Mrs Worthington’s TV.

Strikes in China; that’s a first. Cruelly put down by gov troops using live rounds and killing a few, but lets face it they’re only a drop in a bucket, the signs are there that after wealth creation comes a demand for sharing it. The wheel turns with each generation. The Japanese, only one or two generations down stream have created, shared and relaxed. They have enjoyed their wealth, got comfortable and found their assumption that it would go on forever not the case. The English have created, shared, relaxed, become complacent and now moribund; atrophied in complexities of welfare. My generation had marvellous opportunities to learn, earn, be creative and generally enjoy the fruits of our forbears. We had such a great time we were grateful of TV’s ability to occupy our children. It was educational, enjoyable and opened the wonders of the world to our child’s consciousness. This is how ‘we’ saw TV. Our children saw it differently. Where we played mud pies, were out riding bikes, fishing and making model aeroplanes, learning guitar, they were safely tucked up watching TV. The bruises we got were replaced by images of people going ‘ouch!’ The things we experienced were replaced by illusions of experience. They now know the ‘wonders of the world’ through a veil of portrayal. What they know is no longer earth bound reality, but it takes a longer view than they have to realise it. From what they have seen they have plotted their path to love, fame and fortune by some effortless means. So at the end of this multi generational process of wealth creation, sharing, relaxation, complacence, moribund-ness, comes dreaming; a sort of dis-empowered senility where one’s mind, in a world of its own, can’t quite remember or know or logically pursue the idea of how to flush the toilet. What comes next, as the many great civilisation of the past will tell you, is death and an immeasurably slow rebirth. It’s no one’s fault, it’s just the predisposition of humanity to repeat its mistakes. If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got. So Mrs Worthington, put your daughter on the stage: keep the TV for your old age when that’s all you’re capable of. 

WC Highlight.

As the England team performed as well as the rest of us on the world stage there was one man who showed in one beautiful moment why. When Terry was asked why the excellent training facilities hadn’t produced a better performance he looked equally puzzled, “I don’t know, the hotel was great.” I’m guessing when you’re overworked the rest of the year a summer break is a welcome respite. Luckily for the rest of us we don’t come back off holiday to an inquest of our achievements. But this one man knows nothing of holidays, or work for that matter, he just lives in a continuous whirl of intensity. Before England took on the refined sensitivities of a stressed out, self involved, screen obsessed poodle we used to produce bulldogs like him. Heize is a fighting dog, a hit man without malice; it’s not personal, it’s just an eleven-man ninety minute contract. And so to the highlight. Minutes after Teves’s first offside goal, helpfully replayed in slow mo on the giant stadium TV so even the officials were aware the decision they were about to enforce was the wrong one, he scored again and the Argentinean team celebrate again. A steadycam operator, unaware of who he was dealing with, homed in on Heinze’s giant smile. So far in in fact that Heinze hit his head on the camera lens. In a hover fly’s wing beat Heize’s smile was replaced by a scowl and 200 million people got a smack round the face. As well as being the largest mass slapping ever recorded it provided the most widespread wakeup call in history. This isn’t just life and death, it’s more important than that. This game we each play every day called life is more than mere survival. It’s ‘what’ you live for and what you will die for that matters. Treat life as a summer break and you’re left with a 4:1 disappointment; treat it like a fighting dog and you stand a chance. 

If you’re interested Tom these were my structural thoughts when writing this piece.

It wasn’t going to be long enough if I just talked about the incident, which only lasted a second or so. I decided to tease the reader by not saying who I was talking about till well in. I decided on a wider philosophical point I would make in conclusion that required putting in place apparently unrelated items along the way, like clues in a who done it, that would all be resolved in the conclusion. I tried to write the incident for both people who had seen it and those who hadn’t. I.e. enough detail for those who hadn’t and a sense of immediacy for those that had. I like the counterpoint between the humorous ‘mass slapping’ and the more serious ‘wakeup call’; it sort of releases then pulls in the tension setting the scene for the conclusion.

Shubha and Shem.

