"Some Vicious Mole of Nature..."

...thus spoke Prince Hamlet, and by golly did he quite hit the spot with that image.

To expound as best one might. 'The stamp of one defect' meant the Bard, by which possession - by nature and not through personal failing - a man takes 'corruption from that particular fault' alone, overturning any good he might otherwise have accomplished.

That single defect then is his downfall. He might have lived had he not died of cancer. That sort of thing.

Let us, though, be clear here. Shakespeare's 'mole' is not the mouldwarp but the mal. Not the cute furry animal, 'Wind in the Willows' stout-hearted hero and terror of many a lawn; but the stain or blot. The etymology is quite different, the meaning differentiated and distinct.

And yet in melanoma, do not the two come together in one unwholesome whole? A mole on the skin derives from the mal. It is, quite literally, a stain. But when it burrows into the skin, leaving behind it a visible heap - as if a molehill - bringing malignancy in its train and wake, is it not precisely so very like the earth-digging creature in its doings?

Does seem, perhaps, a tad unfair to burden an innocent animal with a metaphor of decay and death, yet it is hard not to be so tempted. For it is the burrowing beneath the surface that makes the thing, more than any image of a stain. Drop red wine on a shirt and it marks as it dries. But it does not then set off to penetrate further, as does the mouldwarp.

If you know your melanoma, you'll too know that the deeper it digs the nastier and more deadly it becomes. We all have stains, but not all mercifully are undermined thus.

Just how undermined I am, I am shortly to find out. My mole - my mal and my mouldwarp - has been excised. It is pronounced malignant, but we do not yet know quite how penetrating or how threatening. But what we do know is that the deeper it has gone, the more defective and deadlier it will prove to be.

The Game's Afoot...

No slouch our GP Dr. P. Fixed me up to meet and greet with a certain Dr. D, certified consultant in the skin trade, for last Friday

Nice chap our Dr. D, with good manners and clearly knowing his business. Took me through the basics of what he was seeing: "Large dark centre, almost black and slightly raised. A starfish shaped corona of a lighter colour." (OK 'starfish shape' is my image, but it gives the flavour of the thing.)

Said, indeed, all the right things except for: "I'm afraid that very much looks like a melanoma to me." To which, from my carefully crafted list of pre-prepared questions, I could only respond: "B*gger!"

So having again carefully explained next steps (initial excisional biopsy) and likely further action dependent on test results (wide excision, maybe sentinel lymph node biopsy) we exchanged phone numbers in the hope he can do me privately sooner rather than NHS later.

Am now confirmed for tomorrow pip emma, which is about as swift as swift as can be. The game, therefore, is quite afoot, though precisely which game we'll have to wait and see.

It might prove simply be a little horrid something that can be cut out, binned and never heard from again; or could be something so very much more threatening and nasty, leading to Heaven's knows where and when. (Still, of course, the minutest scintilla of a possibility that it is just masquerading as a melanoma in order to add some confusion to the medical text books. But I'm not holding the front page on that, and neither I suspect is Dr D.)

Funny - in the odd way - having (probably - I cling to that for now) a cancer you can actually see and touch. The sarcoma was a protruding lump easy to spot under the skin and to run the hand over, but it's something else altogether when you can actually stare it in the face and touch it with the finger. Been doing a fair amount of that this weekend!

Not exactly feeling too chipper about the whole thing today to be honest. (English gentleman's code of course for feeling totally freaked and more than half out of my mind!) It's not so much the having of the cancer itself (probably, as before) as facing going through the whole thing once again.

All the steps and stages, the uncertainties, the anxieties, the hopes and fears (of me and mine), the waiting and the wondering. Those repeated times when each appointment begins with one of two chances: the good option of 'Hey, the tests were clear. Go celebrate', or the bummer 'Sorry to have to tell you, we've seen something.'

I lived with and through that for the first five years of sarcoma - for the first two years every three months. Had the energy to cope with all that then. Don't feel quite so strong this time round.

As our dear American cousins will say: 'Sh1t happens.' Or as I would, in more Anglo-Saxon mode, would put it: 'B*gger!'

Something New Under The Sun...

...well, not new of course in the sense of never yet seen or heard. The Preacher after all was right when he wrote that there is simply nothing new under the sun. For every human event there will always be someone already with the tee-shirt bearing the logo "Been there, done that...etc., etc."

