Hooptedoodle #234 - Donkey Award - The Auld Firm

My mother has been having worsening problems with her mobility, and on Saturday I was obliged to call in an emergency doctor, who agreed with me that her difficulties with vertigo required some prompt investigation, and suggested that a visit to hospital would enable this to be checked out, and would also allow the Occupational Therapists to see if it might be possible to get her to walk with her zimmer frame with more confidence.

Accordingly, he arranged for her to be admitted to the Western General (in Edinburgh), and for an ambulance to collect her from home. Since it was about 10pm when he arranged this, we were led to expect the ambulance to arrive around midnight. We packed a bag for her, and waited for the ambulance.

And waited.

And waited. From about 3am we started getting calls from the ambulance control team, to apologise for the delay - apparently they were having an unexpectedly busy night, and, quite rightly, any 999 (emergency) calls received take priority. Such was the flood of 999 calls, in fact, that it was 7am before the ambulance came, by which time my Mum (who is 91), was not very well or happy at all.

Can't really complain - money is tight, we are lucky to have the services we do have, and the doctor and the ambulance crew were all marvellous. So what strange thing was going on in Central Scotland on Saturday night then? - was there an outbreak of Dengue Fever, or had an aeroplane crashed on a city centre? Was it the Great Fire of Bathgate? How could this be?

The answer, of course, is the Auld Firm game. You probably could not care less, but the two biggest rival soccer teams in Scotland are Celtic and Rangers, both based in Glasgow, and both drawing fans and support from all over the country. Since some financial difficulties (too complicated to explain here) resulted in Rangers' being demoted to the lowest division a while ago, there have been no league games between the two for some 4 years or so.

However, cream always rises to the top, as all sewage workers will testify, so Rangers very quickly won promotion through the lower leagues, back up to the Scottish Premier, and on Saturday the magnificent tradition of the Auld Firm match against Celtic was renewed. Terrific.

Well - to a point. Scottish football undoubtedly needs teams with the drawing power and wealth of the Glasgow giants (I nearly said cyclops twins), but the traditions of these clubs, I regret to say, also involve a history of religious and sectarian bigotry (and we are speaking here of Ulster history, rather than Scottish), and a century and more of mindless, drunken conflict. I am confident, I hasten to add, that a lot of very decent people take their kids to the big games in Glasgow, but they are not the ones you see or hear. The Auld Firm game is, mostly, as far as you can tell, about hatred, and about such topical themes as the Battle of the Boyne and Irish Republicanism.

Depressing. Saturday served to remind us of what the tradition really consists of. Not that it matters an awful lot, Celtic won 5-1, which probably turned up the heat a bit. My Mum's ambulance was delayed by the need to look after critically ill people - people who had suffered heart attacks, people who had been injured in accidents - no problem with any of that. But by far the majority of the unusually high demand was football fans, in the aftermath of the big match; guys who had alcohol poisoning, guys who had hurt themselves falling down in a drunken stupor and - most of all - guys who had spent the evening in a frenzy, kicking lumps out of each other.

Thank you, my friends. Thanks for everything. It is a pleasure to share a planet with you.

Hooptedoodle #230 - Donkey Award - John Lewis' Technology Dept

Oh no - here we go again.

Since my old Windows netbook is no longer supported, I have purchased a Samsung tablet to take on my travels, so I should be reachable (assuming I have wi-fi). I'm pleased with the tablet - only snag at the moment is that I am having some fiddly problems with email - if I send an email from the device, everything gets into the right folders on my email server, so that I can see it on my phone and on my iMac, but the actual wording in the mails sent from the tablet gets repeated for some reason I am trying to work out. 

If you get an email from me which seems to say the same thing twice, then it will be from my tablet. 

If you get an email from me which seems to say the same thing twice, then it will be from my tablet. You get the idea.

Buying the tablet was a refreshing exercise - I had a fair idea what I was looking for, so went into John Lewis' Edinburgh store early yesterday, since I was on my way to Claymore in Granton. It is very clear that old guys with white hair and tweed sports jackets are either invisible or don't fit some marketing profile which features in whatever training they give the staff these days. I was there about 9:05am, and by about 9:15 I was ready to be helped to buy something.

