More than a few years ago, during a summer holiday weekend in Paris, I was sitting in Sant Michel Metro station eating ice cream. Paris in July can be sweltering and I was glad to have a little relief from the sun even though the station itself was still a pretty sticky place to be hanging around.
Anyway, I’m sure you know how complicated it can be trying to eat ice cream in a heatwave. Unless you are really good with your slurping technique, you tend to end up with ice cream everywhere. Eventually, you end up delicately turning the cone around, trying to find a dry bit to hold it by.

Curiously, it’s the same movement you use when trying to keep a spider from escaping out of in a jam jar as you walk to the window to set it free.

(By the way, I hope you always set your spiders free. They are far more scared of us than we have any right to be of them).

Where were we? Ah yes, ice cream in Paris. So there I was, sitting on the bench, enjoying my treat when what should I see but two little mice come scampering along the platform.

They didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry and the heat seemed to have dulled everyone’s spirits because nobody paid them very much attention at all as they scampered along the platform edge.

“Why, it almost looks as if they live here,” I thought to myself. “I wonder what their names are?”

So I asked them! The story of the Metro Mice is everything I can remember from our conversation. And who knew that mice would be so fond of ice cream?

I originally wrote the story of Renoir and Beth as an adventure tail….I mean tale….for my two daughters who are now no longer quite so small. But they enjoyed it very much indeed and now I hope that you will too.
If so, please tell all your friends or use Facebook or Instagram to let me know!

Happy reading!

Andy