Death By Beaver

When beavers were introduced to Knapdale, Mid-Argyll in May 2009 I cheered.

Being part Scottish I could only celebrate with my far-Northern cousins that finally, at last, their beaver needs were being met. It is a little known fact that there has long been a shortage of beaver in Scotland. Some blame the Highland Clearances, some the proliferation of Buckfast and deep fried Mars bars, most put it down to the hordes of midge flies that are attracted to anything warm and moist. After all an itchy beaver is an unhappy beaver.

However, as the classic beaver spurns any kind of fashionable depilation, it was agreed that a good full musky pelt would be ample protection against even the most determined of hormonally driven irritants and therefore the whine and nip of insistent little pests would be “nay bother” to the eager beavers waiting to set up home in the west coast of Scotland.

The beavers were duly released and allowed to run free and to this day thrive and prosper in Knapdale, Mid-Argyll.

It is a story worthy of the BBC’s Springwatch. A conservation success story to be shouted from the rooftops although we are yet to see Chris Packham get to grips with a beaver live on telly despite Michaela Strachan’s best attempts to the contrary.

All should be well. Beavers and beaver jokes have been resurrected in the British Isles to the glory of all.

And then comes the disturbing news today that a man in Belarus has been killed by beaver. The beaver population in Belarus is an eye-watering 80,000. I’m not sure what ratio that is to the male human population but surely there is enough beaver to go around.

Details are currently sketchy but it seems the man had attempted to capture the beaver in order to have his photograph taken with it.

Well truly, what man has not savoured the adolescent dream of being photographed running his fingers through the quivering fur of a beautiful, perfectly formed beaver?

It seems this particular beaver was having none of it though. It didn’t want to be tied down. It didn’t want to be posed. It didn’t want to be stroked. It wanted to be left alone and photo-shoots be damned. It was plainly the wrong time of the month. The beaver was not in season. The beaver bit and bit hard.

The poor man consequently died of his injuries.

Although “death by beaver” may sound to some a glamorous way to go I suspect my Scottish brethren are now twitching nervously beneath their sporrans and analysing growing beaver numbers in the Knapdale area with a sense of gnawing trepidation. Prime air-time on Springwatch is all very well but with a beaver population explosion on the cards it is only a matter of time before there is bloodshed in the Scottish bush.

After all, an angry beaver with teeth is not something you want erecting a dam at close quarters in your kilt.

The Ayes Have It

We think we’re so great, us humans. So darn clever.

We measure our evolutionary advancement solely in terms of technological progress.

It began with machines that would do our work for us. Tools. Bows and arrows. Mills. Looms. Then progressed to huge engines and rudimentary robotics that could standardize the material produced which in turn led to even greater scope for the work we could get our machines to do. Wars and the need to kill more people than our enemies drove us even further forward. Computers came on the scene. Electronic beasts that could out-perform hundreds of men in a single second, with the flash of a single diode.

And then evolution took a new turn. We began to build machines that would take care of our leisure time too. Gaming, Streaming media. Music, film, art. Ironically we probably now employ more people in the leisure industry than we ever did in the industrial revolution. Leisure has become work. Has become an industry.

iPads. iPods. iDocks.

They are the status symbol of modern man. If NASA were to send a new Voyager probe off into the outer reaches of the solar system now it would feature a line drawing of a naked man, a naked woman and the latest incarnation of the iPad.

But in our arrogance we have forgotten that Nature got there first with this so called new-fangled iTechnology.

You only have to check out old naval films to realise that the iAye – a device for acknowledging (usually ridiculous) orders on naval galleons – has been around for hundreds of years. The iAye can usually be slotted into an Aaaar!Dock for those that prefer their pleasures to be pirated.

But even before this advance, millions of years ago in an example of true evolutionary development Nature came up with the iBall. Without this fascinating and incredible complex device mankind wouldn’t have invented the wheel let alone wafer thin electronic notepads. For the majority of us who are fortunate, the iBall comes fitted with iSight as standard. It is an app that most of us take for granted but were it at risk of being taken away would be the one we’d probably realize we valued the most.