Bizarre. Every time I approached a member of sales staff, they would avoid eye contact and move into a conversation with a colleague. This happened a few times - I was beginning to wonder if I should try jumping up and down, or singing Old Man River while standing on top of the TV display. Eventually, after about another 10 minutes,  I got someone from another department to persuade one of the sales people to condescend to speak to me. Very young chap appeared, with skin-tight trousers and rather unusual hair. Not bloody interested. Also, to be frank, didn't know very much - probably knew little more than I did, but managed to retain his cosmic cool throughout. Eventually he was pleased to get me a Samsung tablet from stock, selected a generic hard-shell case for the device for me, then handed me off without a further word to a colleague at a check-out till. This colleague wasn't interested either, but at least he made some businesslike noises - he gave me the wrong information about guarantee details, processed the sale and - presumably - returned to chat with his mates.

I left feeling oddly depressed - this dismal experience cost me a fair amount of money, of course, though I am pleased enough with the device. My feelings about the episode are not helped by the fact that the hard case recommended and supplied is the wrong one - it is specifically for an iPad of the same screen size, but the iPad has all its orifices in different places, of course. No matter - I shall return the case to Edinburgh for a full refund - when it suits me to do so - and I shall buy the correct case from someone else. Someone a little more professional.

The technology section in JL is tricky these days - they deploy various external specialists in logo-bearing sweaters (the Apple man, the Samsung man, the Sony man etc), but they may not be in attendance until later than my visit yesterday, and the other (generic?) JL sales staff seem to have less familiarity with the kit than they used to. This is all a pity - I have always liked the shop, and I have bought a lot of stuff from them over the years, including technology (my current iMac, and the computers of my wife and my son all came from there within the last couple of years). As a matter of principle, I would like to approve of JL and be a faithful customer, but they keep demonstrating that they don't care a great deal, and I keep promising myself I shall not go back.

Disappointing, really. 

Hee-haw.

Hooptedoodle #229 – Donkey Award – Main Dealer Auto Servicing

After receiving some justifiable criticism from Musaeus, I am cutting down the number of rants on this blog. Today, however, I am pretty mad, so please regard what follows as a kind of helpful public information service, rather than just a mindless stream of bile.

I own a Mitsubishi ASX – I have had it now for 3-and-a-half years. It is an ideal vehicle for me – economical to run, well engineered and built, and provides optional 4WD for the bad weather (we can get a bit stranded at times in the Winter). I bought it new from our nearest dealership (which is some 40 miles from here), not least because they offered me an attractive trade-in price on my old Mitsu pick-up. When I bought it, one of the add-on lollipops was a cheap, pay-up-front offer on regular servicing - £200 on the purchase price secured me free annual services for 3 years. Since the warranty more or less cements you into main-dealer servicing for 3 years anyway, it seemed a reasonable deal, so I went for it.

The car does not do much of a mileage – my wife has her own car, and I also run a van, so the ASX has done about 23,000 miles from new, in three and a half years. Last week we drove in it down to Cheshire and North Wales, and by the time we got back on Friday there was something decidedly odd about the brakes. So yesterday I handed the vehicle over to the garage in our village, with whom I have had a long and positive relationship, and they fixed it and reported back. I have not yet seen their bill, so I may be even madder in a few days.

Now, our local garageman is a decent fellow – he is aware that if he cheats his regular customers in an area of low population then he will soon have no customers. Since everyone in the county knows or is related to just about everyone else, you can be pretty sure that word will get around. As a local builder once told me, if I do a good job for you, you might just tell someone, but if I do a bad job you’ll tell everyone – it’s a different world in the country, brothers. Howard the Local Garage Man is also professional enough to avoid criticising the competition, since such an activity simply gives the entire motor trade a bad rep. However, on this occasion he told me a few things which cast a dark shadow on the special main-dealer service deals which come with new cars.

The third and final pre-paid service on my car was carried out by the dealer at the end of January, at which time it also passed what is known for historic reasons in this country as the MOT test (a mechanical and safety check which is required annually for vehicles 3 years old or older). Since that January service it has travelled about 2,500 miles – not a lot. According to Howard, my car returned from Wales with its front brake disks rusted and pitted, the pads wrecked, and the rear brakes seized solid with rubbish and corrosion. There was no evidence of any lubrication being carried out on the braking system at any time since the vehicle was new; Howard was also astonished that the car could have passed inspection at the January MOT, given the state that the brakes must have been in 2,500 miles ago, but then the dealer carried out the test. Hmmm.

