Meticulous Attention to Detail

Now that you have been introduced to Sam you can see that he and Robbie have a lot in common. They are like 'me' and 'mini me'. Sam is like a Sherpa, he carries all that is essential to him in a huge rucksack and he becomes very distressed if he is parted from it. Robbie is just the same, he carries a ton of ironmongery in the bottom of his rucksack so that he is equipped for an array of potential train emergencies should the need arise. He even took it on honeymoon with him! Sam often provides too much detail and bores people rigid - sound familiar?

It was very windy last night and Sam told me he was concerned about his rabbit and about the garden fence blowing down. A couple of years ago he had similar worries about his hamster Seth the Second who usually lived in the hall. He kept taking his cage upstairs and parking him in my bedroom. There was absolutely no way that I was going to share my room with Seth, I may have to put up with things going round and round inside my head but I drew the line at Seth going round and round on his wheel! Sam thought Seth could get cold at night so I asked him where hamsters come from. I was attempting to point out that they are used to cold nights, but Sam completely misunderstood me and announced that they come from Petsmart! I said "no, where do they come from?" Sam gave a deep sigh and gave me a very detailed account of hamster reproduction; he seemed to know more about it than most hamsters!

By this time I had given up on the conversation. It reminded me of an episode that happened two or three years before. I came downstairs one morning to find Sam in the lounge with two hamster cages on the floor. At first I didn't notice that one cage was empty, but when I asked Sam what he was doing he explained quite calmly that he was breeding the hamsters. He said "they have done everything properly so they can go back to their cages now" He knew exactly when the babies were due and he watched for signs of pregnancy, but to my relief we did not witness a population boom in the world of hamsters. When it was clear that there were no babies Sam decided to try a different tactic. He got up early one morning and I found him reading to the hamsters from the chapter on reproduction in the hamster care book!!