And if I could be bothered to pursue this lame conceit any further I could happily hold court on the following examples of pre-Jobian iTechnology: the iLash, the iCandy, the iPatch, the iClaudius, the iCaramba, the iWitness and, finally, that curiously Welsh development, the iDai.

But to be honest, I’m beginning to feel that post is beginning to become something of an iSore and the mood of my dear readership is starting to turn iCy.

iApologize to those of you who thought that this was going to be a serious post... but you were plainly plugged into your iGnoramus app.

Gob

Eavesdropping is necessarily a snide pastime.

I don’t think I’ve ever eavesdropped on a single conversation and come away thinking, “Ooh, they’re lovely people – I wish they were in my friend’s network so I could get to know them better”.

Generally I come away shaking my head, sneering, laughing and quite often disgusted at the small minded, bigoted, malapropism-rich outpourings of my fellow man.

Of course, I’m quite willing to accept that maybe I am just a big snob per se and congenitally live in contempt of my fellow humans.

But that in no way invalidates my claim that eavesdropping inevitably positions those being eavesdropped upon well beneath the moral hobnailed boots of those doing the eavesdropping. It’s just human nature.

This being the case, I was walking quite innocently back to work after my lunchbreak yesterday afternoon when I stopped at a pedestrian crossing. While I waited for the lights to change in my favour two other pedestrians approached the lights behind me and waited at my back. Two young teenage girls, the ubiquitous mobile phone held out in their hands like a Ghostbuster PKE metre and their overly glossed lips pulled into pouts big enough to form the south facing wall of a bouncy castle.

“Fockin’ gaffa tape. Fockin’ gaffa tape. Bastard. I mean, look, that’s what he wants me to get. Fockin’ gaffa tape. Can you believe it? Bastard. Fockin’ gaffa tape.”

And on and on and on. Those same few phrases repeated over and over while the orator’s companion laughed like a drain and no doubt was as familiar with the gutter as one.

I actually began counting how many times this delightful young lady swore. I got to 15 before the green man finally appeared and rescued me.

As I sped away I could still hear, “Fockin’ gaffa tape, fockin’ gaffa tape, bastard” singeing the air like hastily deposited nuclear waste and I found myself wondering whether anyone on this planet can ever find such constant expletive incontinence attractive. Or even think it adult or mature?

I mean I am right in thinking that someone who effs and blinds every second word is chromosome deficient, aren’t I? Their emotional / intellectual development has somehow stalled at the ‘bike shed badinage’ stage and they’re forever stuck with the mentality of a 15 year old where they think that heavy use of the eff word automatically bestows upon them the heady mantle of ‘Adult’.

I instantly found myself dismissing this pair as a couple of foul-mouthed, uncouth, thick as shit, nob chompers who will end up working in McDonalds and exorcising their dissatisfaction with life by wiping malicious bogeys onto the underside of all the bread buns.

Which isn’t fair. They might actually make it to Burger King.

Joking.

They might actually be intelligent. They might even be nice girls. From good homes. With a staunch moral view of the world and an acceptance letter from Oxford.

But I don’t think so.

We are how we talk. Our voice and choice of words express our personalities and our aspirations. I’m not talking about accents here. I’m talking about what we say rather than how we say it. To choose to swear so prolifically and so (deliberately) loudly speaks volumes about a mindset that has not only normalised aggressive displays of behaviour but has also promoted them as being the most efficient way to navigate modern society.

And that is deeply, deeply saddening and possibly speaks volumes about the rest of us.

Possibly.

Or it could just be that a potty mouth is a habit that people fall into when young and like all nasty habits needs a jolly good kick to get it broken.

Believe you me, I was tempted.

Guilt And Shame

It’s very telling how we deal with guilt and shame, isn’t it?

I used to think such feelings were foisted on us by society but now, watching my boys develop, I can see that actually we are all born with an innate instinct for right and wrong. I daresay that instinct is borne out of a very basic nascent empathy – how would I feel if someone did that to me? – but it does the job just the same.

