FALLOUT from the distressing London attack in which twins were badly bitten by an intruder fox as they slept in their cots might well persuade townies to change their minds about the nationwide fox hunting ban.
It certainly tells us countryfolk a thing or two about life in the big city.
For a start it’s a lock-up lifestyle. “I don’t know why anyone would leave their patio doors open in London,” one ‘fox expert’ told the BBC. “I certainly wouldn’t.”
Secondly, it’s a city that’s as full of nutters as it is of foxes (10,000 furry little fiends at the last count). They are pronounced ‘cute’; people leave food out for them, charities exist to rescue and tend the injured animals.
Lastly, there’s a kind of ‘darling fox denial’ campaign cranking up among the lunatic fringe of urban animal lovers. “This fox did not go ‘on purpose’ to attack the children,” wrote one of them, appropriately named Nutkin (might that be Squirrel Nutkin?), in a London newspaper.
“Any injury would have been accidental and we need to be more responsible about how we treat wild animals in areas of human habitation.”
In other words, WE are the violent intruders.
When I lived in inner London, four miles from Kings Cross, foxes were an everyday sight in my hundred-foot garden in Highgate. One warm spring day I watched dogfox, vixen and three cubs gambolling on the back lawn.
A charming sight, certainly. But surely one more suited to the wilds of Northumberland than to the suburban streets of North London?
FARMERS up here aren’t what they once were: the generation following in the cart tracks of old horny-handed sons of toil like The Byreman are more familiar with broadband and computers than bullocks and combine harvesters.
My dear friend Morebottle (so named for his accelerated consumption as closing time approaches) spends the earliest hours of each day poring over his laptop to check last evening’s closing future prices on the Chicago Commodities market. If tatties are up he’s happy; if they’re down he’s as miserable as a pork butcher on Good Friday.
Child of the Techno Age that he is, he couldn’t help showing off the latest ‘app’ on his iPhone – a decibel meter which measures noise levels.
“We were using a pneumatic drill on the farm the other day and it recorded a level of 92dBA,” intoned Morebottle knowingly. “It meant we had to wear ear protectors.”
So how did the Red Lion Sunday domino school rate? Wow! It peaked at 102 when Joe the Barber scooped the jackpot and held a steady 85 average throughout.
A pint of your best and a pair of earplugs, landlord!
SERVES her right, I suppose, but a somewhat bewildered Mrs Banks brought home a packet of potato crisps she’d been given in her picnic pack on completing the Alwinton Round charity walk last weekend.
“What do I do with these?” she asked, tossing my way her bag of – wait for it – Barbecued Kangaroo flavoured crisps. Yes, I really DID say kangaroo!
Leaving aside the fact that among the ingredients listed on the bag – potato, garlic, paprika, onion, smoke flavouring and so on – there wasn’t the merest mention of anything resembling ‘roo, who on earth would even KNOW what a skinned and scorched Skippy tastes like?
Crocodile Dundee, certainly; Kylie, possibly. But surely no one doing the North of Tyne Search and Rescue Team’s fundraising walk could distinguish the taste of a wombat from a wallaby? So wasn’t there a choice, I asked Mrs B. Was there nothing approaching what European tastebuds might recognise?
“Oh yes,” she replied. “I could have chosen French Baguette with Garlic, or German Bratwurst flavour, or . . .”
Strewth! Pass me a Skippy dipper, cobber.
First published in The Journal, Newcastle, July 4, 2010
It certainly tells us countryfolk a thing or two about life in the big city.
For a start it’s a lock-up lifestyle. “I don’t know why anyone would leave their patio doors open in London,” one ‘fox expert’ told the BBC. “I certainly wouldn’t.”
Secondly, it’s a city that’s as full of nutters as it is of foxes (10,000 furry little fiends at the last count). They are pronounced ‘cute’; people leave food out for them, charities exist to rescue and tend the injured animals.
Lastly, there’s a kind of ‘darling fox denial’ campaign cranking up among the lunatic fringe of urban animal lovers. “This fox did not go ‘on purpose’ to attack the children,” wrote one of them, appropriately named Nutkin (might that be Squirrel Nutkin?), in a London newspaper.
“Any injury would have been accidental and we need to be more responsible about how we treat wild animals in areas of human habitation.”
In other words, WE are the violent intruders.
When I lived in inner London, four miles from Kings Cross, foxes were an everyday sight in my hundred-foot garden in Highgate. One warm spring day I watched dogfox, vixen and three cubs gambolling on the back lawn.
A charming sight, certainly. But surely one more suited to the wilds of Northumberland than to the suburban streets of North London?
FARMERS up here aren’t what they once were: the generation following in the cart tracks of old horny-handed sons of toil like The Byreman are more familiar with broadband and computers than bullocks and combine harvesters.
My dear friend Morebottle (so named for his accelerated consumption as closing time approaches) spends the earliest hours of each day poring over his laptop to check last evening’s closing future prices on the Chicago Commodities market. If tatties are up he’s happy; if they’re down he’s as miserable as a pork butcher on Good Friday.
Child of the Techno Age that he is, he couldn’t help showing off the latest ‘app’ on his iPhone – a decibel meter which measures noise levels.
“We were using a pneumatic drill on the farm the other day and it recorded a level of 92dBA,” intoned Morebottle knowingly. “It meant we had to wear ear protectors.”
So how did the Red Lion Sunday domino school rate? Wow! It peaked at 102 when Joe the Barber scooped the jackpot and held a steady 85 average throughout.
A pint of your best and a pair of earplugs, landlord!
SERVES her right, I suppose, but a somewhat bewildered Mrs Banks brought home a packet of potato crisps she’d been given in her picnic pack on completing the Alwinton Round charity walk last weekend.
“What do I do with these?” she asked, tossing my way her bag of – wait for it – Barbecued Kangaroo flavoured crisps. Yes, I really DID say kangaroo!
Leaving aside the fact that among the ingredients listed on the bag – potato, garlic, paprika, onion, smoke flavouring and so on – there wasn’t the merest mention of anything resembling ‘roo, who on earth would even KNOW what a skinned and scorched Skippy tastes like?
Crocodile Dundee, certainly; Kylie, possibly. But surely no one doing the North of Tyne Search and Rescue Team’s fundraising walk could distinguish the taste of a wombat from a wallaby? So wasn’t there a choice, I asked Mrs B. Was there nothing approaching what European tastebuds might recognise?
“Oh yes,” she replied. “I could have chosen French Baguette with Garlic, or German Bratwurst flavour, or . . .”
Strewth! Pass me a Skippy dipper, cobber.
First published in The Journal, Newcastle, July 4, 2010
No comments:
Post a Comment