Another unpleasant surprise we can blame on a banker

I am renowned for always expecting the worst to happen, so my progress through life is rarely jarred by unpleasant surprises.

It therefore came as a deep shock on Saturday morning when I caught sight of something so completely and utterly unexpected in my peaceful corner of Northumberland that I literally could not believe my eyes.

But sadly I had to concede that there could be no mistaking the bushy tail of a grey squirrel as it leapt into the roadside ditch just in front of my car.

I had never caught sight of such a thing in these parts in 25 years. Our native red squirrels rank alongside the call of the curlew as one of the chief natural attractions of the locality.

All together now: "Aaahhh!"

And, ironically, I have seen more red squirrels out and about by the local roads in the last few months than I have ever seen before, suggesting that the population is thriving even as their nemesis closes in. 

A common - and necessary - road sign in my neck of the woods

Subsequent enquiries established, predictably enough, that I had just not been paying enough attention. Grey squirrels have been sighted many times in my area, and a trapping programme is well under way to try in a brave attempt to keep them under control. I hope that mention of the fact in this column may inspire a few more locals to keep their eyes open and also to report their sightings.

The great hope for the future is apparently a vaccination against the squirrel pox carried by the greys that currently proves fatal to the reds. Though somehow I doubt that the red squirrels will queue up for this as obediently as the older folk of Rothbury did at the clinic to which I was driving for my annual flu jab when I had my close encounter with that grey arriviste on Saturday morning.

I should add right away that I do not actually qualify for this vaccination on grounds of age, but have crept within the NHS’s beneficent net on the strength of my alleged infirmities.

Having suffered bronchial pneumonia in the past, I was particularly pleased to be offered an additional bonus “once in a lifetime” vaccination that would afford lasting protection against the pneumococcal form of the disease.

“Are there any side-effects?” I blithely enquired as I rolled up my second sleeve of the morning. I was briskly assured that there were not, though this turned out to be not strictly true. My arm hurt a great deal for the next 36 hours and I entered one of those periods of decline in which the only possible course of action seems to be snoozing on the sofa before a roaring fire.

Still, that must be considered short term pain for long term gain if I can now laugh in the face of “the old man’s friend” when pneumonia next beats a path to my door.

It is a rather more complex equation in the squirrel world, where even short term relief for the delightful red variety can only be procured by killing the greys – provoking the usual animal rights objections that this is needlessly cruel to a species that is only doing what comes naturally, and that in any event it is unlikely to save the reds in the long run.

Any excuse for another cute picture

Sadly, a natural pessimist like me feels that this may well turn out to be true. But I am so in thrall to the charms of the red squirrel that I feel that it is only right to offer full support to those who are giving it a go on their behalf.

Above all, this should be a valuable reminder of the perils of tinkering with nature, when someone next thinks that a non-native species might make an attractive addition to our fauna or flora.

The grey squirrel invasion started with the release of a single pair in Cheshire parkland in 1876. Now there are millions.

It seems that the bloke who had the bright idea was a banker, too.

Macclesfield banker Thomas Brocklehurst: it's all his fault

Now there is one fact that should occasion absolutely no surprise whatsoever.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

If only I could vote for the ash cloud

My battle with pneumonia last week had a decidedly Franco-Italian flavour: lying down, conceding defeat and waiting for outside intervention. Mercifully it arrived in the form of powerful antibiotics, normally reserved for elephants with rampant septicaemia. These have so far taken me to the Battle of the Bulge phase of the campaign, with the cough of doom currently staging an improbable but determined fight back.

Still, at least it gave me time to think, for a change, and to reach one important conclusion. If the cough wins, the perfect epitaph for my gravestone will be “If only”. This should prove less controversial with the authorities than my previous choice, “Not sleeping, only dead”.