When my youngest, Tom, has been naughty – and believe me he’s sussed enough to know when he’s being naughty – he’ll tackle the resultant fall-out in one of two ways. The first is to hide his face or run away. I’m sure that response is borne out of his belief that if he can’t see us then he is rendered somehow invisible. The second is to try the ol’ distraction and sympathy technique. This usually involves him offering up his hand as if it were an injured bird and suddenly inventing an injury that nevertheless didn’t stop him twatting his older brother around the head with a toy spaceship a few seconds earlier.

“Ow! Hurt!” And those big brown eyes will implore and beseech in the vain hope that what’ll come to him is sympathy and hugs and not a good telling off.

We no longer fall for it and as a consequence he tries this tactic less and less.

But he was never taught it in the first place. It seemed to be already there in his armoury of survival techniques. And to be honest it was a tactic I pulled quite often myself in my youth – and continued to do so until I was well past Tom’s age. I can remember being in the playground at Infant School and trying to attract the attention of some Sikh kid. Looking back on it now I can see he would have looked quite cute to a grown up with his hair tied up in a little hankie on top of his head. At the time I didn’t think he was so cute. He refused to acknowledge me and I thought him an arrogant git though I didn’t have the vocabulary to call him so. As my shouts weren’t having the desired effect I did the next logical thing: I threw a stone at him and cracked him a whopper on the side of that hankie.

Cue tears and the joyfully pointing fingers of accusation from every other kid in the playground. “Him, miss, him, Stephen – he did it, miss!”

I hid in the boy’s toilets and had to be ordered out by the teacher. I emerged with a sudden limp and that same hound-dog look that Tom often pulls on me and Karen. It got me just as far as it does Tom. A good telling off. ‘Cos I was guilty and I knew it.

So why not just hold my hands up and admit it? Well, I just couldn’t deal with the guilt and the shame of doing something that was wrong. The telling off; the shouting were minor tortures. It was having to acknowledge that guilt in front of everyone else that was the real killer.

Now, of course, as adults we make a virtue out of acknowledging guilt and wrong doing. We like people who “take it on the chin”, who don’t “pass the buck”, who ‘fess up and deal with it. We deplore people who don’t; those who wriggle and seek sympathy (BP take note).

And yet to hide away and deflect the attention is still, I believe, our first deeply-rooted instinct.

I guess to overcome this is what sorts the men from the boys.

As for me, can I just say that I have not been motivated by guilt to write this post? I have not done anything wrong and expiation for some unnamed crime is not my prime motivation. I know what you women are like, see. A guy starts philosophizing about guilt and shit and you’re first instinct is to wonder: OK, so what the hell have you been up to that you feel so bad about it?

That’s the fake guilt that you women make us men feel just by looking at us and going, “hmm?” with your eyebrows raised. And that’s the subject for a whole other post by someone much braver than me who is stupid enough to tackle it.

‘Cos I am staying well out of it and I am staying righteous.

And I’m sure I’ll hear a big Amen to that from my brothers...

More Arse Than You Can Shake A Pink Stick At

I’ve taken the unusual step of publishing a picture of a lady’s bottom at the top of this post. It is not meant to be sexist or gratuitous. It is merely a response to some of the buttock shaped flak that I have received over the last 7 days. Life has been giving me the bum’s rush and I’m not sure how I should be interpreting the message.

Take last week. I’m going about my duties. An undesirable has entered my workplace despite being banned from the building. It falls to me to approach this ne’er-do-well and remind him that his bodily functions and the building wherein I work are not meant to meet. There are reports he has gone into the Gents’ toilets. I go in. There’s no sign of him. I check the Baby Change facilities and find Mr ASBO with his back to me, his trousers and boxers slumped around his ankles like Jayne Torville around Christopher Dean’s ice skates, his arse hanging out like something unspeakable in a Turkish butcher’s shop window and his gooseberries in the sink being washed with the hand soap.

It ain’t a pretty sight.

It’s one arse too many.

I asked him to leave. He got mouthy and shirty (after he hastily got trousery) but his previous nekkidness had one positive effect: it is impossible to feel cowed by someone when you have seen their hairy bum cheeks.

