The Secret Mice

My Dear Princess and Dear Friends,

Today was very busy. I bounced from meeting to meeting to meeting. 

Mind you, two of those meetings were breakfast. One of them was impromptu. I met Ellie on her way into the office so I had eggs on toast with her. You will be glad to hear that she is doing much, much better and seems to have got her Ellie bounce back. 

My second breakfast meeting was with Erica who is the project coordinator on my new project. She seems nice. She brought me in some banana bread, which is a good start. 

My new project manager is called Laura and she also seems lovely. It is hard to say how things will go with Laura and Erica. It seems unlikely we'll establish the same sorts of friendships I had on Project Gromit. But they seem like people I can have a laugh with. 

Given this, my highpoints of the day were the Ellie breakfast meeting and then later, one with Fazzy. 

I just love Fazzy. There's just something about her that is so kind and so warm. I asked her a few dumb@rse questions about Ramadan and what it means and how it works. 

I'm interested. 

She humoured me, and answered my questions although it's clearly a private part of her life. I guess she trusts me. And that in itself makes me feel warm inside. I'm really very lucky to have met her. 

Given the comparison, poor Erica and Laura have a tough act to follow.

Fazzy tolerates me in other ways too. In the newest story for Zay and Hani, one of the characters encounters, "The Secret Mice" - a cabal of hidden rodents who keep from view and wear fedoras and dark glasses to avoid being recognised.

I asked Fazzy to stick little mouseholes all over her house, and also to stick secret mice about the place for her children to find. She said she was no good at drawing secret mice. So I drew this character for her with instructions to print him out multiple times, colour him in differently each time and position him in out-of-the-way places, so that every time her children found one, it would be exciting.

Fazzy rolled her eyes at me. As usual. But she was smiling.

I really am very lucky.

S.