Where The Buffalo Roam

This'll be the third day in a row that I've written in this blog. Why is this, given I hadn't written anything for a year and a half? Obviously my inner voice is telling me I'm soon to meet my Maker, so I should say all I need to before this happens. This does makes sense, given I'm 113.

Paradoxically, I've been feeling very well of late, the result of going to the gym each second day, where for over an hour I hit the heavy bag, skip rope, and spar. And I take great care over what I eat. No more bangers and mash, fried eggs and bacon, or dripping roast beef for me. Now, it's muesli, vegetables, tofu, and the other stuff these left-wing namby-pamby socialists like to eat. Always learn from your enemies, is what I say.

I would today like to talk of my current home. But first I'll remind you that I'm in America, on the run from the police, and so are my men, Mikey Squeaky and Freddy. How we got into this predicament is an awfully long story, so I'll need several postings to tell all. I ask you, therefore, to be patient.

I do, in fact, have two homes. My main home is in the south of England, a delightful rural cottage in which I've lived for many, many years. It's so peaceful and quiet that I'd hoped to dwell there the rest of my life. But I fear I'll never again see it, for, as a hunted animal in America, I'm trapped here. Now I know how the coyotes and raccoons who eke out a wretched hunted existence in alleyways and culverts in the midst of our sprawling megalopolises must feel. I and they are birds of a feather, so to speak.

You'll understand, then, that my American home, which I share with Mikey Squeaky and Freddy, is necessarily as different from my English home as can be imagined. And it is likely as different from your own home as you could imagine, for mine is underneath the concrete foundation of a demolished house. As to its location, I can only say that it's somewhere in Texas. I hope you'll understand why I can't say more, for the police may have discovered this blog, and be reading it daily, hoping it'll reveal clues to my exact whereabouts. Fortunately Texas is big enough for me to say safely that I'm somewhere in it.

I and my men discovered what came to be our home while walking through an abandoned broken-down lot on the edge of a city, which, as I've said, I cannot name. I noticed an opening under one of the sides of the concrete foundation. I crawled through it and into what had been the basement part of the house. I saw it would be perfect for me and my men to live in, since it would provide rent-free shelter, and no-one, including the police, would suspect we'd be living there.

We furnished our new underground home with discarded furniture left in back lanes of nearby houses for the garbage men to remove. A thick cord of wire led into our home from the outside. On an impulse, I applied the end of it to a light bulb, which, incredibly, lit up. The cord must still have been connected to a power line outside. So we had free electricity.

Within days we had appropriated at no cost, all the necessities of a home – TV, mattresses, hotplate, pots and pans. If we need water we fill, late at night, large pots with water from water-taps situated in back gardens of nearby houses. For our ablutions, or answering the calls of nature, we use the toilets and washbasins in restaurants, or those in a nearby Greyhound Bus Depot.

For added secrecy, we've covered the entrance of our home with foliage. And we come and go in the dark as much as possible. I and my men have lived here some months now, and we've come to love it, for there's no place like home.