What’s this about Nazi Fundamentalists Shubha? It’s true Shem, they figured it out. Suddso, the cow pee we add to Israeli wine, the lot. Shubha I know I know they know; do they know we know they know other people know? I mean other than the people in the know. What? You know, like do we have tactical nuclear weapons. Yes. Yes I know we do Shem like the people in the know know, but what about the others? Ah you mean the people who don’t know? Exactly. Do the people who don’t know know and if so do they know if we know they know. The others I mean, not the ones that know? Good point. You don’t know do you? Well. Shall I take that as a no? Yes. OK I’m glad we got that one sorted out. OK, so we know they bug your office right. Yes. So we could have a conversation. They could hear us say we know or they could hear us say we don’t. Right. If they find out we don’t know we could carry on listening to see what else they know. Good point. But if we let them know we know we can say it’s a big joke and deny it. I mean if they didn’t know we knew it would look a bit suspicious if we came out with a denial about something they thought we didn’t know. Excellent.

(Later) You stupid shmuck Shubha. Now they know we know they know. They were only supposed to know we knew. Sorry Mine Heir. And you lapsed into the z’s and v’s a few times. Yes Mine Heir. This changes everything. Shall I check with our surveillance guys? No way I trust those guys, no go on You Tube, try ‘Wikileaks.org’, those guys have got principles. They’ll know if the people who don’t know are getting to know stuff.

(Later) Good news Shem. Wikileaks don’t have a bug in my office. Great Shubha. They’ve got CCTV. I didn’t know you were shagging my secretary. Well I… I don’t think your wife will like hearing about that Shem.

Karl and Kurt.

Did you get that Karl? Loud and clear Kurt. He’s gone too far this time. This pig penis plan makes me fucking sick Karl. This is the fucking Nazi fundamentalist scum we’re up against. You got that right Kurt. Don’t your sister use Suddso? Yeh but I can’t tell her, she loves the stuff, and anyway it’s classified. I tell you Kurt, when I imagine her in the shower all wet, rubbing Suddso all over her body you know, over her breasts, up her thighs, round her… Karl! That’s my sister. No, I’m just saying Kurt, it makes me sick to my stomach. Well when I, I mean if I imagined humping your wife in the shower covered in suds, and you’ve got to admit it Suddso does give a great silky feel, you’d be upset wouldn’t you. That’s true. OK lets get back to the national security issue here. OK. OK so we can’t tell the nation we’re all using pig dicks in the shower right. Right. We can’t bomb the factory because it’s in Tel Aviv. We can’t.. Hold on Kurt, Tel Aviv, Israel!? Nazi fundamentalists in Tel Aviv? Oh come on Karl, we both know that’s where they all went after the war; remember boot camp, “best place to hide shit is in the toilet.” Israel’s run by Nazis. And the Jews? They all live in New York. Come on Karl, where’s your history. OK so we can’t bomb the factory. It’s such a god dam shame Kurt; that cute chipmunk, all those butterflies, the woodland glade and that hot naked woman. I don’t know, I’d miss Suddso you know. It’s like we grew up with it, it’s part of or DNA. Fair point Karl; when we were ten all my sis wanted was to be the Suddso girl and I wanted, well you know. And it’s not like it’s hurting anybody washing with pigs dicks; and it’s like a part of the animal that would otherwise go to waste ain’t it. True. What say we pay this Stiffmouse a visit, make him an offer he can’t refuse to keep a lid on it? Right. Fancy a shower Karl? Fine by me Kurt. Got the Suddso Karl? Yep. 

My Soap Superior.

I’ve just realised who I am. Do you want to know who you are? We are not the noble meerkats of Russia battling through civil wars to compare insurance prices, we’re the tossers in all the other adverts; the one’s who’re overjoyed at getting pennies for our old jewelery, whooping with delight to be offered an even bigger loan than the one’s we’ve got already, tickled to death by an insufferable, overweight opera singer. That’s us, that is. Of course we’re lesser beings than the celebs whose sitting and chatting obviously warrants being watched by millions of us, but less than shampoo and car insurance? It’s to do with cart and horse. The cart, us, needs to be pulled by the horse, product. It used to be we were important purchasers, rightful customers, but when we were doing the pulling we could as it were make the wrong decisions. We sometimes took it into our head to not buy Suddso because it’s crap and International Soaps Inc. didn’t like that. “It is not enough zees days to appeal to our customers, ve must make zem realise zay are the stupid ones and it is our zoap that has the intellectual power to improve zair sad existence.” But how Mine Heir? “Ze actors must portray zem as stupid, mindless imbeciles who are guided only by zeir emotions. Zay must be shown as dim-witted losers whose only chance of happiness is to love our zoap.” But will they not like that portrayal of themselves? “Hanze, Hanze, zay will not even realise ve are stamping zeir self-worth into za dirt like ve did za Polish Jews, zay will laugh and learn to love us. Zay vil look up to our zoap as zeir superior, even though it is made from rendered svine genitals. Think of it Hanze, all those young ladies viping zeir faces with pigs penis. Oh how ve vil laugh on za vay to za bank. 