If only I could have predicted that the Elfin Safety worriers would prohibit all air travel for the best part of a week (with more to come) and that Nick Clegg would become the most popular British political leader since Winston Churchill, and if only I’d had the wit to place an accumulator bet on it, I could now be looking forward to a very comfortable retirement.

Marred a little, if the polls do not move, by having another five years of Gordon Brown as Prime Minister even if Labour comes third in the number of votes cast. Though at least such monstrous unfairness might finally provoke the supine taxpayers of Britain into meaningful revolt against their political system.

The trouble with the Clegg surge is that it is a meaningless revolt; an anti-politics gesture provoked by that televised non-debate which reduced the election to another episode of “Britain Lacks Talent”. It serves David Cameron right for pressing for these events in the belief that they would show up Gordon Brown for a fool, without pondering long and hard on the other possibilities.

My first problem with Mr Clegg is that I cannot hear his name without thinking of Last of the Summer Wine, and that nice old boy whose national treasure status has been consolidated by providing the voice of Wallace and Gromit. It would greatly increase my engagement with the electoral process if the next Prime Ministerial debate could be filmed in Holmfirth, with Clegg, Foggy Cameron and Compo Brown careering down a hillside on a souped-up DFS sofa, then being chased by a brush-wielding Harriet Harman in the role of Nora Batty.

Next, he unfortunately shares his name with those large horse flies that inflict such painful bites and are the best argument, apart from the climate, for avoiding the exposure of flesh while walking the Northumbrian moors.

Apparently no-one minds that he went to precisely the same “posh” school as that unbearable toff George Osborne, though admittedly he had the wit not to join the Cambridge equivalent of the Bullingdon Club, or at least not to get photographed in its uniform. But then going to the Eton of Scotland never did Tony Blair any electoral harm, did it? Different rules apply to Tories.

Finally, at the heart of Mr Clegg’s political philosophy lies enthusiasm for the project of European integration. I am sure the vast majority of the British people are not of the same view; so perhaps, as the focus turns to policies rather than personalities, this clegg may yet be swatted. One can but hope, remembering that Churchill reached his peak of personal popularity just weeks before he was ejected from office in favour of the anti-charismatic Clement Attlee.

Ask yourself this. If Mr Clegg really is the new Churchill, why has he not already commandeered a flotilla of small ships to sail to Dunkirk and bring our stranded compatriots home from the Continent?

Personally, I feel an increasingly soft spot for the invisible ash cloud that has stopped all those pesky carbon-emitting flights and may yet cool the whole northern hemisphere. How green is that? If only it were standing for election …

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Absitrep

I regret that I cannot make the usual Tuesday entry in this blog because I did not file a  Journal column this week; I did not feel well enough to write one. True, I could have made the same claim for the last several weeks, but now at least I have the backing of an official (if figurative) Doctor's Note certifying that I am suffering from pneumonia. Which is what you get, now I come to think about it (because I have been around this particular course before, hard though it is to believe that anyone would be stupid enough to do it more than once), if you try to ignore a hacking cough for weeks on the grounds that your NHS doctor will sniff "it's only a virus" and send you home without any treatment. Keep that up for long enough and you will end up, like me, scarcely able to move and swallowing the sort of antibiotics normally reserved for elephants with rampant septicaemia.

That is only my layman's interpretation, mind. The NHS doctor I finally consulted believes that I am actually suffering from Legionnaires' Disease. The test results are due tomorrow, and may open up the exciting possibility of wasting the next several weeks trying to track down some poor sod with a dodgy air conditioning system and then suing the backside off them.

Anyway, that's all, folks. The column may return next week or at some more distant date - though, like banging your head against a brick wall or indeed working in general, I have to say that it is lovely when you stop. In the meantime, I hope that this note may serve as an explanation and apology to any of you who have been wondering about my unexpected non-appearance at your office, meeting, church, pub, shop, club, political rally, dinner party or other social event; or why I have been so uncharacteristically dilatory in responding to your letter, e-mail, phone call etc etc.