Anyway, it is now fixed, and I shall enjoy driving in comfort and improved safety, and I shall grit my teeth and pay Howard’s bill as part of what is required to keep my personal transport on the road – convenience has its cost. The bit that really grates (apart from the pitted brake disks) is the almost complete worthlessness of the cheap servicing package on a new car. The factory warranty forces the customer to return it to the dealer for maintenance anyway, an effect which is exacerbated by the inevitable series of peculiar safety recalls – “next time you return the vehicle for servicing, your dealer will carry out a necessary, free safety check on the bolts in the bonnet hinges – etc.” (this was a Renault example, but it will serve). In short, they have you by the dangly bits.

During the first three years of a car’s life – especially for a low-mileage vehicle such as mine – the servicing is likely to be cheap and routine. Any exceptions to this are likely to be covered by the manufacturer’s warranty, so I appear to have had three oil changes, fluid level checks and maybe the odd new filter for my £200. Oh, and maybe the lad gave it a wash with the power jet. At the end of my first 23,000 miles with the car, it seems the brakes may have been untouched and in an unsafe state.

Not great is it? Now that the warranty period is over, I shall be very pleased to go back to getting all my servicing done locally – Howard has never let me down.  

Hooptedoodle #224 - Donkey Award - The Donkey

Guido Fawkes is most famous for failing to do whatever it was he was planning to do back in 1605 (there is still some debate about just what he and his chums intended), but it is pretty certain that if he had succeeded he would have had the sense and the good taste to refrain from turning up at Westminster a few days later to gloat.

I was determined to avoid a rant about Europe – it’s a fait accompli now (foreign expression meaning “done deal”), so we must make the best of it. However, this Farage chappie takes the biscuit (foreign-derived word meaning “cookie”). Having had the effrontery to turn up in Brussels yesterday (a rare enough event – he has the second-lowest attendance record of all active MEPs), this sneering, shape-shifting hypocrite saw fit to accuse his colleagues in the European Parliament of never having had real jobs. I am aware that he was once a commodities trader, but I understand that of late he has mostly been a professional politician – certainly since 1999.

It would be interesting to know, in light of his minimal commitment and his constant hostility to the institution, just who has paid for his involvement in the European Parliament, how much he has pocketed and what we have all gained from the experience – apart from a lot of collective embarrassment, and the polishing of the ultimate, nightmare English stereotype, to our eternal glory.

Perhaps he could give us all a break now, and disappear into deserved obscurity? – or maybe he could appear on top of the odd bonfire from time to time?

Hooptedoodle #223 - Donkey Award - Daily Telegraph

It would be unkind to criticise the Telegraph - that's a bit like criticising someone's senile auntie - but misinformation (a fashionable commodity in these pre-Referendum days in Britain) is always a bit hard to stomach, and I thought I'd speak up on behalf of those poor people in London, who may be being misled again.

I was looking around for details about the construction of the Channel Tunnel, including numerical data - cubic yards of rock shifted, how long it took - all that. I found some interesting stuff, including a couple of good articles on the Telegraph's website. In the middle of one of the articles, up popped the advert at the top of this post. I realise that newspapers have to suck people into things like fake opinion polls, to score some advertising revenue from some completely irrelevant supplier.

However, I thought the questions were kind of interesting - mostly because they made me wonder whether there are any grown-ups working in the marketing area at the Telegraph. I can see that the construction of the Tunnel was quite an achievement, though I'll duck any further discussion about who the Telegraph thinks might be coming through it at the moment; don't get me started on the London Bloody Olympics, which was yet another bulk transfer of funds from the Provinces to the capital, with the odd personal fortune for Lord Snooty and His Pals thrown in; the one which caught my eye was question 3.

Just a minute - Britain won the Rugby World Cup? I didn't think Britain had ever entered the Rugby World Cup, though I do recall England winning it. Don't tell me the Braying Jeremies at Twickers read the Telegraph?

I gather this advert predates the most recent Rugby World Cup. Anyway, no matter.

Hooptedoodle #222 - Donkey Award - SO

As befits one who might be (charitably) described as verbose, I love language – I am entranced by it – fascinated by it. Not in a useful, academic way, but in a more generalised, gosh-just-look-at-that sort of way.

I am besotted with etymology, with connections between languages, ancient and modern, origins of sayings or colloquialisms, dialects, unusual or outmoded words – I even have a great fondness for slang, and children’s verbal traditions,  and where it all comes from. One great, unexpected bonus I got from my reading about the ECW was exposure to the writing and spelling of the 17^th Century – before standardised spellings, people would write what they said, or what they thought others said, which is alarming to the newcomer but gives us an insight into how spoken English must have sounded at that time, and the regional (and, I suppose, class-related) variations in this.