And then take last night. I’m walking home from college after another Sign Language class. I pass the park. I hear rowdy male singing coming from the bandstand. “Here we go, here we go, here we go-o...” Oh good, I think to myself, drunken footballers... Though I was not aware there was a match on tonight. I can make out about 15 figures prancing about in the gloom.

And then one of them makes a dash my way. And... Oh God... he is wearing nothing but his socks. He is stark staring bollocknekkid. His gennies are flopping about like one half of a broken deely-bopper. Thankfully as he nears me he is distracted by the bright lights of the pretty cars that are rushing by. He leaps out into the road and begins to ‘air-thrust” at the passing motorists. I half expect the voice of Mr Punch to emerge from his arse saying, “That’s the way to do it!” I’m holding my breath at this point because let’s be honest, erectile tissue + sheet metal travelling at 40mph = airborne ketchup. The result of a collision isn’t going to be successful insemination.

But then Mr Car-Lover changes tactics and begins to race up the road, chasing one of the cars. My last view of him is his buttocks grinding at speed and diminishing in size as his pink fleshy form blurs into the red tail lights of the car in front of him.

Now, I don’t know about you but that is too much male naked arse for a dyed-in-the-wool hetero like me to take in one week. I’m fine with homosexuality but I take no pleasure, sexual or aesthetic, in being presented with the jelly-like realities of the masculine buttock. It don’t float my boat. So what the hell is Life trying to tell me?

As near as I can figure it, I think it’s telling me that it is time for more totty on this here blog. Female totty. Rounded, smooth, female totty. Hence the picture above. I’m not just being as arsehole, honest. The Universe made me do it. I am merely answering the call. Restoring the balance. Ensuring there is no gender bias.

After all, one buttock deserves another. It’s Nature’s way.

Ants In Your Pants

Now I don’t know whether this is a national phenomenon or even a global one - maybe you good bloggers out there can inform me – but it certainly is a personally observed local one.

On the same day, at the same mysteriously appointed hour – perhaps when the soil reaches a certain temperature and the eggs hatch – every ant for miles around feels the need to boil upwards from its underground nest and swarm crazily on the surface of the human world.

And not just ordinary ants but the far superior and brutal looking flying ant too.

Basically the ordinary common-or-garden ant is just an ordinary GI Joe. Regulation uniform, hand me down rifle and one-size fits all combat training. On their own or in small numbers they’re so ineffectual as to be negligible. But when there are hundreds of them swirling over the patio like self stirring bug soup it’s time to wear industrial boots or risk the flesh being torn from your feet by a thousand clicking mandibles.

The flying ant by contrast is a force to be reckoned with on his own. Compared to the GI Joe he is a Stealth Bomber with a full payload and a bad attitude. He’s out to nobble whatever and whoever gets in his way. When you see a flying ant up close – and I’ve had one of the buggers insinuate itself into my mouth and bite the inside of my lip – you can really see the genetic connection between wasps and ants. They’re nasty, my friends, really nasty.

Anyway, yesterday, no matter where we went during the afternoon the ants were out. Darting through the air, swarming on the ground, mincing over cars, pinching their way up T-shirts and blouses and basically getting into every nook and cranny they could find. And if those nooks and crannies were human in origin all to the good. There was just no escape.

And much as I’m used to seeing this phenomenon by now (for it happens every year) it still has me scratching my head (in fact just plain scratching) and wondering: just what is the trigger? How do they all know to leave the nest at the same time – or rather how do all the nests know that this is the day to evacuate en masse? ‘Cos we drove to the next town and, just as in our garden a couple of miles away, the ants were erupting there too.

Is there some kind of insectoid Google that we humans don’t know about? Is there an arthropod graffiti network that tags small blades of grass with the date and time of the next ant rave?

When me and my family have enough trouble coordinating ourselves to get to work, school and nursery on time each morning I find this invertebrate efficiency deeply enviable.

However, it still doesn’t stop me pouring boiling water all over the little blighters.

Another cup of tea anyone?