Dole-versity.

My young stepmouse Tom is at Uni studying creative writing. It’s a subject that somehow reminds me of Plumbing for Accountants. It’s hard to say why. Anyway Tom posted this Facebook page, “Uni is like being on the dole but your parents are proud of you.”  Universities can thus be applauded for bringing forth such irony in their protégés. One thing though these ironic youngsters have overlooked. On the dole you don’t have to pay back the money, they just give it to you. Stick that up your monkey on your back for the next ten years student loan. Which has just ignited an idea, how about ‘Dole-versity’? At Art College the staff came a not very close second to our own inter student rivalry. We got better incrementally by looking over each other’s shoulders and thinking ‘I can do better than that.’ Free of the forty something failures struggling to maintain their self-respect we practiced and read current magazines. Worked a treat. This week I got involved in an e-mail fix of some guy’s motorcycle. Was it the carb or a leaky vacuum tube to the petrol pump? Time will tell. I guess my point is going to Uni is not some magical osmotic process; one learns via an intent, a reason, the pursuance of one’s unique personal objective. Without it one learns only what one needs to to fulfil the objectives of the institution, which usually revolve around bums on seats and the avoidance of staff redundancy. Maybe that’s why Tom et al’s pals mostly post about pissups and pictures of ‘about to fall over faces’, because they have fulfilled their obligations by simply being there and paying their fees. The Internet has given us an amazing connection to vast amounts of knowledge and a wonderful inter-connectivity with our peers. Armed with that, the dole and a personal intent to become amazing who needs a Uni? Join the Dole-versity revolution; you can still damage your brain in the evenings.

Should Postman Pat Walk?

England manages to draw against two great footballing nations. Nothing could be more apt than my last blog in explaining England’s performance. There is something about how the mind functions in the wrong conditions. It must be well documented somewhere that under conditions of expectations, censure and lack of autonomous control the mind is provoked into dealing with an extra set of considerations. Whether these are contained in the conscious stream or in the unconscious background they take precious milliseconds of operating time and disrupt what Csíkszentmihályi calls ‘flow.’ In flow the whole of cognition is involved in the present activity, being out of flow results in stress and poor performance. The England team are perfectly capable of performing well but show all the signs of stress. In the few milliseconds it takes to prepare the body for a cross or a shot on goal the players are losing a vital percentage to inappropriate considerations, and accuracy plummets. Flair is replaced by scrambling to retain control. This is now endemic in the English psyche. Where South American supporters make loud enthusiastic noises English supporters make the moaning sound of defeat. As supporters we deflate our team with ready criticism and overblown expectations, but far more important is the managers roll. Postman Pat in his workmanlike professional approach has produced a highly managed workforce, each with a strict roll and job description. His stressed out workforce will, if they get to the later stages, be playing teams who are managed and allowed to play as artists. We don’t stand a chance. We will all be frustrated, stressed and miserable until we learn to fly; until our team, though organised, will be set free to enjoy what they love doing. My they play their games without fear of their supporters or manager.

Our illusory Tribe.

TV ‘Tribal Wives’. Woman, single, 40, spends month with family who have just enough of very little. She knows having, achieving and failure, and they know living. The exchange is rather one sided. I have been through that same training as the woman, of avoiding not having, avoiding not achieving and avoiding failure. I’ve been very good at it. I have, as we might say, been successful. Yet the family introduced a sort of nebulous irrelevance called living. It was repetitive, hard, simple, focused nose-to-nose contact with their daily reality. Not romantic, nor humdrum, not exciting nor boring; it was, as the mother said, “walking your life without fear.” That was the lesson the woman and I need to learn; that life is an embrace, not an arm wrestle. In effect we are ‘the have nots’ because we judge ourselves on the many elements of what we do not have, where those who have little judge themselves on what little they have. It’s exam time and thousands of youngsters are trying hard not to fail. Their teacher may invite them into the wonder and beauty of science and literature, but by being examined they learn only what’s needed to not fail. It’s an endemic state of mind that produces, wait for it, Failure, or the merest modicum of success. It becomes life without heart; a potato plant genetically modified to produce one potato as the minimum proof of what it is. Without fear of reality we make fear in all our unrealities of failure, of how we might be judged. Because of all we have we can afford to be humdrum, not romantic, boring, not exciting; we can be nose-to-nose with our own illusions. But the good news is illusions won’t kill you, only reality can do that. May you walk your life without fear. 

