Today, the little column of adverts that pops up alongside my Google mail - personally targeted to my every need by armies of fiendish surveillance wonks - reads as follows:
Barking Shopfronts (a rather alarming image)
Walk In Showers
5 Star Guest House in Cheltenham (handy for GCHQ?)
How to Declare Bankruptcy
There's a life story lurking in that list, I feel - but it's certainly not mine.
Meanwhile, I was concerned to read the news about anxious crayfish. Scientists seem to have established, at least to their own satisfaction, that crayfish can feel anxiety, though as far as I can make out they seem only to have established that crayfish tend to avoid stressful situations in favour of non-stressful ones, which seems only sensible. I'm sure a crayfish has enough to think about without going and getting itself electrocuted. On the other hand, the crustaceans, bivalves, marine molluscs and other forms of edible sea life in the waters around Dieppe might have good reason to feel anxious if word's got around that Mrs N and I are heading that way next week...
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A recent study by carcinologists at the University of Minnesota has conclusively attributed crayfish anxiety to their being insensitively invited to join the Lobster Quadrille. Replicability studies have been carried out and the evidence has been announced as being conclusive. What the inviters have failed to notice is that the crayfish are naturally lacking in confidence and experience enormous inferiority in the presence of their better equipped and larger cousins, the lobsters. Personally I will only eat crayfish slaughtered in the Halal way.
ReplyDeleteHo ho - yes indeed Guy - and I'm sure oysters suffer traumatic collective memories of what that walrus and carpenter did to them...
ReplyDeleteAnd another thing Nige..what on earth are "barking shopfronts"? Is this yet another example of the wholly unacceptable stigmatisation of the mentally ill?
ReplyDeleteI believe it's been proven conclusively that a little remoulade sauce does wonders for their confidence and self-esteem.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that's been properly peer-reviewed Peter. For me the only way to crayfish self-esteem is for us all to embrace a crayfish-centred approach more wholeheartedly.
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