Wild About Skinny Dipping

We like Dr Alice Roberts in my house. Or rather, I like Alice Roberts in my house. My wife, I suspect is a little more ambivalent seeing her as yet another addition to the already overlong list of top television totty pin-ups that I adolescently maintain in my mind to mull over on a rainy day.

But you see, Alice Roberts isn’t just eye candy. She’s intelligent and astute and has a soft gentle voice that was just made for television voiceovers. And she’s a doctor. And a scientist. And she sometimes dyes her hair red and she once showed an X ray (or something) of her clitoris on TV. Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re thinking: that’s going the extra mile in the name of science, but for me it was a very direct and very personal come-on – there it is, Steve; I’ve shown you where to find it!

So it was with interest that I noted she’d made a documentary for BBC4 on the subject of Wild Swimming. My mind blazed with images of Dr Alice, face and body painted like a tiger, cavorting in a swimming pool alongside other suitably painted animalized ladies... possibly the top ten from my list of top television totty pin-ups... but as I read the Radio Times review I realized it wasn’t going to be like that at all. It was in fact a documentary about swimming, free and unfettered, in the UK’s rivers and waterways. A televisual homage to Roger Deakin who extolled the virtues of wild swimming in his famous book, Waterlog.

And I have to say it was lovely. Although I am not a great swimmer, I can really see the attraction of wild swimming. You are immersed in the natural environment, part of it rather than just a casual observer, you are seeing the natural life of the river and the riverbank the way the wildlife sees it.

At first Alice did her swims in a wetsuit; her rubber enveloped limbs cutting smoothly through the peaty water, but she soon proclaimed that she was missing out on the full sensory experience. She wanted to feel the water upon her skin, moving across her flesh, tingling her all over... my Bunsen burner suddenly pulsed with an intense flame so blue it cracked my petri dish clean in half.

Could she mean...? Did she mean...? I hardly dare whisper the words skinny dipping... for, ahem, I was taking no vicarious titillation from the intimation only wandering how far Dr Alice could push the envelope of respectability whilst honouring the ethos of wild swimming and being at one with nature. After all, I am not the kind of man who watches TV programmes just to get off on occasional glimpses of flesh and suggestive movement, no; I wish to be edified and educated. My higher ambitions illuminated and excited.

As it was, Dr Alice merely meant losing the thermal protection of her wetsuit and swimming in nowt but a one piece bather. Would she be able to take the cold though? The average river temperature in the UK for the time of year she was filming was something like 15 degrees C. Now that’s damned cold. Would there be pokie action? Some of the more uncouth of you were probably thinking. But not I. No. I was pleased they showed how cold Alice was with nothing more than a nice thermal imaging camera borrowed from a passing thermal imaging camera salesman. Look how blue she’s gone. Oh heavens. That water is cold, isn’t it? I do hope they get her warmed up again soon. Nothing to titillate here, folks. All good science.

But as it was, all was not lost on the skinny dipping (purely for scientific research and artistic integrity) issue, for to honour the memory of Roger Deakin Dr Alice decided to conclude the documentary with... gasp... a real totally naked and unrobed skinny dip in an unnamed pool in the Lake District that has by now, I suspect, been religiously sanctified and dedicated to the memory of this great boobs-out event. (Latest news reports state that votive offerings have been left at rocks near to this sacred tarn and candles lit in the trees to better aid the sight-lines of passing binocular users).

And so, as the denouement of this fabulous documentary neared, Dr Alice, proud and curvy in her geeky boffinness, threw off her white fluffy bathrobe with an almost Old Testament defiance, and plunged full length and body long into the cold clear waters of Wordworth’s birthplace. Back and forth she surged, scarcely causing the surface water to ripple or break, a veritable nymph of the pool awaiting the pen of Tennyson to immortalize her forever... while some inept camera man floundered around behind her doing the doggy paddle and only managed to snatch occasional shots of her legs from the mid-thigh down and her arms barely up to her shoulder tops, I mean, really! What kind of shoddy camera work is this? Is this what I pay my TV license for, BBC? She was skinny dipping, for God’s sake. Bloody skinny dipping! Naked in that there pool and you had a ruddy great professional film crew to capture it. Where were they? Did they shove a couple of apprentices behind the cameras or something? Were the real film crew down the pub playing Sudoku or sinking jars of Riggwelter? Sod respectability and the higher cause of science! I feel really let down.

