Bats I have known
One of the great things about showing up to write here every single week is that it forces me to begin without any idea of where I’m going. Pushing my little raft of words out into the river and hoping it doesn’t sink when I climb aboard. To wit:
A list of bats in no particular order and certainly not chronological.
Bat the first: A few summers ago, we cleared my father’s house prior to selling it. The pandemic had swept through the year before, we’d held my father’s funeral on the brink of the first lockdown, and my brother had used the subsequent time to effect major repairs and changes to the roughly converted cartshed where my father had made his home and workshop.
The task that my brother undertook was epic in scale, made more so by the fact that he is nether a plumber, nor joiner, nor builder, nor electrician. However, he is a highly intelligent human, and applied this intelligence ( with the aid of what he could find online in those innocent times before the advent of AI ) to the various problems he encountered en route.
By the time he called me in to help, one year on, he’d advanced the whole project to the stage where I could spend most of the summer deploying nothing more taxing than a paint roller. There was also the matter of disposing of the contents of the biggest, full-to-burstingest attic imaginable, one cardboard box at a time, most of which were crammed with enough books to flatten those of us at the foot of the ladder waiting for another box to be passed down. Afternoons crawled by, spent moving stuff from one location to another. So. Much. Stuff.
By way of light relief, I offered to clear the built-in bookshelves lining the gallery/upstairs landing. Most of the volumes there were in Italian, so I wasn’t tempted to linger, or set aside for future reading. I simply cleared shelves, packed the books in boxes, wiped the shelves, cleared more boo-
AAARGH. WTF?
It had been entombed behind a wall of books. Or perhaps had crawled in there to sleep? die? And over many months/years? had mummified. Poor little creature. A lonely, literary death. Surrounded by wise words, none of them enough to sustain life. Heaven spare me from such a fate.
Footnote: we’d already discovered some large, not-so-mummified but definitely dead rats under cupboards in Dad’s kitchen. But a bat in his bookshelves? That was unexpected.
Bat the second: Post-graduation from Art College, I lived in a damp farm cottage with my (then) only son. We were very broke, I’d been recently dumped by my partner of several years and I was learning in this new and unwelcome state of independence how to talk myself down off the ceiling when bumps in the night, incursions from mice in my bedroom1, weird unexplainable noises and everything my own feverish imagination could dish up sent me spiralling into near-hysteria. In short, a work of adulthood-in-progress. A half-baked human.
Imagine my instant panic and fits of the screaming hab-dabs when, returning home with my child one winter’s evening, I turned on the hall light only to have a gigantic silhouette of a bat project itself onto the wall in front of us.
AAAAARGH!
Later, I was to discover that the bat curled up inside the hall light-shade was actually a fake toy bat, placed there for LOLS by my nine year old son. O how I laffed. Not.
Bat the third: Many years and children later ( we added four more, towards a grand total of five, since you ask) in a vast house in Argyll, I was to be found hammering out a series of six linked novels in a little room at the top of the main staircase. After a long day’s work, I unfolded myself from my labours to draw the curtains against the night.
EEEEK! WTF?
A frog (or maybe a toad) was squatting on top of the curtain pelmet, three metres above my head. I called for help. Beloved arrived promptly, understandably concerned - like just how damp was this house if frogs were taking up residence on the curtains? He burst out laughing. The squatter wasn’t an amphibian, it was a bat.
As if in agreement, the little creature took off, flew through the door of my workroom, along the upstairs landing, hung a right and flew down the stairs to the hall. We followed, wondering what on earth we should do next. The panicked bat, cleverly sensing that Beloved was the one with brains, flew straight at him, crash-landed with wings fully extended on his Arran-jumper-clad chest and hung there, its little sides heaving as it assessed its next move.
Thank heavens it landed on Beloved. He was calm, did not flail and flap and shriek as I would have, merely walked to the front door and opened it, whereupon our tiny uninvited guest remembered it had bat-business with the insect population of Argyll, and flittered off into the night. Nobody got bitten or squished. Result!