Take a look at the lovely maps of John Speed, from the period around 1610 – check the spellings of the place names – and, of course, the names themselves. Try to imagine where Speed got these names from – from older maps? – Domesday Book? - from local people? – somewhere else?

I have here CS Terry’s book on the life and campaigns of Alexander Leslie – that’s Lord Leven to you and me – sometime Field Marshal in the service of Gustavus Adolphus, later the guiding light of the Covenanter armies. There is much of his correspondence – with the spellings of the day, we can very quickly spot a Scottish speaker from the phonetic way he writes – much of it is still familiar and recognisable.

I understand that language has always changed and evolved, with migration, colonisation, education and religious influences, and – always – with fashion. Obviously, if language never changed, everybody around here in Lowland Scotland would still be speaking Old Brythonic, and I doubt if a single word of that ancient language is still in common use here. And – just a minute – Brythonic must have replaced something older. Like all change, there is a strict limit on the extent to which we can restrict it to what we, subjectively, regard as constructive, or acceptable. We may fight against it or lament it – the educators and the clerics and even the government may try to direct it, but speech is, by its nature, just a flow - the currency of the street, the market, the home, the newspaper (OMG) – it evolves, for the most part, on its own, and the rate of change is accelerating, as the world shrinks and its communications technology moves further into overkill.

Fashions come and go – most of them we probably don’t even notice. To be honest, to offer a couple of examples, I could have managed nicely without the Valley Girls, or the infuriating “Ya?” of the Yuppie Years, or the idiotic fashion for forcing a rising cadence into everyday speech, so that a statement sounds like a question (the usual explanation for this is that it is a sort of running comprehension check – it’s also usually blamed on the Australians, though I’m sure that’s unfair). I am disgusted by the way in which the worthwhile ancient word “like” has been converted into some insane form of punctuation – here’s a commonplace example – this is top model, Jamie Gunns, being interviewed – seems a nice girl, but what on earth is she talking about? Anyone have any observations on educational and cultural decline in the UK?

I am, you must understand, someone who insists on sending text messages which are grammatically correct, solidly punctuated and free of acronyms – I even have the predictive support switched firmly off. Why? I hate to think why – perhaps, in my sad little way, I am fighting some lost cause. Pompous ass. I also have to confess that exposure to US spellcheckers on my Mackintosh has rather dulled my awareness of English vs American spelling – I used to be very sniffy about this, but now I’m no longer sure which version I meant. Perhaps this is progress?

Which brings me – having choked off a whole lot more of the same – to the word “so”.

I have a bad history with “so”. There was a fashion for extended spelling – presumably to denote a lengthened syllable, or an element of gushing – as in “sooooo cute” and similar, seen everywhere (literally ad nauseam) on Facebook. Then there was a bizarre construct which gave us expressions like “that was so fun”, or, as I once heard, “that is so not the right thing to do”. These seem to have calmed down a little – maybe they became So Last Year?

Whatever, “so” is back with a vengeance, though it seems to have become “SO”.

In the mornings, I like to wake up to BBC Radio 4; it maintains some of the better traditions of the BBC – news and comment on current affairs are presented by intelligent, articulate speakers who do not pretend to be my best mates, offer me celeb gossip or update me on what is trending and threatens to leave me behind. So far so good – the problem is the guests. And it’s usually educated, expert guests – spokespersons for action groups, consultants, political mouthpieces, know-alls of every shape and colour.

It’s a formula. When asked a question, the response begins with the word SO, followed by a meaningful pause, and then comes a prepared answer. What are they doing? Does “SO” mean “this is an authoritative reply, so shut up and listen”, or does it mean “I am so intelligent that I recognise that you have asked me a question, and I am now going into Answer Mode”, or does it mean “ah yes – I have a piece of paper here somewhere with the answer written on it”, or what? Why is it infuriating? Why does it make me shout at the radio so early in the morning?

SO - here's a woman in a hat visiting the Radio 4 Studio

Is it because it’s a learned affectation, and because the affectations of others are always more annoying than our own? Do these people get instructed how to do this? – do they go to classes to perfect it? – do they practise in front of the mirror? – did they once hear someone who did this, and were so impressed that they decided to adopt it immediately?

To be honest, I couldn’t care less why they do it, but I sincerely wish the fashion would die out quickly – my blood pressure readings in the morning would benefit. In fact, the way language evolves is sneaky anyway – if SO really is here to stay as a permanent change to protocols of spoken interaction, then presumably I will start doing it myself, and I won’t be annoyed any more. Or should we fight back? At the moment, roaring “SO WHAT?” before the rest of the answer follows is a bit childish, but it serves to remind me that there is a point at stake here, and my radio doesn’t seem to get offended.