Damn you, BBC!

P.S. In protest at the BBC’s ineptitude I may have to start a new series on this here blog called Steve’s TV Totty Of The Week. This will be a new feature and will probably not be weekly at all but merely dragged out when I have little or nothing else to waffle on about and will feature – you’ve guessed it – my TV Totty Of The Week. Well done, Dr Alice: you have the honour of being the first in a very long and very shallow line of totally self indulgent, sexually gratifying blog posts about TV totty. A round of applause for this week’s winner, please.

The Voice Of The People

It's a bit late to produce a film review by now as I'm guessing all of you who are going to see Avatar have already done so. Due to circumstances Karen and I only got to see it yesterday - fashionably late, with the media not caring so much anymore and not in the much vaunted 3D.

But you know what? I do wonder if coming to the party late did us a big favour. The hype had died down. We'd read some reviews. We knew what to expect. And as for missing the 3D boat... well, who cares? I find 3D gimmickry way too distracting. Karen and I were in the mood last night just to settle back, relax and give ourselves without complication to a traditionally rendered (and CGI is becoming traditional) fantasy world for an hour or two.

And to be honest that's what we got. An uncomplicated fantasy world. Sure the effects were astounding and a real break-through (they managed to make Pete Jackson's Gollum look very ragged around the edges). And, yes, they were that old cliché: a must-see. But the story was just simple and honest. No twists. No mysteries. No surprises. And that isn't a criticism. It was just a decent story told competently. Utterly predictable. Let's just give the viewer what they want.

And we got it.

The forests are beautiful. The exotic flora and fauna rendered wonderfully. And the Navi are strangely (though, of course, deliberately) attractive. In fact Sigourney Weaver's Navi avatar was quite a fox. It's impossible not to fall in love with the entire world and tear up the arm of your cinema seat wanting them to kick every human butt off their planet and save their wonderful way of life.

This is the point of the movie of course. For all this is a fantasy it is also an allegory whose moral compass is in your face pretty much the whole time. Fine. This is fine. I agree with the message. If Avatar helps brings the point home to a few more Neanderthal petrol-heads all to the good.

But the cynic in me occasionally railed against the too simple story-telling. Nice to think us greedy humans would be so openhanded in our greed, isn't it? That we would go out and bear our teeth face-to-face so to speak; enjoin battle with some (read that as "tiny") sense of honour. Out in the open. Where every blow can be seen. Alas, history (and even the present) teaches us that us humans would be most likely to sell the natives blankets infected with cholera or accidentally poison rivers at their source and, oops, wipe out whole communities via disease and contagion... but hey we'll offer the survivors compensation to keep the moral gripes of the shareholders in check. And if all else fails, if, as in Avatar, we found our initial expeditionary force kicked off the planet with its tail between its legs (as opposed to communing with the local trees) you just know we'd go back all gung-ho to nuke the place and then rape the planet for what we wanted dressed in bio-suits.

Oh yeah. And that reminds me. "Unobtainium"? WTF? That was just lazy, Cameron. Why not call it "Perfectwomanium" or "winninglotteryticketium" and have done with it?

My other problem is that the magical forests of Pandora are just too magical. It's not enough that they could have healing properties on a biological level, no, the forest has got soul too. It's omniscient. So yeah, of course, we want it to be saved. We care about it now 'cos, to quote (or rather unquote) one of the grunts from the movie, suddenly it ain't "just trees". And this is where the allegory overplays its hand. The planet Cameron wants us to save is our own planet. And for all our trees are magical and wonderful in their own way and I have no doubt there is a cure for cancer somewhere in the rainforest... they don't speak to us or light up beneath our feet like the forests of Pandora. They're just trees. Now that is enough for me. But I suspect it is not enough for others. For others they are just trees. And while they may daydream idly about fighting to save the planet of Pandora or getting down and dirty with a giantly sensual blue alien they won't do the same for their own planet. The magic of Pandora is almost too dazzling. It makes our own world look rather drab by comparison. Too pedestrian. Not as "saveable" or "worthy of being saveable". Which is a shame and wrong.