But a novelty within my life, though even here it must be said only up to a point. One has trod before the Via Dolorosa of cancer [see earlier] and now it seems one may be about to tread that same rocky road bearing a new and lengthy slogan: "Yay melanoma, do you think after I've survived a most minging sarcoma that should have seen me off a decade ago I'll let a little skin cancer do for me?"

Lacks a certain precision as a slogan I'll admit. Hard to get all of that text onto a medium-sized rectorial chest. We are not quite there yet, so time still to work on it.

'Twas H of course who set the whole thing in motion. "Don't like the look of that peculiar shaped mole dear PP. Hie thee to a GP this instance and let him opine on the matter."

Well you know us blokes - anything to avoid mithering a doctor. (First Rule of Bloke Health: 'Ignore it and it will go away.' Second Rule of Bloke Health: 'Sometimes that's a really stupid thing to do.') One thing though more to be avoided, at all and any cost, even than troubling a busy GP and that, of course, is a good indoors and persistent nagging.

So solely to ease the ear-bashing, one duly telephoned the local NHS slaughter house masquerading as a surgery. A brief convo. with the Female Demon (receptionist), a swift telling of the circs., and it was "See you 9.05 ack emma tomorrow Rector and no excuses."

All a little hasty one pondered. Usual waiting time for an appointment - if you're still actually breathing - being nearer the two to three weeks mark. Wouldn't even put it passed H to have had a word with said Female Demon, they both being on some committee or other for public good of a generalised and no doubt splendid nature.

Anyway, so no sooner Mattins done and dusted than it was off to dear Doc Peasbody for to let him take a decko at said unfavoured mole. Slightly, one must say, taken aback at his reaction. For no sooner had the professional gaze alighted on the spot in question than pens were being grasped and phrases such as "referral for urgent excisional biopsy" were upon his lips.

The fax even was sent as we sat gassing about life, the universe and the odds of it being malignant. "About 50 / 50 I should say Rector" - in a voice that had me not reaching for my wallet to bet on the better half of the wager.

And as if that wasn't bad enough, no sooner is one back in the old study sipping a reviving and nerve-steadying pre-luncheon malt of some considerable measure it must be owned (not sure what line the Dutch take on courage in the face of possible fatal sickness, but whatever it is they have it nailed for certain), but the old telephone sounds in the old study with a new voice announcing that a 'See and Treat' appointment has been made for Friday following.

Allowing that this here 'See 'n' Treat' malarkey is just a fanciful name for the NHS simply doing its job, one is still impressed - if slightly over-awed - by the swiftness of the whole thing. Where gone are the good old, bad old days of "Around Michaelmas-tide I should expect, if the weather be fair" approach to secondary medicine I should like to know?

And so there we have it. One may - or one may not - have melanoma and one somewhat anxiously waits to find out. This is where the whole 'Been there, done that, worn the wretched tee-shirt' thing comes into its own. For once more must I become the 'impatient patient', finding out in advance all there is to know and ask about melanoma in order to ensure that all options are considered and all decisions taken are with my full and active consent. Will we or not, for example, opt for the 'sentinel node biopsy' to check for local invasion of the lymph system and if not why not?

My poor people who treated the sarcoma had to become accustomed to my asking all and any question I cared to ask. "That big shiny yellow thing in the sky..." "Yes Rector, it is the sun now may we proceed?"

So now we have the time of waiting. Either I have the thing or I do not. Here, tonight, and for possibly some several weeks to come I shall not know which it is. One or the other though it must be, I cannot play quantum and be both beam and particle at once. Either one door will open pointing the way to 'business as usual', or else the other darker door will usher me into the Lord alone know what.

This waiting then is painful. It agonises and it sets the spirit and the soul on fire. Poor H is all over the shop and I'm not exactly standing calmly by the till waiting to serve the next customer, as it were.

If you know your Bob Dylan you'll recognise the song that is pinging in my head right now. Comes from my all time fav 'Blonde on Blonde'. Catchy little number with a rock-a-billy beat called 'Memphis Blues Again'. Irresistible line goes thus: "And here I sit so patiently waiting to find out what price you have to pay to get out of going through this whole thing twice."

Nothing new then really under this or any other sun. (And yes, I do still miss my horse. That will and can never change. Some constant in one's life is always welcome.)

Farewell My Horse...

...it has indeed taken the derring-do of the aforementioned to stir me from the torpor that has prevented me posting these past weeks.

For I am man in mourning and silence is my retreat from pain.

My beloved horse - Diamond Jane, or Janey, or even 'J-Pops' - is sold and I shall never see her again. I am bereft. E wanted it so to advance her equestrian career; H commanded it so. I, therefore, acquiesced though with heavy heart and spirit torn.

