Tales Of The Country: Send for Rodentman

As a student at Liverpool University, 20 years ago, my old school friend Andy Coughlan, six-foot-three of brawn and keen on dressing up, created an alter ego for himself, called Rodentman. Rodentman was a self-styled superhero who used to patrol the streets of Toxteth assisting little old ladies across roads, and helping young mums lift pushchairs up flights of steps. He had furry rat ears and a giant "R" on his chest, and, naturally, he wore a pair of Y-fronts over a pair of tights. Once, at my student digs hundreds of miles away, during a party that Andy had said he couldn't attend, there was a kerfuffle at an upstairs window and Rodentman clambered in, saying he had heard there was a light bulb that needed changing. How we laughed.

I thought of Rodentman this week for the first time in years, because we have had to seek the help of Maurice O'Grady from Leo Pest Control in Leominster, and although he does not have furry ears, or wear his underpants over his tights, he is definitely a superhero to me. Moreover, the number plate on his van is L77 RAT. It cost him £280. "Nobody else wanted it," he said. Can't say I'm surprised.

We called Maurice in because the mice have been having ceilidhs every night in our pantry, and have even taken to scurrying across the kitchen floor during Coronation Street. Our joiner, the preternaturally capable Alan, who is repairing the roof of one of our holiday cottages, recommends propping up a milk bottle baited with chocolate. Apparently, they can get in but they can't get out. He put one down in his loft last night, with a bit of chocolate pinched from his son's Advent calendar.

But clearly, we need professional expertise, and nobody round here is more expert than Maurice. Nor more entertaining. He was once driving home, late at night, after a day shooting rabbits and foxes on his wife's family's farm in Wales. "They'd given me a dead calf to provide meat for my dogs," he said. The calf was sitting on the front seat, wearing a seat belt to stop it toppling over. You can guess what happened next in this real-life Larson cartoon. Maurice was stopped by the police, and one of the officers walked round with a torch to check his tax disc. When the torch illuminated the calf in the passenger seat, the policeman nearly passed out, and for all anyone knows, is still having counselling to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Anyway, according to Maurice, if you can push a Biro through a gap in the woodwork, then a mouse can get through, too. And since there are gaps in our woodwork through which we could push a bicycle, it is hardly surprising, with the temperature suddenly plummeting outside, that our house is now to woodland mice what Ibiza is to 18-30 holidaymakers. Still, Maurice has put poison down, and might also give us a dose of the marvellously named Rodent Deodorant, which gets rid of the whiff of decomposing mice.

Not that mice are our only problem. Maurice also found clear evidence of rats. He showed us ratty footprints in the cellar, and though I'm not by nature a jumpy character, I must admit David Attenborough's story of sitting astride a toilet in India and being startled by a rat emerging from between his legs has slightly blunted my enjoyment of the sports pages, which accompany me to the loo every morning.

Mercifully, though, Maurice seemed pretty sure that there are no rats at large in the house. However, they have been tunnelling into the conservatory to get at the grain we keep for the chickens. And rats are not as easy to poison as mice, because, according to Maurice, they are neophobic – meaning they hate change. So a rat will be unlikely to nibble at something that wasn't there the night before, whereas mice, being very inquisitive, will head for it first. "They'll try anything once, that's their downfall," said Maurice, unable to contain his enthusiasm for the chase. I'll keep you posted.

Docklow daze

About five years ago, we nearly moved out of London to an old farmhouse just outside Macclesfield in Cheshire. Then we decided, fairly late in the process, to stay put. And that, we thought, was that. Our urge to leave the city had been overcome by our urge to remain. We even had a phrase for times when metropolitan life seemed captivating and we thought: "Thank God we didn't move to Macclesfield." Going back to Crouch End after seeing a fantastic West End show, for example, and stopping for a banana split at Marine Ices in Chalk Farm, where we might bump into Michael Palin or someone equally celebrated, and have a chat, and think: "Isn't this city great?" Those were our "Macclesfield Moments".

Now, instead of Macclesfield Moments, we have "Docklow Days". But they have precisely the opposite meaning. On Monday I was in France and Jane phoned to tell me she was having a Docklow Day – the sun was shining, and the children were beside themselves with excitement, saying they'd seen two lambs being born in the next field, and Robert, who is secretary general of the Parish Council, or something important, had dropped by with a brace of pheasants. There are times when living here is like being in an enjoyable episode of The Archers. Or, since Brian in The Archers is a rotter, make that Emmerdale.

Small is beautiful

A letter has arrived from the proprietor of the Smallholder Bookshop in King's Lynn, rebuking me for shelling out £248.50 to Forsham Cottage Arks for a hen house. "Most unsmallholderish," he says, advising me that I could have built my own for no more than 30 quid, although the notion of me building my own hen house has caused Jane much amusement. She knows that the nearest I come to physical exertion in the construction of almost anything is when I let my fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages (this is not through laziness, I hasten to add, just a vivid sense of my own inadequacies).

All of which, I confess, helps to make me decidedly "unsmallholderish". I would go so far as to say that, even pushing a wheelbarrow, I exude "unsmallholderishness". Still, it was never really our intention, on moving to the country, to become smallholders. We thought it would be nice to have a few hens, and nice, in due course, to grow some of our own vegetables, but I still think of us as slightly more Jerry and Margot than Tom and Barbara (pictured). Titles such as Pig Diseases,All About Composting, and Practical Goat Keeping – all of which are stocked by the doubtless excellent Smallholder Bookshop, incidentally – don't particularly light my fire.

But at seven this morning, as I was standing in a frosty orchard in semi-darkness fondly stroking the feathers of one of our cheeping bantams, I thought that maybe, with every day that passes, I am acquiring a little more smallholderishness. I might have a hen house in me yet.