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Joanne Black

President Donald Trump’s declaration that “actually, throughout my life my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart” could become one of those dinner-party games that would improve with each empty bottle.

You could extend the game by adding attributes, having to remember in the correct order the ones that had been previously cited. It would be after the fashion of the children’s game that goes: “My mother went to the supermarket and she bought six oranges, three bananas, a bottle of milk and some Fanta.” (Inevitably, there is someone who adds a nuclear reactor and a chihuahua to the list.

Some people cannot help themselves.)

So it could start with someone saying, “My President says his greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like really smart”, to which the next person might say, “My President says his greatest assets have been narcissism, mental stability and being, like, really smart”, until conceivably, somewhere between dessert and coffee, the winner announces: “My President says his greatest assets have been inherited wealth, tax accountants, nepotism, marrying models, threatening lawsuits, impulsiveness, social-media addiction, bare-faced denials, vanity, media-bashing, hair dye, staff management, egomania, narcissism, mental stability and being, like, really smart.”

Admittedly, I see it as more of an American dinner-party game than a New Zealand one.

The squirrels finally broke me. The day before one of the longest periods of sub-zero temperatures in recent history was due to end with a forecast of 1°C (and snow), I opened the kitchen cupboard in which we keep our baking ingredients.

Generally, I am a believer in letting nature take its course, however brutish. However, having watched a squirrel trying to dig some of its stash out of the frozen backyard and another eating snow because any water outside had been frozen for weeks, I decided that a little something to help them through until the thaw could not go amiss.

The cupboard yielded walnut halves (for the Afghan biscuits that I never got around to making), hazelnuts (for Nigella’s Nutella cake that I never got around to making), pecans (for an American recipe that I …) and pistachios that I used to occasionally put in my daughter’s lunchbox to give the impression that she comes from a household of healthy eaters.

I lingered over choosing a pretty dish from my extensive collection of nursery china but then pulled myself up. “They are squirrels, Joanne, squirrels.” I scooped up a large handful of mixed raw nuts – no added salt, in the interests of not hardening the squirrels’ arteries – and put the nuts out on a corner of the deck that squirrels regularly scamper across.

It did not take long before the first grey squirrel found that, I imagine, all his or her dreams over this long winter had come true. It invited no one else to its private party. It sat alone on the deck grasping the nuts in its front paws and chewing them in that slightly maniacal way that is perhaps explained by the presence of foxes.

A barking dog scared it away, and by the time I returned there was nothing to be seen but a litter of pistachio shells on the deck and lawn. Well, after years of being a parent, I never expected the squirrel to clean up after itself.

The next morning, a grey squirrel was lingering around the deck, but I had already steeled myself for tough love. I do not want them becoming dependent. It was a single windfall for a random animal: the once-in-a-lifetime lottery winner of the squirrel neighbourhood.

After years of being a parent, I never expected the squirrel to clean up after itself.