She - a mare - has gone to an new owner who swears to cherish her. I will rip the woman asunder if I hear any different.

Fed, watered, groomed and well-ridden that is all she will want. She may or may not wonder when 'Grandad' will next visit, but I shall miss sorely her until the day I die.

Frank Corti - A Good Neighbour...

...We, mercifully, are blessed with good neighbours. I trust it is a view they share.

That they are at somewhat of a distance - the Rectory being of the old style, large and with plentiful grounds - does not signify, as they are all in fact decent, quiet coves; though were they not the half an acre of lawn surrounding would be handy.

Mr Frank Corti, a hero of our day, is not so happily blessed it seems, his neighbour - one scumbag named Gregory McCalium - bursting in one evening on the startled Mr Corti and his dear wife Margaret, armed with a knife and intent on burglary with harm no doubt.

The photographs in the newspaper today show both victim and assailant alike. There is young McCalium, 23 years of age; and there is old Mr Corti a white-haired seventy-two.

The one is bruised and bloody, eye blackened with thickened bloody lips. Mr Corti, on the other hand, shows himself firm, upright and properly defiant.

For yes indeed, Mr Corti, an ex-soldier and boxer to boot, taking - as he would - unkindly to McCalium's threatening intrusion into his peaceful home, brushed aside the scumbag's knife giving the would-be thief the old one-two.

Biff, bash, bosh as they say. Or as Mr Corti himself said: ""I was scared when he first drew the knife, but my old training must have kicked in because I just punched him as hard as I could and he went down like a sack of spuds. If you can't defend what's yours, where are we at?"

That accomplished, it seems Mr Corti then restrained the battered McCalium awaiting the Police to cart him away.

Bravo Mr Corti for your deeds and for your words. Last word perhaps, the Judge to McCalium before sentencing him to four-and-a-half years without the option: "You got what you deserved." Quite so.

I wouldn't know if there is a 'Neighbour of the Year' award proximate to where Mr Corti and his wife live, but there jolly well should be and he its winner.

Frank Cook - An Apology...

...his not mine of course.

Let us read his explanation:

Stockton North MP Frank Cook has today described as ‘inexplicable, embarrassing—and deeply regrettable’ the report that amongst his Parliamentary expenses for 2006 was a note referring to a donation a Battle of Britain Memorial service.

The MP said that, whilst he could not understand why the note had been submitted to the House of Commons Fees Office and said they were ‘entirely right’ to have rejected it.

Said Mr Cook “Anyone who knows me will understand that there is no way in which I would seek intentionally to make a claim for a donation made at a church service or to a charitable cause—in over 26 years as a Member of Parliament I must have attended hundreds of services and other similar events and never once have I sought to claim for money I have paid as a donation or for a wreath.

“I must assume that the story in the Sunday Telegraph is correct and, as I explained to them and to other journalists who have contacted me, I cannot recall the note to which they have referred—and I certainly do not understand how it could have been submitted to the Fees Office. The Sunday Telegraph reports that it was rejected by the Fees office—and thank goodness for that.

“Whilst I cannot understand how the note came to be submitted, I have to accept responsibility for its submission, hold my hands up and apologise. It was a genuine mistake and I stress again—I would never deliberately make a claim of this kind.”

And so where did this 'note' come from that so inexplicably found its way to the Fees Office? He can hardly - one assumes - have asked for a receipt on the day, given the circs. So who wrote the note if not he? And if so, why so? And having done so, why and how did this note come to be passed for payment?

We all have bundles of receipts in our wallets and purses that - where the occasion merits - are striped down for reimbursement. But not a 'note' we have carefully crafted for a clear purpose.

Did he indeed not bother to check what 'notes' were being sent in for claim?

Chiltern Hundreds for that man if he has a shred of decency. Only the three available, so he'd better hurry.

On which note - don't we love the shop that now boasts the warning sign: 'Only two MPs allowed in at any one time.'

Bravo! The nation speaks.

Frank Cook - Utter Scumbag

If the Telegraph is to believed - and we here do - then Frank Cook, MP, must merit as the worst of all the worst.

For we read that he attempted to claim five pounds in expenses, that being the amount he had put into the collection plate during a Battle of Britain church service.

Read that again and does not your anger mount and your very stomach retch?

Let us wait perhaps for any repudiation or denial before gathering the faggots to build the burning pile with him atop it. But should there be no ready answer to hand, then here in my hand tonight is the box of matches to light the cleansing fire.

