louiscatorze.com

Je crie, donc je suis

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Sa Majesté Louis Catorze, Le Roi Soleil, supreme ruler of Le Château, sworn enemy of canine foe and scourge of Ocado delivery drivers.

  • Tu peux me trouver au club

    Video calls: no. Just no.

    Whilst Cat Daddy insists that they are “no different from meeting in person” (?), for me they have a performance element that makes me cringe. I am not a YouTuber, for heaven’s sake. And if I didn’t want to video call when I looked normal and had interesting things to report, I certainly don’t want to do it with quarantine root regrowth and when nothing even faintly noteworthy has happened in my life.

    In short, I will grudgingly accept a video call under the following circumstances:

    1. If you are a work colleague and I have no choice. And an agenda beforehand would be appreciated.

    2. If you are 5 years old, because you will do most of the talking and I can just listen, plus your attention span is short so the call will be over quickly.

    Any other reason: no.

    And if you have crazy thoughts of trying to Make It A Regular Thing: HELL, no.

    Puppy Mamma is an especially naughty one for trying to trick me into video calls by giving them inventive names, but I’m not falling for it. “Virtual barbecue”? Nope: it’s a video call. “Online cocktail hour”? It’s still a video call. “Distance drinks party”? NICE TRY, BUT STILL A VIDEO CALL. So, because she hates WhatsApp/text messages and I hate video calls, we have compromised by telephoning – as in, voice calls in which we can hear but not see each other. (Younger followers: ask your parents.)

    Cat Daddy, on the other hand, loves his new-found Zoom adventures. He has had a couple of video chats with his family, taking care to mention my name many times in case they wonder about my absence and think we’ve split up. And his video meets with his boozy beer buddies have been continuing every Friday at 6pm.

    This week’s virtual pub conversation included the following:

    1. What everyone was having for dinner that night (Cat Daddy had pasta with spinach, walnut and Stilton sauce, thanks for asking).

    2. The money they are all saving because of not having to pay for cabs home from the pub.

    3. How to get Simon back into the call after the host accidentally deleted him.

    4. Why everyone could see Mike but not hear him.

    5. Deforestation.

    6. Tim’s quarantine haircut.

    7. Robbie Williams.

    8. The confusion of having two people called Nick in the group, and a Foolproof New System for differentiating between the two.

    As you can imagine, I didn’t hang around for the duration of the conversation and just caught odd snippets. However, when I heard Cat Daddy say, “I’m going for a loo break, so I’ll leave you with my cat”, I never imagined that he would mean it literally. I should have known better (see below).

    With lockdown, all our worlds have become that little bit smaller. But Boys’ Club is clearly going from strength to strength, with brotherly bonds that extend beyond Le Château and stand the test of time and distance.

    Louis Catorze agrees that Tim should have left it longer at the front.

  • L’envahisseur inconnu

    I am so, so sorry for the deluge of posts. It’s this darned cat. He just won’t stop. And I am keen to document every bit of it to make a point to all those who say, “But he’s so cute!” “He’s like a little kitten!” “I can’t imagine him being naughty!” and other such nonsense.

    Last night the planets were magically aligned and we were lucky enough to get an Ocado delivery for the first time since the world ground to a halt. Louis Catorze promptly escaped out to bother poor Pankaj driving the Raspberry van, then he went on the rampage. At the same time, when I dropped some of the Ocado supplies at Blue the Smoke Bengal’s place, Blue also took it upon himself to escape out and to join Catorze on the rampage in the street.

    So there we were, supposedly under lockdown, with Blue’s poor self-isolating mamma chasing him down in her dressing gown and slippers, and me trying to drag Catorze, Cône and all, out of That Neighbour’s bin.

    Blue’s mamma eventually managed to retrieve her guy when he grew bored and went home of his own accord. And I retrieved Catorze when he got stuck to our lavender plant with the Velcro of his Cône, and I had to peel him off.

    I know. This could only happen here.

    It gets worse. A couple of nights ago we sat outside to watch the sunset and, when we came indoors, Catorze decided to remain outside. Now, we have learned our lesson from previous incidents and we didn’t want to make the same mistakes again, so we kept checking on him every half hour or so. And, every time we checked, he was on exactly the same spot on the outdoor sofa, appearing to be enjoying the solitude.

    Then Cat Daddy decided to fetch him in for some unCôned lap time, but returned empty-handed and flustered.

