An extraordinary phrase
I was listening to the Today programme this morningâhalf asleep as usualâwhen my brain filtered the following phrase out of the warm fuzz of words:
“…lives blighted by otters”
Take a moment to read that again. The questions ‘what?’ ‘how?’ and ‘why?’ immediately springs to mind. The piece was following on from another yesterday, which noted the welcome recovery in the otter population due to the banning of pesticides like DDT and dieldrin. Not everyone is happy to see the cute little furry critters back: the ‘Specialist Anglers Alliance’ (carp fishermen) are claiming that the otters are eating all their fish.
The phrase “lives blighted” is usually used when old people are terrorized by groups of delinquent youths, so it brought to mind a fantastic image of gangs of swearing otters, drinking alcopops on river banks and spraying graffiti on trees. “Tarka” would make quite a good graffiti tag, actually…
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6 of us once travelled from the South Coast to Scotland in a dilapidated caravanette, then traversed the whole width specifically to see Maxwell's cottage, because one of the girls was reading "Tarka".
Just as we were limping into view, she turned the last page, to discover that the damn place had burned down.
We liberated the rocks from the cairn that was left and took turns in stoning her to death.
Happy days.----- eedjits. can you see my heart bleeding for the poor anglers? they can jolly well go down the shops and buy fish like the rest of us.
by Lisa @ 16/05/2003 7:05 am • Permalink •
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