Bat the fourth: Hey, I’m on a roll here. Roll up, roll up, read aaaaallll about my lovely bats. We got bats in bookcases, bats in lampshades, bats on curtains and now… bats with flaps at bedtime! Behold Goodnight Baby Bat.
To Mummy Bat’s dismay, Baby Bat doesn’t want to brush his teeth and his face or wash behind his wings. He digs in his little trident-like toes and refuses to go to bed until several contractual obligations are met.
Snail has to be tucked in.
Then Caterpillar…and Spider.
Moon too? A cloud helpfully intervenes.
And finally, the weather comes to Mummy Bat’s aid.
‘Look, Baby Bat. Now even the world is being tucked in.
Flake by flake, white upon white, softly, softly under a quilt of snow.
And now it’s your turn.
Go to sleep, my Baby Bat.
Slumber deep, my darling.
And dream of wings, and soft dark things
and sleep until the morning.’
I had to fight hard for the inclusion of those pages of snow - originally there were five overlays, each one adding more snow in layers/drifts, but also adding more expense, more hassle and generally less appeal to the bean counters in production who have to rein in the creative excesses of their illustrators and writers and answer to the shareholders.
So when my then editor wanted to write ‘includes snowstorm and flaps’ on the front cover, I asked that the storm be downgraded to a flurry. A flurry. Oh dear. Nobody really wanted to take a flurry home with them. A snowstorm? That’s another thing altogether.
The book bombed, alas. I love it still, but never see it anywhere. But look - inside Mummy Bat’s soft, dark wings, she keeps some interesting things.
Bat the fifth : That series of six linked novels that I was writing while bats lodged in our curtains? The fifth book introduced a bat called Vesper2 who arrived in the Strega-Borgia household just after the family’s beloved nanny had gone forever. Damp as the youngest family member and thus closest to Nanny MacLachlan, missed her with her whole heart and soul. Pining away in a nursery devoid of Mrs MacLachlan’s gentle touch, Damp is in deep despair. Enter Vesper -
Hanging from the curtains3 and surveying the chaos, the little bat squinched his wings in closer to his body and shuddered fastidiously. Not only was this new cave a complete pigsty, but his new mistress was leaking. Wet stuff sounds completely different to dry stuff when listened to via echolocation. The bat emitted a series of high-frequency squeaks and then concentrated fiercely. There. Well. That was a relief. Only leaking from one end.
Unaware that she was under surveillance, Damp rolled over, presented her back to the nursery chaos, and turned her face to the wall.
“Whoops, no -” the bat squeaked in alarm. In his experience, when humans turned their faces to the wall, it wasn’t in order to examine the wallpaper. It was a sign of surrender, of losing interest in life; a prelude to death. He panicked - “No! No way, ma’am. Not when I’m on dooty. Code Red. Repeat. Code Red. I’m going in” - and launching himself into space, he plummeted from the curtain rail, in his haste unfortunately omitting to unfold his clenched wings before takeoff.
Extract from ‘Deep Water’ published by Doubleday
It may have been called ‘Deep Water’ in the UK, but when it crossed the Atlantic, it was renamed Pure Dead Batty. And no, I have no idea why Vesper had an American accent.
Bat the sixth: The bat that allegedly changed the world, derailed the economy and cleared the roads in the UK for one blissful but deadly summer? AKA bats as reservoirs for SARS-CoV-2 ? Evidence for which, as of November 2025, is annoyingly inconclusive. However, a long time prior to the global pandemic, horseshoe cave-dwelling bats transferred SARS-CoV to palm civets and then on to people in Guangdong. There is no cure for this version. In 2002, over 700 people died.