 

Hooptedoodle #216 - Donkey Award - The Bank of Scotland

This is not going to be a rant, just a straight description of my recent adventures with the Bank of Scotland. If any of this seems odd or unsatisfactory from a customer’s point of view, I leave a judgement on that to the reader.

Some years ago I disposed of a (very) small business which I owned, and I closed the Bank of Scotland business account which I had opened for it. In fact I had made very little use of this account – the charges for deposits and cheque payments were unattractively high, and the account was really only used on the relatively rare occasions when a customer paid me by cheque – my main clients mostly paid by bank transfer (which was much cheaper) and my smaller customers almost always paid in cash (which, of course, was free).

So I went into the Dunbar High Street branch of Bank of Scotland, sometime around October 2011, handed over my cards and cheque book and paying-in books and returned the (unused) security token which I had been issued, and requested that the account be closed. All the bits and pieces were accepted over the counter, but I was told I would have to write to a particular address in Basingstoke to get the account closed.

OK – I did that. After this I received occasional letters advising me of subsequent changes to interest rates and account terms, but you would expect that – this is a bank, after all, and banks are idiots. In 2013 I was sent a replacement security token, which I promptly returned to the Dunbar branch.

Around February this year I received a letter telling me that the terms of this supposedly dead account were to change; from some date in the near future I would start paying some £8.60 per month just for the privilege of having it – if I were to use it in any way, of course, the charges would be much more punitive. So this time I gave up on the losers in Dunbar, and I went to see my friends in the North Berwick branch of BoS, told them that I thought I had already got rid of this problem, and asked them to sort things out, since I really didn’t want to pay anything for an account which I didn’t want or use, and which I had thought no longer existed.

The lady on the business desk was very helpful – she found my account on the computer files, and told me that they had never closed the account, since it had a positive balance of £2.42. This was a bit of a surprise, since I thought it had been empty when I closed it (or failed to close it, as it appears).

Anyway, now I received £2.42 in my hand, and signed a couple of bits of paper which authorised the bank lady to close the account. Very good – job done.

Not so fast. A letter arrived today to tell me that I now owe them 71 pence, which will be billed to this same account on 17^th April. A statement was enclosed, dated 10^th March, which shows that I was billed £0.70 for the debit of £2.42 from the account because – well, because that’s the charge for a withdrawal – plus an additional charge of 0.65% of the amount withdrawn – i.e. 1 penny.

Presumably they have been unable to close the account this time because there is a negative balance. Furthermore, apart from the potential monthly account fee of £8.60, I fear that I may be about to be hit with a further charge of £15 for having an unauthorised overdraft of 71 pence.

Whatever else I might have imagined I would be doing tomorrow, I now realise that I will be going back to the Bank of Scotland’s North Berwick branch at exactly 9:30am, and I am sincerely hoping that I will find some grown-ups in. I trust and believe that those lovely people will do what is necessary to prevent any further cost and inconvenience, but if they do not manage it I think I can promise that a rant will follow sometime later.

Just off the top of your heads, can anyone think of a single reason why we should continue to deal with retail banks? I have to confess that I am struggling to come up with anything. 

Hooptedoodle #206 - Donkey Award - Plastic Coffee Cups

Yesterday being the Sunday after New Year, things were pretty quiet at the hospital where my mother is currently convalescing. Since I was early for official visiting, I went into the little WRVS cafe on the ground floor, and got myself a sandwich and a cup of coffee. The volunteers that run the cafe are often as elderly as the patients, so it can be a slightly confusing place if you don't pay attention. Yesterday it was deserted apart from me and the lady who was in charge.

They have a coffee machine behind the counter - also pretty elderly - so I asked could I have a filter coffee with a little milk. "Is that an Americano with some milk?" said the lady, and I agreed it probably was, though the matter of lifestyle names for types of coffee is an irritation for another post, on another occasion.

My coffee was prepared, in a plastic cup, and the lady proceeded to clip a lid on the cup.

"Please don't bother with the lid," I said, "I'll just sit and drink it in here".

Can't be done, apparently. It was explained to me that the volunteer was not allowed to sell coffee without the lid, since I might turn around and spill scalding coffee over the person behind me in the queue, and she would be responsible. No point getting into a dispute about it, so I took my lidded coffee over to a table - I had a choice of 5 tables - the place was like the Marie Celeste - I would have had to go somewhere else to find someone to spill it on.

