on the kitchen floor. When a beech leaf dries, it curls up into a little tubular shape that looks for all the world like a slug—especially when the shadow of a leaf's pointy tip adds a second point right next to it, and at first glance, these two points fool you into thinking they're a slug's antennae.

So, I have to make my best guess as to whether it is indeed a leaf or whether it's actually a slug. And then I must decide whether to pick it up and drop it in the bin (as if it were a leaf) or deal with it in the way I deal with the rogue slugs (of which, I'll spare you the gruesome details; suffice to say they don't live to tell the tale).

Luther Vandross once wrote a song called A House Is Not A Home. He may be right, of course, but while I live in this house, it is my home. And one day, when I'm turned to dust and lost to the earth—just like those curled beech leaves by the end of winter—gone, gone, gone, the house will still stand. And if the slugs are still here with it, they will say, "See, this was our home all along—he was only passing through."

--

I don’t understand cushions. (I am a simple man.)

I mean… when I sit in a chair without cushions, it’s comfortable. When I add cushions, it’s not. So what’s the point of them? I have a sneaking suspicion that their intended use is not what people think it is, and everyone is using them wrong. 

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