    He told me that, when he opened the door to go out, he heard a scrambling sound and saw a very large shape at the end of the garden, which took off over the top of our shed and over the fence. Cat Daddy couldn’t tell what it was because it was too dark, but he believed it to be “maybe a cat, more likely a fox, but pretty big”.

    And, whatever it was, Catorze had immediately taken off after it.

    Oh. Mon. Dieu.

    We both stood outside and called the little sod, but were met with deathly silence. After a very stressful 20-minute wait he reappeared – mercifully avec Cône, utterly unbothered and without the slightest scratch on him – and this time Cat Daddy was the rescue helicopter plucking him from the top of the fence and carrying him indoors.

    Cat Daddy: “It’s the drugs. He’s bloody stoned. They turn him into a lunatic.” This is true. Thank goodness we are now moving into the lower-dose phase, which means that he should be calming down soon.

    Here is Catorze, proving that Le Cône does not hold him back:

    Important Cat Business.

  • Où est Le Cône?

    Holy. Flippin’. Hell.

    I was just about to say “I guess this had to happen sooner or later” but, I’ll be honest, I absolutely NEVER thought it would happen: Louis Catorze gave Cat Daddy the slip during their joint outdoor exercise session – Cat Daddy on the stationary bike and Catorze pitter-pattering around – and the little sod strolled back from wherever he’d been, minus Le Cône.

    After a quick search of Le Jardin, I found it behind the shed. And it was fully undone. So Catorze hadn’t simply wriggled out of it; HE HAD ACTUALLY UNFASTENED THE VELCRO.

    Mesdames et Messieurs: as long as I live I will never, EVER understand how on earth he did this. This mystery is right up there with the disappearance of Lord Lucan and those weird lines in Peru.

    Cat Daddy: “I can’t believe how smug he looked, trotting merrily up the path. If he had any sense, he’d have stayed in the playground at The Back and had a good old scratch. And we wouldn’t have been able to do a thing about it.” Well, for once I am grateful that he’s thicker than a concrete milkshake.

    So our new security measures are as follows:

    1. Extra caution is to be exercised during the 2 hours following his steroid dose. (Virtually all the bad behaviour takes place immediately after he has been pilled.)

    2. Wardens cannot perform any other tasks alongside their supervision of the pilled inmate (not even making a cup of tea).

    3. Le Cône is to be glued/nailed onto inmate’s person and, in the event of inmate not liking this, tant pis pour lui.

    When Cat Daddy recaptured the inmate, this also happened. Not sure what “this” is, exactly.

  • Les drogues et les bagarres

    Now that the steroids have kicked in, living with Louis Catorze is rather like living with a drug addict (not that I have lived with THAT many drug addicts in my life, but you know what I mean). He spends his days either asleep, bouncing off the walls or having an attack of the munchies.

    The good thing is that he’s MOSTLY continuing to eat his tablets in Pill Pockets. However, on the odd occasion when he doesn’t, we have had no choice but to use the Greco-Roman method.

    To find out why the Greco-Roman method is so called, please look here: https://louiscatorze.com/2017/01/07/la-pilule-est-dure-a-avaler/

    Although I am getting better at Greco-Romaning, when he takes his pills without the buffer of the Pill Pocket it’s rather like having a neat vodka shot instead of a vodka and soda. Suddenly he is wired and invincible, and we have to be on the alert to wrench him out of trouble’s way.

    Not long ago, immediately after being Greco-Romaned, he decided to go outside and taunt the enemy again. You can just about make out the squirrel atop the telegraph pole and Catorze, alarmingly, is trying to figure out a way of joining him:

    I would have concerns about any cat considering this even under normal circumstances, but doing so whilst stoned and Côned is utter lunacy. So I had to go out there and do the rescue helicopter thing and pluck him to safety. (Yes, I also took a photo, but this is mainly because I didn’t think anyone would believe me.)

    No doubt we can expect to have another warning anytime soon. And I know how these gangs work: if one warning appears to have no effect, they will do something worse the next time. So, if you hear that our bodies have been found, buried face-down in our back garden (cause of death: stoning with hazelnuts), you will KNOW.

  • La guerre de la planète des écureuils

    We appear to be living in not one but TWO horror movie sub-genres at the moment:

    1. Post-apocalyptic dystopia.

    2. Erm, those films in which the protagonist offends the wrong people and receives a warning message daubed on their house.