None of which is the kind of history that a bat publicist would welcome. Also, see rabies. Some of our UK bats carry it. To the extent that GOV.UK has a webpage devoted to the subject. Needless to say, when Beloved had that trembling, terrified bat clinging to his jumper, he knew the potential risks. And did not flap. For which, huge respect. I’d’ve been a shrieking, windmilling, soon-to-be-bitten wreck. Which brings me to -
Bat the seventh: Two years ago, on holiday in Dumfries and Galloway with our family, we rented a large house in a converted stable block attached to a vast mansion. The entire estate had fallen on hard times, which was probably why we could afford to rent our share of it for a week. The vast mansion was inhabited by a couple who had clearly bitten off more than they could chew but were determinedly carrying on, trying to project the ambience of a work in progress, but in reality the vibe was that the whole project was midway through an inexorable slide into decrepitude and financial ruin. Hey ho.
Relieved that it wasn’t going to be our roofing bill, we settled in, apportioned the bedrooms accordingly, during which I chose a tiny single bedroom in the attic. At some point it had a working fireplace, but that summer, the fireplace sported a chimney stuffed with newspaper, a single bed, a ghastly 1940’s cabinet for clothes and a bedside lamp that didn’t work. Of course it didn’t.
The holiday began, we cooked up a communal storm, cracked open the single malts, pored over maps of future walks, discovered the shore a scant five minutes walk away and unpacked books, board games, knitting, sketchbooks, walking boots and all the things we love to have time for, but rarely do except on holiday.
Anyway. Midway through the week, I woke up in the middle of the night to a rustling. A papery rustling, as if wind was blowing down the chimney and disturbing the stuffed-up newspaper. Except… it was perfectly still outside. I could see how still it was because I hadn’t shut my curtains and the climbing ivy outside my window was hanging limply in the moonlight.
More papery rustling. I pulled the feeble syntho-biscuit duvet over my head and tried to ignore the sounds. Unsurprisingly, that didn’t work because my imagination was pulling on its boots and getting ready to fire up on all cylind-
The rustling changed to a flapping. A flittery-fluttery flapping sound as if little leathery wings were testing the perimeter of my bedroom. Then silence. To be honest, the silence was far, far worse.
Then a soft thudding sound as if something was trying to fly through the glass of the window, unaware that when what looks like air becomes stiff and impenetrable, that means it isn’t air but a man-made glass barrier. More thudding at which point my nerve failed, I leapt out of bed, snatched the curtains shut ( presumably in an attempt to enclose the thudding, flapping, winged thing in between glass and cloth) and ran for help.
AAAARGHHHHHHHHHH.
It was a bat. In my tiny bedroom. Panicked and flying at the window, over and over again. Yet again, Beloved shepherded it outside and I didn’t sleep another minute for the rest of the holiday. Our hosts/landlords were deeply unimpressed. What did I expect? Old houses, they shrugged. As if I were the heathenish denizen of a brand new box in an estate of identiboxes and thus had no concept of life in a historical gem such as this. The implication was that I should consider myself fortunate to have had the privilege of sharing my tiny, freezing bedroom with such an aristobat.
And yes, in the light of this morning’s message on Instagram ( ugh, yes, the ‘gram is an eM Ee tee A product and thus WTF am I doing with it still on my phone? But the message below is exactly the reason why I haven’t deleted the problematic app. Only connect, right?) I am ridiculously privileged.
And humbled. And, dammit, crying again. Slava Ukraini! Heroiam slava!
On my pillow. Tangled in my (then) long black hair. Seriously. What a time to be alive, right?
A name the bat shared with my beloved and recently-deceased guinea pig, Vesper. Vesper of the coal-black fur, moth breath and the loudest WHEEEEKS I’ve ever heard. Vesper who is slowly becoming a birch tree. Vesper who I’d far, far prefer to still be a guinea pig. And now I’m crying again, dammit.
Write what you know, right?
Brilliant BATS!!! I feel the same about the not really knowing what I'll write til I do. I loved this post possibly the most of all so far. And definitely love the weekly showing up we all do here. That's brilliant too.
SEVEN bat stories!! I loved them all but am particularly envious of Mummy bat's wing contents...