So. Flawed. Flawed a little in the telling. But in terms of entertainment, in terms of suspending belief and creating a world that the viewer wholeheartedly wants to leap into (and wishes were real), yeah, a great great victory. I greatly enjoyed it. It was marvellous and I'd be happy to see it again. Happy to own it on DVD. Or even Blu-ray.

Glow in the dark trees and foxy half naked aliens. What more could you ask for?

Not Getting Any

A report on BBC News24 had me choking on my freshly dunked bourbon biscuit this morning. It seems that scientists in Newcastle have successfully bio-engineered their own sperm.

And by their own sperm I don’t mean, like, you know, their own sperm – cos, let’s face it, every bloke I know (with the possible exception of Michael Jackson) bio-engineers their own sperm on a regular day to day basis. It kind of comes naturally. Sorry. No pun intended.

No, these guys have bio-mechanically engineered a whole bunch (gaggle? shoal? flock?) of spermatazoa in a laboratory – possibly in a petri dish, possibly in a test-tube, certainly not in a tissue – from human stem cells.

Now, I know I’m being glib and flippant in my approach to this and I know that the impetus for this research is to help men with low sperm counts bestow the bounteous joy of children upon their female partners but my first thought was: are these scientists utterly mad? They are making men’s role in the procreation of the species totally totally redundant.

Yeah. I know. Some females among you will (quite rightly perhaps) say that we men have been a negligible ingredient in this endeavour for years. Let’s face it a dirty mag, a willing donor and a turkey baster is all a woman really needs to get a bun in her oven.

But where’s the fun in that – for anybody?

You see, my fear is that any kind of scientific research – no matter the honourable motivations that lie behind it – can ultimately be abused and used to the detriment of our species. And in fact probably will be.

I’m amazed this didn’t occur to the research scientists. I mean they have literally rendered the existence of men (except maybe for plumbers) completely unnecessary. Why would they willingly do this?

My theory is that the scientists involved are highly geeky and have never had and never will have girlfriends. They are being motivated by disenchantment and “rejection anger”. Because they are not getting any they’re going to see to it that the whole concept of any is totally removed from the equation of ongoing human life on this planet.

Now some of you women might shrug and say so what, who cares? But the heterosexual woman among you need to bear one thing in mind. If us straight men aren’t getting any. You’re not getting any either.

It’s time to resurrect the Luddites! It’s time to smash the machinery! Before our own machinery de-evolves into redundant protuberances of skin and tissue matter (like the appendix) through lack of use...

Playing Hide And Seek With The Neighbours

Our neighbours are many things but they are not nudists or naturists or given over to holding Druidic ceremonies in their back garden.

Which is fortunate as the fence that divides their good green earth from ours is (a) dilapidated and (b) only about 3ft tall even when it is upright.

We can see absolutely everything.

Every barbecue. Every attempt at sunbathing. Every sweaty session with the lawnmower.

And they of course can see us doing the same. With the exception of the barbecue as that’s an activity that Karen and I haven’t yet embraced (we’re quite capable of burning our sausages in the oven, thank you very much).

Now, our garden lives are quite innocent. Neither of us are growing marijuana or opium. Neither of us are burying hated relatives under the patio of even stuffing their decomposing body parts into green wheelie bins for the local council to take away.

We ain’t got nuffink to hide, guv’nor.

But a little privacy would be nice. A little privacy would be welcome.

We get along fine but I’ve noticed that whenever they are in their garden, sat around their Ikea table, we have only got to appear around ours for them to immediately disappear inside. Or if we’re in our garden playing with the kids and they suddenly appear we feel strangely inhibited. That entire side of the garden is somehow off limits for us to approach or even look at. Especially when Mr and Mrs Neighbour are stalking around in their very highly cut European shorts (they’re Polish) ‘cos let’s face it, a camel toe on a man is not a great look.