    Not content with annoying the magpies, the parakeets, the foxes and the dogs, and despite being Côned, Louis Catorze has now pissed off the squirrels. And this was their grim reminder that they are not to be messed with:

    We have seen news stories about nature reclaiming the planet now that we humans have retreated into our homes (for example, those goats in that town in Wales: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-52109712/coronavirus-goats-take-over-deserted-llandudno) and it seems that our answer to that is the squirrels. They are the new gangland bosses who rule the lawless streets of TW8, and they appear to have teamed up with the magpies and the parakeets to form a united force against their common foe: cats.

    (It also doesn’t help that relations between Cocoa the babysit cat and the squirrels are acrimonious, to say the least. He can name murder, actual bodily harm, kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment among his crimes against squirrels, so you can’t really blame them for not liking cats.)

    Not only do the squirrels seem bigger, cheekier and more prolific than ever before, but they are also noisier. Yes, squirrels have a NOISE, which is a new, and not especially pleasant, discovery to us. We have heard the abrasive part-chatter, part-rattle during Catorze’s supervised exercise yard sessions – with the little sod occasionally meowing back – and now we realise that it wasn’t just an incidental squirrely sound but a battle cry. And I dread to think what Catorze said in return. I had hoped it might have been a friendly “Bonjour” but, under the circumstances, this seems unlikely.

    These are dangerous times indeed, Mesdames et Messieurs. We have been told that we must stay at home to remain safe, but I feel anything but safe knowing that the squirrels KNOW WHERE WE LIVE.

    *EDIT: 48 hours after Cat Daddy cleared up the above mess, the squirrels returned and did the same again, presumably because we talked. Shit just got serious.

  • Le coach personnel

    We are very lucky to have a garden that we have been able to transform into a mini fitness area. Any kind of outside space in London is a precious gift but, at this time, we appreciate it more than ever.

    Trying to work out at home with Louis Catorze around has had, shall we say, mixed success. I will start with the positives:

    The whirring of Cat Daddy’s stationary bike and my clunking and stomping on the exercise step would scare off most cats, but Catorze happily sits and slow-blinks through it all. So he can be a part of our outdoor exercise experience, which is rather nice (at least in theory). He is mildly curious about the exercise equipment, but not excessively so; he is yet to stick his face into the spokes of the spinning bike wheel and have his whiskers chopped off, and I have only kicked him once whilst doing the step workout.

    However – and there just has to be a “however”, doesn’t there? – his creepy, silent staring during our workouts is like having a passive-aggressive personal trainer who has such contempt for us that he can’t even be bothered to shout. Yet, just as I start wondering whether the yelly drill sergeant style might be preferable, Catorze proves his versatility by demonstrating that he can do that, too. When I do my sit-ups he pitter-patters around me, up-tailed and screaming like a fire engine. But, trust me, this is no emergency service coming to my aid: this is a great white shark circling his prey, hoping I will hurry up and die so that he can have Cat Daddy to himself.

    Here is the little sod, taking a rest between reps (mine, obviously, not his) on top of my jumper and my resistance band, with his disapproving face on display for all to see:

    “Fais cent pompes. Puis meurs.”

  • Seul son ongle sait où se gratter

    Last week the vet confirmed that we may start giving Louis Catorze his steroid pills. This was a huge relief to us because the little sod was hell-bent on scratching, and outwitted us every time we tried to stop him.

    I had reached the stage where I couldn’t make my morning pot of tea unless he was within sight, because he had found a new scratching apparatus somewhere in the house (and we still don’t know where). And, on one occasion, he vanished into thin air during his exercise yard session, finally reappearing on the roof of That Neighbour’s shed, up-tailed, screaming and proudly sporting yet another a new scratch wound. (This wasn’t the time he was screamed at by the parakeet, but ANOTHER occasion.)

    We have also caught him trying to scratch himself on his Yule tree from last year, which now lives in our garden. Yes, THAT tree. The one with the Blood-Letting Needles of Death: https://louiscatorze.com/2019/12/07/le-sapin-de-mort/

    Every evening we give Catorze limited, controlled Cône-free time (with the door shut) so that he can wash more comfortably. Even that is fraught with danger because he bides his time, often pretending to be asleep on his daddy’s lap, then scratches when we are engrossed in something suitably suspenseful on TV. A couple of nights ago he chose his moment when the scary Mexican drug lord opened fire with his semi-automatic weapon and, of course, the gunfire completely masked his scratching sound. So, by the time the police shot the drug lord and we realised we had been double-crossed by Catorze, he was already well and truly stuck in and it was too late.

