Britain is being battered by severe gales at the moment. Not so bad here, but fairly wild up in Scotland. The police, in their usual well-meaning way, urge everyone not to travel. And what do the BBC always do? Yes, they send one of their reporters to stand underneath (or as near as dammit) the Forth Road Bridge. If he got swept out to sea, I suppose they’d take the cost of the rescue out of the licence fee, would they? Frankly, they’d be better spending the money, including the foolish journalist’s travel expenses, on better comedy or drama shows; failing that, they could shell out for some brand new neckties for newsman George Alligator or Huge Edwards. We all know what gale force winds sound like. Do we really need anyone to risk life and limb to keep telling us the same old stuff?
BBC News 24 continues to dish up the same stuff dozens of times an hour. Today they kept showing footage of David Cameron emerging from 10 Downing Street with his briefcase crammed with French and German phrasebooks for the forthcoming EU summit. Now imagine if, on coming out of the door, Cameron had been blown away by all those strong winds and sailed off, Mary Poppins-style, across London and over the Channel. What an impact that would have made in Brussels. (‘Cameron Airways, you’re clear to land…‘)
On a more local note, the big sycamore over the road from our house is looking a little careworn, with several branches on the verge of breaking off, I’d say. The crow’s nest remains firmly in place at the very top, though, and you have to wonder how those birds manage to build such solid structures. Do they start off, as all good boy scouts would, with a simple clove hitch and just keep lashing the nest to the nearest branches until they’re done? Or is it a timber hitch start, followed by crochet knots, for that professional finish? Or do they just use an indestructible form of bird-spit mortar to bind it all together? And if so, how come the council couldn’t have synthesised the stuff so that the walls of 1960s housing stock didn’t turn to virtual sawdust in only half a century? (I could go on about all the ‘fun’ we’ve had trying to fix things to the walls–including the hole that once appeared in our wafer thin bedroom wall. I could, but I won’t; otherwise we’d be here all day.)