Other people's Poo.

The animals waste quite a lot of hay dropping it on the ground while they’re eating it. I used to thing OK they’re just dumb animals, what do you expect, but we sell cups of grass pellets to feed goats, donkeys etc for £1 and today I spent an hour scraping up a mud of dropped pellets from outside their pens. Probably about £20 worth. So much for human superiority. In fact all of them are showmen; I’ve been watching them work the crowd. No food, no interest. “Move along if you’ve not got pellets; cup carriers only thank you.” If you’ve got a cup they’re as cute as hell but cupless, bugger off. Time and time again today people have come up going, “Oh look at the baby goat’s poking their heads under the fence to feed off the ground.” Don’t believe it, it’s a con! It’s just another cute ploy. Their parents tell them to do it so they’re clear to eat what comes over the fence, and basically you can’t fill up a goat. They may look bony but they can digest food quicker than you can feed them. All they do is shit more, which is why I was in with them all afternoon. In fact I’m getting quite resentful. There I am cleaning up after the bloody things and all these young mothers can do, some of which are quite tasty, is go all gooey over the stupid shitting grass eaters. What about me! I’m not only intellectually superior, good looking and roughly the same species as them, I’m knee deep in goat excrement out of the goodness of my heart! No ‘oh look at the cute farmer man, what are you doing after work?’ No, I’m the one covered in poo. Well it’s not mine!

Blind to Reality.

I just showed Bethmouse some onboard bike footage from the TT. I find it scary verging on incredible. She had no reaction, none whatsoever. It was as if I’d shown her an invisible tadpole swimming in ink, or a small piece of unused blotting paper. I found it amazing that having no experience of what she was looking at made her almost unable to see it. It reminded me of a story that South American tribes couldn’t see the ships of their conquerors approaching because they had no reference for what they were seeing; also that 80% of our vision is cognitive postproduction. I experience something similar when I watch Glee or the Gilmore Girls, programs that Bethmouse can see in incredible detail. I am visually aware of something happening but I don’t have the postproduction to see it. So I can hardly blame Bethmouse for not having ridden a motorcycle. But that approaches my concern. When one has a highly developed postproduction capability to ‘see’ platitudinous drama on TV and relatively poor capacity to ‘see’ the real world, will the real world become invisible? OK one will see movement, discern faces, hear sounds but will one make any sense of them? Will one feel any inclination to be involved with it? It is after all dangerous, smelly, ugly and boring compared with America’s Next Top Model: One’s Citroen Picasso will never be a match for the cars they trash on Top Gear. The saving grace used to be having to mend the bloody things when penniless but they’re not even mendable now. One can only tow it into traffic and hope someone rights it off on the insurance, and watch Formula 1 while you’re waiting for the cheque to come through. Any necessity to come face to face with reality is departing as all roads lead back to the sensory equivalent of video editing. So maybe The Day of the Triffids was right. We will all go blind together. But only to reality.

The TT.