    But I am thrilled to report that he has been happily eating the steroid pills (delivered Trojan Horse-style inside a Pill Pocket). If you have ever had to give medication to a less-than-obliging animal, you will understand what an incredibly big deal this is.

    However, be warned: age makes Pill Pockets crumbly and powdery, rather like trying to make a sandcastle using dry sand. And, the more you handle and squish them, the more likely it is that you’ll propagate the pilliness and your dastardly Trojan Horse plan will be foiled. When I started using the Pill Pockets for Catorze’s Piriton a few weeks ago, I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t able to mould around the pills. Then, when I checked the expiry date, I saw that it said, erm, “November 2017”. Oops.

    But we now have a brand new, in-date supply which is much easier to shape around the steroid pills. And the little sod is eating them. Merci à Dieu, HE IS EATING THEM.

    Well, it was about time something went right, wasn’t it?

    Cleverer than he looks. This is not much of an achievement.

  • L’enfer, c’est les chats noirs

    The good thing about having a black cat is that, when they raise hell, you can pretend it was some other cat and not yours. And the chances of anyone proving otherwise, beyond all reasonable doubt, are slim. If they raise hell at night it’s even better, because the darkness hides them and therefore there is zero proof.

    However, Little Sods’ Law decrees that a black cat is most likely to raise hell as follows:

    1. In broad daylight.

    2. When the entire neighbourhood is at home to witness the carnage.

    3. When the cat is sporting a unique piece of headgear making it impossible to mistake them for anyone else.

    I turned my back for SECONDS to put the kettle on, then heard the most God-awful shrieking. When I went to investigate, I was met with this:

    At least they’re 2 metres apart.

    The screeching was coming from the green parakeet pictured on the wires, who was hollering at Louis Catorze with all its might. Yes, Catorze is on Oscar the dog’s territory. No, I have no idea how he got there. And, yes, he now has a new self-harm wound which means he will be Côned for EVEN LONGER until it heals.

    He is now sleeping off the excitement in the living room, right where I can see him. I, in the meantime, am Googling animal cages (size: XS) and wondering if they can deliver within the hour.

  • Une journée au musée

    This would have been the first Sunday of the Easter holidays, with people out and about doing fun things in beautiful weather. Instead we’re still in lockdown, too scared to step outside for fear of the sunshine flushing out the non-space-respecting stupids, and days of the week aren’t even a thing anymore. But it doesn’t do any harm to dream about normal life resuming again. And, one day, it shall be so.

    If you have never been to the London Museum of Water and Steam in TW8, I would highly recommend a visit once we are safely through all this horror. Not just for the water and the steam, but for this:

    Not a chance in hell
    Rather you than me

    For reasons that I will probably never know, the museum has chosen a black cat as the recurring symbol marking their kids’ treasure hunt trail. I think a water-dwelling animal or a mermaid or undine or some such thing would have made more sense but, that said, black cats practically INVENTED the art of randomly showing up in places where they have no business being. So why not a black cat?

    I took my niece to the museum during her February half term visit, and she thought the Louis Catorze trail was the most exciting thing in the world. As for me, it took superhuman effort on my part to stop myself from flitting round with a bottle of Tipp-Ex and painting fangs onto every single one of their cat pictures. And, as my last entry gained me a free pass for a whole year, it wouldn’t even cost me anything except for, erm, however much a bottle of Tipp-Ex is.

    So what ARE the horrors that lurk in the black cat’s terrifying crawl-hole? I was too scared to look, and my niece – whom I sent in on my behalf like a pit canary – says you’ll have to come and look for yourselves. And you would be more than welcome to stop by at Le Château for a cup of tea afterwards: just turn right when exiting the museum and follow the sound of the screaming.

    https://waterandsteam.org.uk

    *Disclaimer: tea invitation applies to post-quarantine period only. If you arrive prior to that time, you will be refused entry into Le Château.

  • Je suis heureux, j’espère que vous l’êtes aussi

    I have completed a whole fortnight of teaching from home and survived to tell the tale.

