Yarrr! As the Rev Fanoire Siphuncle might say, "Get off! Get away with you, shitepoke!", shitepoke being the alternative name for the heron, a bird which attacked the Reverend on a weekly basis. The famous 20th century failed inventor and cleric, inventor of Uhunium the adhesive military gas, and crotchless paint, was plagued by bird attacks throughout most of his adult life. It is this sort of misfortune that can create greatness in a man.
I remember my first bird attack vividly. I had seated myself in the sunlight, the canal sat before me, it's weight pressing awkwardly against the bank. As I forced my lips around a dry piece of bread I saw a head appear above the verdant ripples.  In a moment my sandwich had gone. Blood tickled my lips. The water cleaned up after itself.  The tenth of a second flash of blue and white told me all I needed to know. It was a sea ostrich,  known to inhabit the sunken Ford Cortinas of the Grand Union Canal in Leicester.I remember it not just for the rarity of the sighting but mostly for the profound effect it had on my own psyche. I blew a cheese-nut. Wibbled. Cracked a cortical relay.
Waking from my psychiatric bed many weeks later I was a new man. A shock to the system had rejuvenated the beige core. Away with you beigeness (though we must welcome beigeness with open arms as a new word).

Today, as has been the case for several days now I have suffered from the melancholy that seems to appear under very exact circumstances. A kind of despondent sadness mixed with a stratospheric hatred for all things seen.  Based on an inner realisation. The subconcious is moving north. The howling of the wolves within. The slow feet like continental plates. A hug can save you. But only if it lasts.




I'll never be perfect. And so then never good enough. Good enough for what remains a mystery. Good enough to be loved? To be in control? A man's innate genetified direction is to the top. All opposition, all failure is greeted with emotional unrest.

It seems that we've forgotten about Swine Flu. It also seems that we've forgotten almost entirely about Mad Cow disease, Ebola, bird flu and many of the other horrors and terrors of the modern age. But there's one terror that we haven't really been able to shake off and that's Richard Hammond. Although not technically infectious and arguably not a threat to our physical well-being Hammond has begun to spread. Hammond used to be, back in the day, an anonymously humble, genial little haircut of a man who was able through the gift of television to offer unconditional love to everyone that gazed down upon his grinning pixels. Although puppy dog cute only in the eyes of many ladies he also didn't have enough talent or ability to offer any threat to the male observer and so was kind of accepted into our arms like a bubble car, or a Japanese tourist.

And then there was the accident. Is it me or did something change? Suddenly, as if brought to the surface by the urgency that a near-death experience can bring, the man changed subtly, yet critically. Someone, or rather something took his trademark inoffensive charm and went and drowned it in the canal. It wasn't such a problem before when he was "on everything", every other TV programme you could think of. No one minded. That's because he was "nice". And now he isn't. Now Richard Hammond has lost his appeal with the male audience (I have asked them and they told me. No, really I have) and yet is presenting exactly the sort of programmes that men  like to watch. What is the sense in this?
I would LOVE to watch his invisible worlds program. It sounds fascinating. But I'd rather be smashed up by a hysterical gorilla than watch Hammond spouting guff about a subject that he is less qualified to talk about than a medieval parsnip salesman. And they call it Richard Hammond's Invisible Worlds. I mean really? Just like Richard Hammond's Engineering Connections. You can't help feel that he is stamping his feet at the sight of James May's convincingly authoritative series' on all manner of interesting sciencey topics and screaming "I want to play!". Where is the much needed Hammond mother to offer the essential words, "When you're a little bit bigger dear. Then you can have a go."