If you’re not a diehard motorcyclist or if you’ve never been, how can I describe the TT to you? I have to go somewhere else entirely. It’s a Shakti Gawain book about spirituality. She talks about finding your intuition through meditation and deep imagination, a process of being still and contemplative, and trusting it, knowing and living it. The first time I went to the TT I got a day off work, caught a train from London to Liverpool, an overnight ferry to Douglas (sleeping on deck) and walked to the bottom of Bray Hill in the early morning. I waited. The race was postponed due to mist on the mountain. The course is 37.5 miles and includes a mountain; the two-week event is over a hundred years old. The ‘average’ race speed is 130 mph, which means 160 to 200 mph on most of its narrow country roads. On the middle, ‘Mad’, Sunday the mountain is made one way and open to public ‘racers.’ Doing 70, being overtaken by a guy doing 90 who is being overtaken by a guy doing 120 + on a B road is not an experience I wish to repeat. Anyway I waited, I ate a packed lunch, waited, imagined and caught the ferry and train home. Sitting at a suburban bus stop looking at traffic for 10 hours isn’t an encouraging introduction but that’s the TT. Even when there is racing one has to be able to enjoy contemplation. The roads close 2 hours before racing so you have to be where you want to be, and wait. You have to wait 17 minutes before they come round again, and then you have to wait for the roads to open again. In the midst of this dangerous excitement bees hum, the wind rustles the trees, ants climb your boot, and the grass becomes interesting. In the 6am practice sessions the sound of the bikes begins 4 or 5 miles away building to a tortured mechanical crescendo and a barely visible whoosh of express colour. That’s it, and back to the grass. Now ordinary racing is great. You line up, the flag drops and you enter a funnel of bikes, in my case motocross, into the first corner. The concomitant danger is not uppermost, in fact it is swallowed up by focus. One enters a trajectory of reality that is unbeholden to such considerations, a form of clarity and purpose unknowable by those who haven’t experienced it. One is not afraid but an unconscious drive to survive strikes the anvil of one’s capabilities into life. No fear, no anger, no impatience, no consideration of ‘how’ to ride. One is piloted by intuition. But the TT is not ordinary racing. Each rider sets off alone at ten second intervals so he is racing himself and the road, exploring all the different elements of his own limits. Someone asked me, “is it exciting when you crash?” Der, no!! One is just deeply upset it’s all gone wrong. It’s too fast to even worry about the impending injuries. It just happens, almost serenely. But on the island (Isle of Man) it can be fatal. That’s why tens of thousands of bikers pay yearly homage to the most excellent bravery, a bravery that is worth dying for. Cynics will never be brave enough to know its value. As with the riding the preparation must be nothing short of immaculate. That doesn’t mean polishing the mudguards; it means complete attention to the smallest detail, the emotionless appreciation of every part to the purpose of the whole. What Shakti writes about, these riders live. They’re clear, focused, unphaseable, self-effacing and they love it. Whatever your route to bravery, Shakti’s or the TT, it’s worth the journey. My thoughts go out to the Dobbs family for their loss, to Connor Cummins for a good recovery and to Guy Martin who, thankfully, was not badly hurt.

Responce.

Many years ago my girlfriend and I took a class of Downs syndrome kids to the zoo. She took a group photo of her and her class. Seeing it afterwards I was struck by how I responded to her looking the odd one out. I seemed to have a natural mechanism for singling out and focusing on the odd even in this case where the tables were turned. In a similar way why don’t I see an elephant as grotesque? I mean what’s with the trunk? Is it some giant mutant anteater? Arg arg arg! No it’s an elephant, calm down. I imagine organising a blind date on the phone. She sounds pleasant, amusing, I look forward to it. She appears and is disfigured in some way. I am captivated, and not in a good way, by this one element of her. It is a primitive reaction regenerated every time I look. I can’t see anything without focusing back to the blemish, like seeing a sleek shiny new car in a showroom with a single scratch on the bonnet. ‘It is not as it should be’ screams in my ear. No amount of platitudinous overspeak can overcome this visceral response. I see myself struggling for niceties for, well for anything that doesn’t exhibit my captivation, which I perceive as an ugliness in myself that I don’t want to be seen. In some way my captivation chimes with the internal captivation of my date; that she has become the captive of her disfigurement by a million such encounters. Veins of “I am not as I should be” run deep through her meat. Whether it be by humour, ridicule, niceties or platitudes I have an instinctive wish to distance myself from the different, from the what I perceive as ‘not as it should be.’ It’s as if I, who have average looks, know well this ‘not as it should be’ about myself, and in compensation for my awareness of my own ‘disfigurement’ take comfort in not being as ‘bad’ as you.

Yet a young child might just say, “You’re different”, or as I remember once, “Why has that man got a big lump on his neck mummy?” And we in our adult wisdom said, “Don’t say that sweetheart, it’s not nice.” I can only say what those wiser than me know, that everything is as it should be. It is a sentiment we would do well to share.

I mean should we just remember Einstein for having the worst hairdo in the history?

Nuts.

I broke an exhaust stud. In an idle moment I made a cardinal mistake. Never fit a small socket on the handle that comes with the set. It’s long enough to break anything under 13mm and it’ll mince 10mm without even trying. So now I have three more nuts to undo and a stud to extract. Trepidation. Put socket set away. Phone man who knows everything. Dave does. That’s what he does. He knows the doing of things. OK he supplements doing with books and knows theory but always starts and ends with doing. So Dave knows the real world of exhaust nuts, they’re a bugger. They spend their lives red hot one minute and wet through the next. Mine had lost a good millimetre to rust so spanners were useless. Enter trusty mole. Dave’s advice: Get a nice day, a cup of tea and a fag and just keep worrying them till they give in. Douse liberally with WD40.Get mole on and apply a reasonable force while hitting nut end with a hammer. More WD40. Once you’ve broken the bond just keep working it a bit at a time till it comes off. If that doesn’t work use a propane torch to get it real hot as well. Butane isn’t hot enough but don’t melt aluminium. What’s wonderful about Dave’s advice is it’s forged from practice and failure; it’s real, not theoretical. And it works. No amount of study holds the little details that make for success. There’s no book that says about the tea and fag and a nice day but they’re vital to be in the right frame of mind to be slow and gentle. None that talk about ‘worrying nuts till they give in’ but that says exactly how to approach it. So three nuts off successfully and now a broken stud to extract. Drill out and fit a thread insert. But that’s for another day. If only I hadn’t had that idle moment.