    It was someone else’s cat – a lovely plushy ginge called Simba, belonging to one of my students – who brought my video lessons to a standstill by gatecrashing, meowing to the class and then settling on the desk to watch his small human work.

    Louis Catorze, however, saved his star turn for my online staff meeting, climbing across the keyboard, screaming. Then, when I kicked him off, he ran riot with a noisy bell toy that he had hidden behind the sofa, most likely for this very purpose.

    Apart from that, Catorze more or less left me alone and either slept through my work or annoyed the merde out of Cat Daddy instead of me. I later discovered that the sleepiness was because Cat Daddy has been wearing him out at extended Boys’ Club which starts at around 9pm and goes on long into the night/morning.

    Being at home all day means I have been able to take a cheeky peek into the once-mysterious ways of Le Club, and I can report that Cat Daddy and Catorze have been enjoying lengthy late-night music sessions together. This is mostly old-school prog rock, but they’ve been going through a new wave phase recently. Sa Maj bounces up and down on his daddy’s knees to Elvis Costello’s “Welcome to the working week” in an ironic nod to the fact that neither of them know what one is, whilst I still slave away like a chump. That said, I am very much aware of how lucky I am to still have a job.

    Cat Daddy recently announced – after a few too many sloe gins, I might add – that he wanted to create a cat-themed playlist for their music club. This is excellent news as it saves me doing the same job for Catorze’s birthday.

    The songs that we already know are as follows:

    1. Lovecats (The Cure)

    2. Cool for Cats (Squeeze)

    3. What’s New Pussycat (Tom Jones)

    4. Stray Cat Strut (Stray Cats), although the bit about the lady cats, of course, doesn’t apply

    5. Louie Louie (The Kingsmen)

    6. Sun King (The Cult)

    Six songs aren’t much of a playlist, but never fear: Cat Daddy and Catorze are on the case, and I am confident that the list will be complete by 30th April. And Cat Daddy has trained his boy so well that he sits happily in a room with loud, blasting music and doesn’t even blink (see photo below for proof), so they will probably work on the list together.

    Me: “Does Louis prefer vinyl or streaming?” (It’s important to get this right for the party, after all, even though the party will end up being just the four* of us.)

    [*Cat Daddy, me, Catorze and the mouse whom I know is still at large, even though I can’t prove it.]

    Cat Daddy, firmly and without hesitation: “Streaming.”

    Me: “You seem very sure about that.”

    Cat Daddy: “Yes. Because vinyl means I have to get up and change the record, and that disturbs him.”

    Of course.

    Here is Catorze in his happy place. Would you believe, the little sod actually got up and moved closer to the speaker when David Bowie came on:

    “Je n’ai jamais fait rien de bien …”

  • La vie en quarantaine

    This turbulent period of time seems to be bringing out the furthermost extremes of human behaviour.

    The good: Everyone in our street is sharing provisions (responsibly) and looking out for each other. And, last weekend, we had a quarantine barbecue with Oscar the dog’s family – them in their garden, us in ours, separate food and drink – of which the highlight (for us, probably not for them) was Oscar stealing three stuffed vine leaves from their table when nobody was looking, and letting his innocent human sister get the blame.

    The bad: Most of the population of TW8 don’t give a hoot about social distancing. They stride along in the middle of the pavement, expecting the rest of us to move out of their way and not noticing or caring whether we do or don’t. We have seen many walkers and sweaty, virus-propagating runners with zero regard for the two-metre rule, happily letting us step into oncoming traffic to avoid them whilst they remain steadfastly on course for their new personal best. We have also seen not one but TWO cyclists, on separate occasions, cycling along the pavement whilst looking their phones. I used to think the reason why people in TW9 and W4 look down on us is because our neighbourhood is less posh. Erm, it’s not that.

    The ugly: Cat Daddy and his boozy pub mates have been regularly meeting for drinks via Skype/Zoom/whatever. I don’t join in – video calls are my idea of torture, even with people whom I like – but I eavesdrop for the comedy value. Because they are all, erm, blokes of a certain age, the first 15 minutes of their virtual meets usually sound like this: “Tim, turn your microphone on.” “Pete, do you know that you’re sideways?” “Why are some of us in circles and some of us in squares?”