Bill Cash

...says it all really don't it?

He hands over the Bill and we have paid him the Cash.

Handy little aide memoire indeed should the volume and the detail of it all threaten to engulf you.

Horse Sense...

...the selling of a beloved horse should not be trouble free. The decision, in the first place, to part with the beast in question should itself be taken not lightly.

There is, shall we call it, the professional dimension to consider: if one feels that equestrian aspirations of top-notch dressage are not within its capacity, how confident can one be that the next nag would be any better? Never is there the perfect horse; they - as their riders - all carry some degree of imperfection and only time tells if there is a possible partnership that can develop to some level of acceptable harmony and performance. When you buy you simply don't know if it will work out well or badly.

Then there is the far more potent moral matter: having committed to cherish the animal on purchase, having grown quite to love the thing over five years, how could any other person be entrusted with its care? The vetting process for any new owner has to be utterly rigorous. They are scrutinised and quizzed, third-party information is sought and considered. Only then, when that can be as satisfactorily resolved as may be, is the horse to be submitted for its own vetting.

No one of course seeks to ask the horse if she would mind awfully leaving for another yard, another rider and another life. Impossible even to let the thing know that this is what is intended. Nature has not equipped the respective species with opportunities for mainstream communication. One has, therefore, to go by clues and cues, being sensitive to both but not sure of either.

Today though our mare has spoken out loud and clear what she thinks of the whole thing. Irked by the initial proding, not happy with the eye test in a darkened stable, clearly unsettled by the intrusive flexion tests; no sooner then had E mounted to show off her paces than we were all treated to the horror show of a wild, untamed mustang-like affair, all rearing and twisting and bolting, with E at once thrown to the ground in a pained heap. Horse then bucking its way round the arena quite out of control and all character.

E is carted off to hospital for check-up, potential buyer flees in tears, vet stands aghast and we are all puzzled to have seen something so dire and unprecendented.

Later check-up calls to the stable reveal that horse has resumed its habitual stunned-donkey nonchalance, quietly munching away without a care in the world and, presumably, thoroughly happy with her performance guaranteeing she stays just where she is.

A Healthy Diet...

...the aforementioned Ian McCartney is, we are told, now to leave office for 'health reasons.'

Champagne diet you see. Catches up with you in the end.

"So. Farewell then Ruth Padel...

...left up a creek without one really."

Let Them Drink Champagne...

'Mr McCartney [former Labour Party Chairman] said he had claimed for a dinner set and champagne flutes because, when he was a senior minister, he had to hold meetings at his home. He said: “I had to feed people.”' - Telegraph this evening.

Well, quite.

'None of the Above' - X Marks The Spot...

I may perhaps be too late, but in case not am pleased to announce the formation of a new political party set fair to storm the hustings ere long.

The 'None of the Above Party' will of course be dedicated to ensuring that none of the above candidates of any of the present and utterly corrupt political parties will gain one single, solitary vote.

They hardly will of course, but people are stubbornly attached to voting; they don't care not to make their mark even if it is for the least of all the available evils.

So NOTA - could we even, and why not, pun it 'Nota Bene' - will be there for those who yearn not to absent themselves from the democratic process. A noble and an altruistic calling you'll readily agree.

Problems will doubtless later arise when NOTA is swept to power on a wave of popular sentiment and revulsion for others in equal measure. Our candidates will surely prove as venial as other men and women.

Already - as President of this fledgling force for good - I am measuring the rectorial library for new oaken shelving, and pondering if plain calf leather is sufficient for the strictly necessary re-binding of the thousands of books therein. H would no doubt much care for - need rather - a fine new kitchen of marble and chrome, whilst how could I apply myself to national duties knowing E did not have all the horses she requires to compete at the highest level?

Subscriptions for potential NOTA members will shortly be available. Fee rates are yet to be determined, so do please just send signed blank cheques payable to me at your most earliest convenience!

Let Them Eat Beethoven...

A Rectorial hat-tip tonight for dear Dame Liz Forgan, recently elevated to head honchess of the dreaded Arts Council.

Hear her own wonderful words:

"Throwing children alive into a ­boiling vat of great music does them no harm at all."

Children, so she she tells us, should be subjected to a deliberate policy of exposing them "...to what might appear to be entirely unsuitable masterpieces at an early age. I am more grateful than I can say for adults who loved music themselves, who sought to pass on that love as soon as possible – or even sooner – and who totally lacked the defeatism that believes classical music is inaccessible, out of reach and somehow to be approached in disguise. If I had been forced to start with clapping games, or tooting Frère Jacques on the recorder, I fear I might have turned to crime or even netball as more exciting alternatives. Give them Birtwistle, Buxtehude, Finzi, Ockeghem and Beethoven as soon as possible I say."