World Cup.

Having just watched the World Cup’s 50 worst moments it’s hard to come to terms with what will steer the emotional roller coaster we are about to embark on. When the whole world will see handballs, blatant dives, off and on sides from multiple camera angles that the ref fails to spot; when games are won and lost on flagrantly unjust penalties; when players are sent off due to the quality of the opposition’s play acting, it will surely be the referees who bring the game into disrepute. When heroes like Cantanar and Zidan can be brought down by nobly responding, as any man worth his salt would, to the jibes of sleazy cheats it’s perhaps worth being as sanguine as our players. But even they who love playing the game on the world stage can be reduced to tears of rage and disappointment by unfairness. They must surely hate it as we do but when the ref can be so easily duped cheating becomes a vital part of the game. The ref has become the major sponsor for the unspoken rule, to cheat if you can get away with it. Same with the FSA. When personal honour becomes the currency of losers, rules become so labyrinthine their relevance can always be avoided, cheats will prosper. I would like to offer one new rule to FIFA. “If, after the match, video evidence is judged by an expert panel to show an infringement, un-sportsman like behaviour or a referee error not brought to his attention by ‘both’ teams disciplinary measures will be taken against the player or team in question.” That might bring back some honour to the game that unites the world. 

Donkeys score from Set Piece.

Imagine pushing a wheelbarrow through a gate. Imagine also a donkey. If you opt for pushing the barrow through the gate from behind there is a moment where the gate is open before the barrow reaches it. If you opt as I did for pulling the barrow through the gate thus able to protect one’s approach there is a moment when the barrow is clear of the gate while it’s still open. There is therefore no foolproof way of getting a barrow through a gate without providing an opportunity of freedom to a donkey. Donkeys know this. So this morning donkey A, which I will henceforth refer to as DonkA, ceased eating hay and followed my barrow through the open gate. I dropped the barrow and clung on. What followed would in football parlance be termed a ‘set piece.’ Donkeys happily trot along with a person on their back and the same can be said of a person clinging round their neck. Donkeys know this but in the moment I was slow to catch on. Thus DonkA carried me way from the open gate leaving it free for DonkB and a wily old pony to also escape. I now had three trotters and even the one I had, albeit firmly by the neck, was pretty free to go wherever it wanted. I was reduced to repeatedly shouting ‘Chris’ who, hearing my pleas immediately stopped what he was doing to watch and enjoy. I must admit I was hoping for a more active response. In fairness though he did manage to get both donkeys in the small yard after a bit of chasing about. That left the wily old pony. This pony was obviously a student of psychology. His body language would exude, “oh alright then, I’m just a dumb animal, I give up, I’ll go where you want”, so inducing a moments euphoria, which he then used to exude, “oh no I’m not”, wheel round and be free again. He managed to outwit five of us for a good ten minutes by this and other ruses, circumnavigating the farm and all its byways several times in the process. Now our two deer are nowhere near the donkeys but by this time the word had got around it was freedom day; a sense of “I have a dream brothers and sisters” was in the air. One deer shot past André while he wasn’t looking; basically the same barrow/gate, gate/barrow situation. But two things were against it. One, deer are very skiddy on tarmac, and two they have a tendency to get over excited and drop down dead. But after another ten minutes of Bambi on Ice everyone was back in place. Break time. After lunch André had to de-louse all the chickens; actually it was a group effort. Four of us, me and three feisty young ladies, caught the chickens while André applied the chemicals. Chickens, especially cockerels, don’t like this idea. They too have wiles, mostly around rapid wing movements causing them to take on a strangely blurred appearance. Five of us chasing five flapping chickens in a small chicken coop provided copious amounts of entertainment. What with all this and last week’s sheep wrestling my volunteering day is beginning to resemble having a season ticket to Alton Towers. Who needs aerial railways of death when you can strap yourself onto a donkey’s neck and hold on to a sheep for dear life? And lets face it; a log flume will never make a delicious roast dinner, will it?