    Louis Catorze’s life, on the other hand, continues as normal. He has Lily’s Kitchen Fabulous Fish aplenty – which, Cat Daddy remarks, will also serve us well if we run out of food and end up having to eat Catorze* – and we just about managed to squeeze in a jambon de Bayonne order before the curtain fell on Ocado. The only slight change for Catorze is that Le Jardin is now Le Fitness Suite with Cat Daddy’s stationary bike and my exercise step. Other than that, c’est la même chose. And, despite having been Côned for much longer than anyone ever thought possible, the little sod is happy and enjoying life.

    We hope that you and your furry overlords are all managing to stay safe. If you are local and we can help you in any way, please let us know.

    *Don’t worry, we would never actually eat Catorze. Mainly because there is barely any meat on him.

    “Cat Daddy has prepared a dish of chat farci au poisson fabuleux.”

  • Le courage fait des disciples

    Not that I concern myself unduly with numbers – it’s all about quality rather than quantity for me – but it seems that the frequency of my recent postings has cost me a few followers.

    To be honest, I get it. I appreciate that people don’t want to read quite so many posts, and that one can have too much of a good thing (although Cat Daddy would argue that Louis Catorze cannot, by any reasonable interpretation, be regarded as a “good thing”).

    Believe me, it was never my intention to post almost every day. However, documenting each detail of Catorze’s condition and all the associated developments is a very useful record for me and, had I not done so, I think I would have struggled to remember what we’ve done and what we haven’t. There have been so many vet appointments, medications and tests that, after a point, they all blur into one.

    If you are still here, thank you so much for bearing with us and for supporting us despite having greater priorities at the moment than a silly French vampire cat who won’t do as he’s told. Let’s hope that this wave of saddening news – both Catorze’s and those of the world in general – will soon pass.

    “Merci à tous!”

  • Se gratter sans ongles

    Damn this horrid little sod. Anyone would think he didn’t want to get better.

    Last week we found Louis Catorze with suspicious new sore patches on his face, indicating that he had found an inventive, secret way of scratching (again). For days we puzzled over how on earth he could possibly have done it, given that he is supervised 99% of the time due to his wicked and untrustworthy nature. Then we discovered that, during his sessions in the exercise yard, he had been darting out of sight behind the shed and scratching himself on a bunch of sticking-out bamboo canes.

    We never bothered checking up on him when he went there because it’s only a tiny crawl space the same length and width as Catorze, and we knew that Le Cône prevented him from going far. The space is pictured below, and you can see the offending bamboo canes just above and to the right of him. Cat Daddy has now moved the canes but I’m pretty sure that, even if we put them on the moon, Catorze would find them.

    Our vet practice closed last week to minimise the risk of spreading the virus. The W5 and TW3 branches are remaining open for emergencies only – and, no, the irreparable damage to both our sanity and our will to live still doesn’t deem this an emergency – so we really can’t afford to have this turn bad. It seems we are going to have to ramp up our surveillance even more intensely, and possibly even – gasp – reintroduce the full Cône when the inmate is out of sight.

    Cat Daddy explained to his boy the other day that we all have to live with constraints during these difficult times, however much we dislike it.

    Catorze replied with a “Mwah”. Sadly I don’t think it was the good kind.

    Caught you, you little shite.

  • Le plaisir de Sa Majesté

    Last week, Cat Daddy was the one to drop the ball in our duty of care to Louis Catorze. This time it was my turn.

    I had just let the little sod outside for some fresh air when I suddenly remembered that I had to prepare for a work video call, and therefore an old sports t-shirt and hair tied up in a bun with a pair of knickers simply wouldn’t do. So I left Catorze outside, thinking “What possible mischief could he get into in the few minutes it will take me to change into my work clothes?” (I know, I know.)

    Then Dog Mamma sent me these photos:

    What the …?
    Don’t even THINK about it!

    Oh. Mon. Dieu.

    Catorze can no longer access the playground at The Back (because he can’t fit through the gap in the fence with his Cône), so it seems that he was trying to get in over the top instead. Because there is a wire fence right up against the wooden fence to catch stray tennis balls, he would probably have fallen through the tiny gap between the two fences and ended up stuck halfway down, limbs flailing and screaming undignifiedly. And, because the school is closed, he would have remained there until who-knows-when.

    So the new Château rule is that flight-risk prisoners cannot be left unsupervised in the exercise yard, not even for a second. At least we are in the fortunate position of having two wardens per inmate.