The main reason I didn't want the lid, of course, is because I detest them. The stupid hole in the lid doesn't allow the coffee to come out sensibly - serious efforts to suck the liquid out can probably result in a hernia - and the drips always finish up on my chin. So I set about removing the lid, and - you guessed - spilt hot coffee on my hand and my shirt cuff. It was, however, entirely my own fault, so that's OK.

Hooptedoodle #196 – Donkey Award – Rewilding

It seems Anthony Fremont is alive and well.

If you are unfamiliar with Anthony, he is the central character from Jerome Bixby’s marvellous short sci-fi story, It’s a Good Life, dating from 1953, which I read when I was about 12 and which made such a profound impression on me that I have never forgotten it.

If you haven’t read the story, you should – or if you have 50 minutes to spare a nice man can read it to you.

[Very brief spoiler – Anthony is about 4 years old, and was born with supernatural powers which allow him to control the universe and read people’s minds. In the story, his village has been physically separated (by Anthony) from the rest of the Earth – no-one knows how or where – and exists in isolation, in a nightmare world surrounded by a four-year-old’s idea of a perfect environment – anyway, you should read the story, if you haven’t.]

The relevance is that it seems to me that the spirit of Anthony lives on in many present day conservationists – they mean well, but mostly they don’t have a clue. One of the difficulties surrounding environmental topics is that it is hard to find anyone talking sense about them – most of the enthusiasts are banging a personal drum, or quoting a half-article they read in the Daily Mail, or just letting their bellies rumble. Yes, we should be concerned, but we should try to keep a sense of proportion.

It makes me nervous, for example, that discussion of endangered species seems to be distorted by what is cuddly – bush babies and giant pandas get many more votes (and are better on TV) than disappearing strains of bacteria or cockroaches. It seems unlikely that the phone-in audience, unaided, are going spontaneously to come up with a balanced formula for a new, sustainable ecological system [you can help here – join Max Foy’s adopt-a-cockroach scheme – only 15 euros will secure you your very own specimen – yours is in Sumatra, by the way – here’s a picture of it].

The amateurs are mostly harmless, since they are unlikely to have an impact beyond their own Facebook timeline, and would not have the knowledge or the influence to take any real initiative. The professionals are much more scary, since they actually believe they understand what is going on, and what we should do about it.

One such is a chap – to be perverse, let us call him Anthony – who is proposing that we should reintroduce the wolf to the Highlands of Scotland. Yes – that’s right – not some kind of obscure wildflower, but that big, hairy dog-like creature with bloody big teeth. This gentleman manages a large forest estate, so he knows what he is talking about. He and his colleagues plant a great many trees, which are extensively destroyed by herds of wild deer, multiplying out of control, and thus requiring to be culled each year to keep things in some kind of balance.

The problem is that the deer have had no natural enemies (apart from men with guns) since wolves died out in Scotland around 1700. Our hero proposes to reintroduce wolves on the estate and – bingo – we shall be back in a better age. His vision is of a fenced nature park, along African lines, in which the wolves and bears (did I forget to mention the bears?) will keep the deer under control, the forest will prosper, and visitors (don’t tell me I forgot to mention the visitors?) will be able to enjoy the Highlands as they once were.

Monument to the last wolf killed in Sutherland

Ah yes – as they once were – and this will be Anthony’s own favoured snapshot, so they will not be under several hundred metres of ice, neither will they be swimming in lava – it will be just as things might have been on, say, 24^th May 1684 – or some other convenient date when there were still wolves.

As ever, I am disappointed to find that I am reverting to type and distancing myself from this grand scheme. I admit that I never was any fun at all, but I am concerned about the following:

(1) Wolves reappeared in France recently – in the 1990s – and things are not going well there – here’s a BBC article about the topic, and about our Scottish enthusiast, which sets some kind of factual context.

(2) If you were a betting man, how would you rate the chances of a fenced nature park containing the experiment indefinitely, without becoming some kind of Jurassic Park? When I used to live in Edinburgh, there were not-infrequent excitements in the Corstorphine area caused by wolves escaping from the zoo – cunning fellows, wolves – it is said that on one occasion they disguised themselves as cleaning staff.

(3) If the wolves escape (as they eventually must), how would things look for Scottish sheep farmers? – to say nothing of tourism…

(4) How did the rabbit get on in Australia, by the way?