I love pigs… but they can act like absolute swine
YOU probably think I’ve spent the last week or so up to my neck in s**t, and you’d be dead right. I have. Pig s**t.
A couple of months ago, for lots of complicated reasons to do with potatoes, I decided to buy a flock of extremely rare Oxford Sandy and Black pigs.
They’re so rare that a few years ago there was only one male left in the entire world.
These things make the panda look like its flourishing.
Everyone said I was nuts. They said that pig farming in Britain was now a guaranteed way of turning a large fortune into a small one.
But I wasn’t listening. I’ve always loved pigs because they’re cute when they’re little and then, when they grow up and become annoying, you can turn them into a cure for even the worst hangover.
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I therefore bought ten youngsters, two virgins, two experienced mums and a man.
This is not the correct terminology, but it’ll do for now.
Everything was going swimmingly until one morning a couple of weeks ago, when one of the virgins produced five unexpected piglets.
This means that either she wasn’t a virgin, or that she’d been visited in the night by some kind of pig god.
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It didn’t matter. They were adorable, boinging about in their corrugated iron hut like puppies.
Plus, as they were effectively free, they were all just pure profit.
However, two days later one of them looked a bit poorly. I did my best, trying to get her to suckle on one of the Virgin Mary’s 14 nipples, and then tucking her up in some fresh straw. But it was all to no avail, I’m afraid.
The next morning, she’d gone.
And I don’t mean gone, in the way that doctors mean it when someone dies. I mean gone. She’d vanished.
But not completely. Because after a frantic search in the straw, I found half an ear.
There’s only one conclusion to be drawn from this I’m afraid. The Virgin Mary had eaten her.
It’s strange. Pigs won’t eat onions but, it turns out, they will eat their own children.
They will also vomit in your pocket, ejaculate all over your new coat and knock you over in what used to be quite a pretty field but is now a s**t- soaked quagmire.
I still love them very much but I’m beginning to think that I shall enjoy them in a sandwich even more.
TWO young men appeared in court this week charged with breaking into a zoo and throwing a bottle at a giraffe.
Now I know that this was during lockdown and after a month of making model cathedrals out of all the loo roll we’d bought and doing the downward dog with Joe Wicks.
We were all a bit stir crazy.
But who in their right mind says, “I shall alleviate this boredom by glassing a giraffe”?
Small price to pay
A 34-YEAR-OLD man from Cheshire announced this week that he will only drink, bathe and wash his clothes in bottled water.
He says this bizarre decision to give up with the tap costs him £4,300 a year but adds: “It’s a small price to pay.”
No it isn’t. It’s a huge price to pay.
Especially as we have to presume that, as he lowers himself into his bath every night, the water he’s poured in there is stone cold.
Times have changed
LET me see if I’ve got this straight.
This week Germany banned Poland from sending Leopard tanks to Ukraine.
And refused to lift a veto which prevents other countries from doing the same thing, saying they feared it could escalate into a war.
Germany? Worried about a war? Really?
THE former astronaut, Buzz Aldrin, celebrated his 93rd birthday yesterday.
I’ve always never wanted to meet him because he’s famously difficult.
A few years ago, he agreed to take part in a live interview and as the director used his fingers to count down silently from five, he leaned over to the reporter and, with one second to go, said: “Nothing about the moon, OK?”
Rishi a bit too nicey
RISHI SUNAK cheerfully announced this week that he’d levelled up the North/South divide by giving the Lancashire town of Morecambe enough money to build a new disabled ramp at the library.
“From now on, this lovely seaside town will be as affluent as Bournemouth,” he didn’t say, before rushing off to Hartlepool to hand over a cheque so that the post office can have a new sign.
I don’t mind all this. At least he’s trying.
But I do mind the way he announces the smallest thing like he’s monetised cold fusion or invented a cure for malaria.
It’s like he’s been to the Smashie and Nicey pop-picker school of relentless joy and happiness.
Whereas what we want at the moment is a bit more seriousness.
Because he’s not going to solve the enormous problems this country faces with a few fist bumps and cheery waves.
Heroic Andy is a God
I HONESTLY thought Andy Murray had retired and was now coaching teenagers at some God-awful tennis club in Florida.
But no. He roared back into our consciousness this week with what must surely be one of the greatest sporting moments of our lives.
Not that it was a moment. It was a full-on marathon that lasted for five hours and 45 minutes.
A match that went on until gone four in the morning.
The man is 35 years old and has more mechanical components than a Meccano excavator.
But in an astounding five-set, second-round match in the Australian Open, he proved that he is almost certainly the fittest and most dogged athlete in the world.
One rally, doing the rounds on social media, is the best minute of sport I’ve ever seen anywhere, ever.
I’ve often argued that when Andy loses he’s Scottish and that when he wins, he’s British.
This time though, he emerged from the match as a god.
Motor levy is a con
DESPITE the best efforts of Jeremy Vine and his plastic-hatted army, most normal people can’t realistically replace their car with a bicycle.
It’s just not practical if it’s raining or you want to take the family to Cornwall or if you have bought a fridge freezer and need to get it home.
Public transport isn’t much use, either, because if you go on a bus you’ll get a disease or a head injury from the violent drunk who invariably sits next to you.
And if you go on a train, it’ll stop in Reading because the driver’s gone on strike.
No. You need a car. And of course, you’d love to have a shiny new one.
Something clean ’n’ green. Something that’s way more economical than the old tank you’re using now.
But as it currently costs £1million a minute to stay warm and a tub of butter is more expensive than the Koh-i-Noor diamond, you couldn’t possibly even contemplate buying a new set of wheels for your trips to the doctor or the supermarket.
You’d think that London’s labourish Mayor, Sadiq Khan, would understand this.
He is, after all, a champion of the hard-up. But he doesn’t.
He’s decided that from August, if you want to use your old car to drive around in London’s suburbs, you must give him £12.50 a day.
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Richer people, who can afford a newer, cleaner car won’t have to pay.
You have my permission to roll your eyes.