What a fine, fine woman. E was strapped into her high-chair in front of Wagner 'ere she was one. Not particularly spotted that she's become a fan of the fellow as such, but at eighteen has turned out pretty well, which to me at least proves the case.

Swine Flu Joke - Pandemic Alert

As the World Health Authority appears to have missed a trick here, it falls upon me to raise a level 6 alert regarding a clearly now pandemic swine 'flu joke.

You know the one I mean, beginning "I phoned the swine 'flu hotline..." and ending "...but all I got was crackling." Well of course you know the joke, it has spread around the world in a fevered flash.

I caught it from Deirdre our wondrous Community Nurse yesterday morning, passed it on to three family members before lunch, two parishioners pip emma, also to find that Sal in our local off-licence had already been infected from another source by the evening.

The good news is that the joke does not appear to have mutated in any manner so far. Structural analysis would also seem to confirm that it will not change, though there is of course the ever present risk of conflation with another, entirely different, swine 'flu joke creating a synthetic new variant.

Symptoms of first exposure to the joke appear to be quite strong. Not often indeed would H or E genuinely laugh at any witticism of mine, though in this case both did. Self-immunity though does rapidly build-up it seems, for neither found it anywhere near as amusing when given a second dose of the joke over supper.

I should indeed have expected Sal to have been infected, as her day job is at our local hospital where the risk of exposure to gallows humour of all kinds will be a systemic occupational hazard. Not aware that she is a separated at birth twin of mine, but no sooner were the first words out than Sal was mouthing the punchline as one ever accustomed to finishing my sentences for me.

Developing then the theme, it was interesting to learn that not only does our local slaughter-house not have any of the right sort of face masks to offer its nursing staff, but also security guards have needed to be hired as it was found that the doctors were nicking the Tamiflu.

Stands then the NHS ready, willing and able to cope with a swine 'flu pandemic in this land? Don't make me laugh! That is no joke at all, sadly.

Murder - A Very Bad Sign Indeed...

...terrible news comes today. One's heart goes out to the stricken family.

A friend of E, whom she met at a festival two years ago, has been murdered on a trip to London. We have few details other than that there was an incident in a pub and he was beaten or stabbed to death. A young man of twenty or so.

There is nothing spoofed about this post. I wish it were so, but it is not.

Signs and Portents...

...Religious enthusiasm is another difficulty [see previous] little known in The Wolds.

True enough that local history does relate the occasional outburst of massed outdoor prayer gatherings, led in the main by hairy and itinerant preachers of - it would ultimately transpire - dubious personal morals as well as hygiene; hundreds or more erstwhile sensible farming folk who, losing all control in the whipped-up artificial fervour of the thing, would crowd around a tree to bark at it - quite literally - their unquenchable love of the Lord.

Difficult one assumes for the incumbent of the times to maintain due order at Evensong with so much hysteria in the air, but a rapidly passing fever these matters mainly, some mid-summer madness soon recovered.

There is too the odd - one uses the word advisedly - young curate heaven-bent on inflaming local passion for all good things. One has little trouble here either, indeed it can be quite restorative to be dosed in the same juvenile desire for salvation and its ways one once felt beat so fiercely within.

A bit of a pep all round that can be, though tearful ends there often are for these fellows tend to rouse quite other passions in impressionable young maids, more desirous of the messenger than the message. A folk-Mass guitar in the wrong hands can be indeed much more the aphrodisiac than the strummer thereof either knows or intends.

Or, as one occasionally darkly muses, precisely what is knowingly intended. Curate R, for example, one recalls with a certain lack of charitableness. Perfectly aware that one the impact of a pale face, dark soulful eyes and some plangent chords! All too relieved to learn he soon dropped all pretence of probity and went off to lead some nu-church commune with overtly impure aims and objectives.

It is not though this up-tempo sort of enthusiasm that one now fears, but rather the far more gloomy and deep set mood that can and does give rise to outbursts of apocalyptic, end-is-at-hand rants. Slow burners these in the main.

General and perfectly rational expressions of concern about the hardness of times can sit heavy in a sensitive heart. That sensitive heart then begins to muse on 'whither the world' in quite a mournful manner. Nothing so much of harm necessarily in that, no more perhaps than a handy re-calibration of the individual moral compass away from the material towards the spiritual.

