Three days ago, I spotted something unusual lying on the gravel walk of my small garden. Grey, heavy … a yard or more of dead iguana, which is quite a lot. I don’t know where iguanas usually go to die, but I’d never come across a dead one before and was quite shocked.
It was dusk, so I thought if I said out loud, “I believe in magic!” it would be gone on the morrow. And indeed, it was! The next morning, gone!
The niggle was, having noticed the previous day that its head had been eaten, I was pretty certain it hadn’t woken up and ambled off. I also noticed my cat Anand, a tall, thin cat, sitting on the path, self-consciously regarding his claws.
I was gripped by a sudden memory of the episode in Fawlty Towers in which a guest dies in the hotel. In order not to upset the elderly permanent residents in the lobby by taking it down to the front door, Basil, the waitress and Manuel temporarily hide the corpse in an empty room. Unwittingly, Basil’s wife,on the front desk, assigns the empty room to a guest and the rest of the episode is Basil, Manual and Connie running around Fawlty Towers shifting the corpse in a panic.
