Gruts

BBC: Cats suffer stress, experts say
Cats can suffer from stress-related illness like humans, a study by animal experts suggests.

Good.

Guardian: Ali, Beckham and Thatcher sketch and scribble for charity

…The drawings are part of a project masterminded by Mr Greig [editor of Tatler magazine] to raise money for a London charity for the homeless, the 999 Club. He sent a number of artists, politicians, writers and sportsmen a miniature leather-bound book, a couple of centimetres tall, and asked them to fill it. The results will be auctioned, with proceeds going to the charity, on Monday.

Lady Thatcher wrote out her "lady's not for turning" speech. Paul McCartney was sent a vegetarian-friendly book, with a binding of acrylic-coated cloth, in which he wrote out the lyrics to Hey Jude, and provided a cheery scribble of a grateful cow, captioned with the word "Ta".

…Mr Greig said: "The biggest surprise is that everyone did it. The most popular British artists, the greatest American pop icon, the greatest and only surviving Beatle…"

Ahem. I think you'll find Paul McCartney isn't the only surviving Beatle, Mr Greig. Are you sure you're not confusing Ringo Starr with Yasser Arafat (who's not been looking too well recently)?

BBC: Town pardons executed "witches"
Dozens of "witches" executed in a Scottish town more than 400 years ago are to be pardoned to mark Halloween. Prestonpans, in East Lothian, will grant the pardons under ancient feudal powers which are about to disappear. Descendants and namesakes of the 81 people executed are expected to attend Sunday's ceremony. More than 3,500 Scots, mainly women, were executed during the Reformation, for crimes such as owning a black cat and brewing up home-made remedies.

Or, to put it another way, innocent people tried, sentenced and executed on trumped-up charges are to be forgiven by the descendents of their persecutors.

Has anyone else noticed it's the 21st Century?

(Mind you, I'm all for executing cat-owners.)

OK, now I'm totally confused:

BBC: Cup of tea may help boost memory
Drinking regular cups of tea could help improve your memory, research suggests. A team from Newcastle University found green and black tea inhibited the activity of key enzymes in the brain associated with memory. The researchers hope their findings, published in Phytotherapy Research, may lead to the development of a new treatment for Alzheimer's Disease.

What on Earth is going on? I thought tea was supposed to increase my chances of getting Altzheimer's Disease, not help me fight it. I distinctly remember them saying so a couple of years ago (about the same time they were harping on about mercury in my dental fillings, and fluoride in my tap water). Something to do with aluminium, if memory serves. Yes, that's right, it was aluminium from my kettle that was going to make me go senile. I remember thinking, why are they picking on tea, when I also use my kettle to make coffee? But apparently some tea already had aluminium in it, making it a far greater threat to my mind than other hot beverages.

But now tea is good for you, apparently. I reckon these scientists have been drinking a bit too much of the stuff (or maybe not enough, according to which scientist you choose to listen to).

It's like potatoes. Remember when potatoes were an absolute no-no? I certainly do. And the people who said so weren't just talking about chips; they meant potatoes in any form. Full of nasty carbohydrates that would make you go fat, you see… But now potatoes are good for us, and everyone is going on high-carb' diets to lose weight!

And let's not forget the alcohol. Alcohol is bad for us, right? But now they're telling us beer and red wine (and whisky, I hope) are actually quite good for us 'in moderation' (whatever the hell that means). Which, come to think of it, is exactly what my grandmother used to tell me: "Everything in moderation, Derek!" she used to say, as she poured herself another sweet sherry.

Mind you, Grandma also used to tell me that eating toast crusts would make my hair grow curly (even though I didn't particularly want to have curly hair). She also warned me that, if I carried on pulling that face, and the wind changed direction, it would stick like that. Which just goes to show that, when it comes to scientific matters, Grandmas are not always the most reliable pundits.

And what about masturbation? Admittedly, Grandma never broached that particular subject, but others used to say it would make you go blind and send your soul spiralling into the fiery furnace. But now so-called experts claim it protects you against cancer.

They'll be telling us cigarettes are bad for us next.

Jen and I spent yesterday morning helping our farmer friend bring some cattle down from the moors for the winter.

Even though cows are fairly big, the moors in question are considerably bigger, so it took us over two hours just to find the cattle. They had split into two groups, so, while Jen and the farmer drove the larger group two miles back through the bogs to the farm, I decided to go after the smaller group on my own. But when I returned to the hilltop where I had seen them grazing about half an hour earlier, they had buggered off. I couldn't find them anywhere.

Then I remembered a Ray Mears TV programme from a couple of weeks back, and I had a cunning plan: I decided to return to the spot where the cattle had been grazing and try to follow their tracks. And you'll never guess: it only bloody worked! There were hundreds of hoof-prints on the hillside, but I reasoned that the freshest ones would be the ones that hadn't filled with water, so I followed the tracks about a quarter of a mile and found the cattle hiding below a ridge. Tonto, eat your heart out!

Then there was only the small matter of getting the nine cattle to walk the two miles or so to the farm. As I was doing this, I decided to invent some names for what I had now started to think of as my cows. Here are the rather clever names I came up with (with apologies to Peter McGrath):

• Black Bastard
• Other Black Bastard
• Brown Bastard
• Brown-and-White Bastard
• Black Bastard's Calf
• Other Black Bastard's Calf
• Brown Bastard's Calf
• Brown-and-White Bastard's Calf
• Lame Bastard

The way I saw it, these cattle are closely related, so they should all have the same surname.

Q: What do you call a bird with a tedious job?
A: A drudgerigar.

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!