Worse news though then piles in on bad. World economic meltdown is a bit of a teeth-sucker by itself, but when laid on top of growing terrorism of many kinds - the Taliban we hear perfectly poised to take Pakistan - and now, of a sudden, the potent threat of a global pandemic promising death to many in all lands in a trice; all that and who can escape feeling queasy about it all?

One does indeed find oneself wondering whether St. John the Divine might not really have had a point after all about his Four Horsemen a-riding to herald universal chaos and destruction.

I'll not yet be chalking-up 'The End Is Nigh' or the 'Repent For Thy Doom Cometh' sandwich-boards to be wearing about the place. But I might yet. One more sign or portent and you could find me reaching for the paint pot.

Pros And Cons...

...an ever-fragrant correspondent of mine has recently sternly informed me that she is 'pro-gay.' The putting of it into the pipe and the smoking of it was not specifically invoked, but one sensed the note of that tone in the remark as made.

We do not, on the whole, tend to do religious controversy here in The Wolds. Our tastes are mostly for the quieter life, very much on a live-and-let-alone basis.

The occasional hint, maybe, to one that whilst Jesus may very much want her for a sunbeam, her eternal 'Nearer the Godhead than thou' smile is profoundly irksome. Or tipping the wink to another that tambourines may be all very well at a Romany hoe-down, but daring to bring one into my Church and wave it around during Choral Evensong is absolutely not the thing to do in these parts unless said waver has an undue fondness for hospital catering.

Reining-in Farmer Arthur's fervour for direct action against sinners - his pile 'em high and burn 'em all philosophy - is also necessary from time to time. All for a bit of fire and brimstone myself to put, literally, the fear of God in folk as needed. But when justice trumps mercy at every turn, as it will when Arthur plays a hand, it is not to be tolerated entire.

Other than that and the occasional outburst of ontological nonsense about 'being church' that wafts our way as it must, we are little disturbed in our ways and our faith.

One does though slightly tremble at this edict that being 'pro-gay' is quite the thing, not the least as it implies any contrary stance to be 'anti-gay', which in these troubled times would seem as near unlawful as makes little difference. The 'If you're not with me then you're nicked' note is not cheering.

That then objection the first, as one might in Thomist mood opine. The other, perhaps more a matter of nuance though nonetheless significant, is that it as much imputes that one is not just for it but up for it even. As dear Fr. 'Pepper' Potts would say of his hierarchical people "Everything's forbidden until the day it becomes compulsory."

Am I thus to go about the place demanding of folk to know whether they be 'pro-gay'? Poor lambs, I can hear their bleating cries now: "Pro-gay Rector? Must I really? With my piles!"

Fat Tax - A Vindication...

Avid and intelligent readers of this place (qualities not incompatible I aver) will recall that some while hence H and I both asserted how sensible it would be if commercial enterprises would begin to lay an imposition on fat people for the cost to their businesses.

This was on the back of a silly suggestion that people who were obese should be paid to lose weight. Cash in hand no less for resisting the urge to stuff their faces with yet more meat pies etc.

We rebelled, did H and I, at such nonsense, proposing rather the more assertive notion that if being wilfully fat added to the burden of society - as it must - then due recompense should be exacted.

Hurrah now to discover that precisely this is to occur. At least two airlines - one American, one European - are to charge the fatties more for travelling on their aeroplanes. Quite right too. More space taken, more inconvenience to fellow passengers, more fuel consumed. Why not then a bob or two on the price?

Could indeed this be poor Alistair Darling's way out of our economic mess and misery? Forget a 50% tax on high earners, instead a body-weight tax on the fatties. If we're to talk 'green investment' as it seems doomed we are so to do, then let us begin.

Strikes me, mind you, that our Gordo has been looking a mite more podgy of late. Should we not start as we mean to go on?

"Let Them Eat Fibre..."

...how very handy. The NHS in Bristol has taken their time and our money to print leaflets advising the recently unemployed not to become despondent, but to eat plenty of fruit and veg and get a good night's sleep.

Alcoholic abstinence is urged, whilst brisk walks are advised - though not presumably to the pub - to stimulate the endorphins and 'make you feel energised and positive.'

"Taking care of yourself," we are wisely informed, "will help you to stay in good shape so you are able to cope well with life's difficulties. It will also prepare you for your return back to work when a job opportunity comes up."

Perfectly sound advice of course, bleeding obvious naturally. Play well with people about to lose their homes, whose lives are in meltdown? Possibly not.

Let them eat fibre indeed!