elementary Dr Watson

It is very impertinent and presumtuous of a self-confessed bumpkin to assert that one of the unravellers of the DNA double helix is just a bit thick, but I'm going to.

Now Dr James Watson has once again demonstrated his social ineptness (and had his lecture at the science museum cancelled), for his recent comments (in The Sunday Times) that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really". He said there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".

I submit that it is a scientists duty to DEMONSTRATE reality to us regardless of notions of political correctness but Dr Watson here is not demonstrating anything at all; he's just shooting his mouth off (again). He has previously claimed that beauty could be genetically manufactured, saying: "People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would great."

QED. The man's stupid. Come back Holmes. All is forgiven.

Obe Wan Bacon Butty

Isn't it great? Every day the media comes up with something else I've got to worry about. Now I've got to fret about obesity costing the NHS circa 7 billious pounds now and around 46 billious pounds (is that every year?) in about 40 years or so. A looming catastrophe, I am informed, potentially as great as global warming. Smeg - just when I was beginning to relax a bit too. OK, I know I can gaze gloomily at the digital readout on my bathroom scales which just sais 'to be continued' and yes, I know my body mass index is a bit on the high side but dammit, I am a middle aged man, we are supposed to be a bit pear shaped and anyway, shagging a skeleton (size zero I think they call it), holds no prospect of pneumatic bliss.

Also, my bony readers, when the Atlantic Conveyor turns off the gulf stream and Britains temperature plummets, you will not survive the bitter cold of winter as you will have no reserves of fat to call on and will be unable to make the necessary climatic adaptations required because you will be dead already, and in the meantime, we fatties are getting valuable fitness training carrying an extra 30 pounds of fat around all day long. Ergo, natural selection will kick in, and we will get shorter, fatter and happier. It is well known that fat people are just more smiley, happy go lucky, kinder, more forgiving, relaxed, gentle, better lovers.... and we don't get Anorexia either. It will be clear to my readers by now that I regard allotments as the solution to just about every evil from rap music to global terrorism. So if the govenment would care to throw some of that money my way, I will gladly give up my job sitting in front of a stupid computer in a stupid office all day and go and work up on the allotment more, thus lessening the risk of me making it all the way into the obese category.



I thinks it's called progress or something. I'll pass on that for the time being.

7 minutes to midnight

Martin Amis (Independant - Fri Oct 12), thinks there is something wrong with the Islamic clock. Of course, we all know to what he refers: that they have become stuck in a Koranic mindset that is antithetical to such wooly notions as freedom, democracy, equal rights, progress etc etc. Their clock has stopped at 00:00, at eternity, the martyrs fast tracked eternity in paradise, the infidels guaranteed eternity in hell.

He has a point but it needs to be taken further. Sure, there is something wrong with the Islamic clock, but it needs to be said that our clock is equally fucked up. Our clock has been hijacked by the corporate AGM, the FT index and the Dow Jones. By the spring sales and the summer sales and the autumn sales. By the 5.9% APR and the DFS sofa on interest free credit (offer ends monday by the way!) and sit on your arse and pay nothing for two years. By the e-mail that demands an instant response. By the celebrites preening their feathers in Heat magazine and by our bad, sad, fat, gadget obsessed, anxious, depressed and over-stressed children who are being tested to death.

My point? My point is that there is (or was anyway), once a natural clock. By it, we felt it time to sow the seed and water it. To tend the delicate seedlings with patience and love and in due course to give them their place in the sun. By it, we felt the pulse of the earth quicken in spring. We watched the birds return from their over wintering, or we felt the chill in the air as we watched them depart again. By it, we plucked the rosy apples and the humble blackberry and roasted the sweet chestnuts over the fire. By it we watched our children damn the stream and climb the tree and romp in the meadow while they worried about precisely nothing.



So Messrs Brown/Bush and Bin Muppet - plough up all yer Guantanamos and yer jihadi suicide training camps and turn them into allotments and lets get the clock ticking again shall we?

Marcus Brigstock sais it better than me and what's more, he's funny too. (scroll down to the u-tube version - priceless)

big nips

Look at that monster! And it wasn't at all woody. We experimented with making some parsnip chips and it worked sort of allright but you wouldn't want too many of them and they're better roasted really. We also made a parsnip soup....I like lots of pepper on it me.

"Spiller, call security at once! There is a strange man in our shed."


We have harvested the remaining sweetcorn because of the increased risk of frost damage now. Some have gone in the freezer and the rest have gone in our tummies. SWMBO refuses to believe me when I say a cob is ready to eat after only 3 minutes boiling. Will anyone back me up? How long do you boil yours for?