Instead we nod hello politely and one of us relinquishes their claim on the outside world and disappears back inside, no doubt grumbling a little.

It’s a ridiculous situation.

And one Karen and I intend to remedy as soon as possible once the money from my aunt’s will is divvied out.

The plan is to erect a good 6ft fence along that side of the garden. Previous quotes gave us a ball park figure of £1000 – which is why we are currently unable to ring-fence our little compound to our mutual satisfaction.

This will have the benefit of not only allowing nude sunbathing and gratuitous camel toeing without risk of causing offense or traumatizing the children but also prevent a certain rogue rottweiler* from invading both our gardens like a canine blitzkrieg.

We’ll effectively be erecting a Cuprinol enhanced Maginot line only without the watchtowers or the gun emplacements (though I’m hoping that these can be added at a later date).

Happiness, it seems, is a warm high fence and good border control.

Which sounds scarily like some kind of BNP manifesto. Gulp. But honestly, folks, it’s not meant to be. I just don’t want any more glimpses of my Polish neighbour’s man bush...

I just want to be able to enjoy my garden without being reminded of 1970’s editions of Health & Efficiency magazine.

Is that too much to ask?




*Re: the dog. We’re no further forward. The dog warden makes regular visits and the owners pretend to be absent. However, although we’ve heard the dog barking on several occasions we haven’t see it marauding or pillaging for a number of weeks now. But until the fence is commissioned neither us nor the Poles can fully relax our guards.

Squirrel Nutkin Must Die!

(Adopts 1940’s terribly proper BBC voice...)

People of Great Britain!

Your country is in peril!

Your country needs you to rally round, gird your loins and perform exemplary duties on behalf of your noble Prince, God save him.

Yes, the call has gone out by the glorious Prince of Wales to rid the land of the grey menace. Forget swine flu. Forget improper use of the expenses system by our doughty MPs. The grey squirrel is threatening the livelihoods of our most respectable landowners.

“The greys are doing immense and increasing damage to hardwoods all over the country and threaten to compromise all our efforts to restore native woodlands...” said the Prince in a beautifully crafted letter to the CLA (that’s Country Land and Business Association to lower class people of unprivileged education).

The Prince – ever mindful of ecological issues – also raised the point that “wiping them out” might be the only way to preserve the red squirrel – the native denizen of these shores who, if it could choose its own colour, would surely be true blue. God save the Queen!

A short advertisement for Izal toilet paper will now follow this broadcast...

*****

So there you have it. A call to arms by Prince Charles no less.

Now, having bought my own house which comes replete with its own humungous garden I am technically a landowner. I might be stretching the point slightly but I bet I could get it to stand up in a court of law.

So I’m taking it as read that by Royal Decree I have been granted license to kill. Admittedly license to kill only grey squirrels but there’s enough of them around that I could make it a full time job. I mean, let’s be clear. The Prince is not suggesting we merely pop one or two of them off. He’s suggesting we wipe out the lot of them. Genocide. Total eradication.

It’s rather a shocking clarion call from our fuddy-duddy Goon loving Prince.

But what I want to know it: is he going to put his money where his murderous mouth is?

Is he going to supply me with the arms to carry out this mission? Hand me an antique musket emblazoned with the Windsor family crest and a bag full of lead balls? Buy me an AK-47 from Ebay replete with newly minted Russian ammo? Or just park a lorry load of cyanide outside my front door where the kids can gain easy access to it?

‘Cos I’m really not fussy.

Hell, I’d even give it a go with a bow and arrow.

I mean this is Prince Charles asking after all. Future King of England and all that...

But I do have one small concern. Where does it all end?

I mean, we murder the grey squirrel today... fine. Do we butcher the mink tomorrow? Do we move onto flora after that – start napalming great swathes of Japanese knotweed and floating pennywort? Because they shouldn’t really be here in the UK either.

Where does it all end? Or, perhaps more pertinently, how far could it be taken?

Hmm.

Puritanism of any kind is never a good thing. It inevitably leads to bloodshed. Or am I just reading far too much into it?