Come The Revolution
Mar 16th, 2008 by Eats Wombats
I have been a little busy lately. I spent Saturday being the European Competition Commissioner in a role-playing exercise: MBA fun and games. I had an amusing brief with a hidden agenda, as did most. My official duty was to ensure the French didn’t get to do an illegal bail out of Société Générale. My French subordinate was, of course, in cahoots with M.Sarkozy’s office, to no avail in the end.
Rugby scores filtered in now and then, but the collapse of Bear Stearns to about 1% of its value 3 weeks ago didn’t register. Tomorrow morning is going to be interesting.
I didn’t get to the Sunday Times yet but, I happened upon a copy of AA Gill’s column online. The restaurant review was forgettable, like the restaurant probably, but for it to have appeared at all may be have been a triumph. An online comment that I might have missed had I read the paper version will not be so forgettable. Writing about an outdoor privy in India, a Mr.Barnes writes
Only problem was, the pigs were quickly alert to each visit and would have their snouts under the seat as soon as you dropped your trousers.
As a child I used an outdoor thunderbox at my grandparents’ farm. What with darkness, pungent aromas, cobwebs, spiders, bluebottles, and newspaper on a nail, that was daunting enough for a city boy. The added excitement of a pig snootling my fundament would, I think, have sent me through the roof if not traumatized my childhood.
Yes, they had a big, bad tempered pig. Thankfully she wasn’t an escapologist, but she would certainly have devoured a child given a chance.
From an early age I felt that pigs had a score to settle. The mighty snufflings of the bacon leviathan under a flimsy half-eaten door on death row made the hairs on my neck stand up. Then the squeals of baby piglets being murdered, as I thought –in reality “only” castrated with a cut-throat razor– jangled every nerve as surely as if I myself was a pigeen in line for the same fate.
Later on Animal Farm had an added resonance. Come the revolution, I think the pigs will have a special place for the authors of scientific papers on whether pigs being castrated feel pain (I’m not making it up).
