Firearms review - Four Barrels Good!

In his guest post, Montague Steeplethorpe delights in the versatility and sheer destructive force of the latest offering from a famous York gunsmith.

Because the proprietors of every safari park we contacted were so bloody unsporting, we have been unable to test the manufacturer's claim that the 'Carnagecaster X-13 Jubilee Special Edition' can indeed stop a charging rhino in its tracks.  We can, however, confirm with authority that it is quite capable of stopping a speeding Honda Civic quite effectively, with our shot taking out first the engine block, the speaker system and finally, in a rather spectacular fashion, the petrol tank.  To that extent it is judged rather more effective than the flashing 'watch your speed' sign that was previously the sole deterrent in the village to the idiot youth who had made a habit of driving through the village with no regard for the speed limit, the safety of others or indeed that anyone else may not share his appalling musical tastes.

Other experiments proved that the Carnagecaster is equally effective against badgers, deer, duck, poachers and, on one unfortunate occasion, a very surprised cow that made the mistake of startling me.  I can also report that engaging 'panic mode' when unprepared, causing all four barrels to discharge simultaneously, until ammunition is spent or the thing overheats and explodes, results in the effective vaporisation of whatever you were pointing at at the time (in this case an unoccupied - one hopes - caravan), a dislocated shoulder and a short spell in hospital being fussed over by nurses.  Hearing returns in two to three days, preceded by a not un-musical ringing.  Any facial hair will return in time.

The Carnagecaster is such an impressive example of the art of the gunmaker that merely slipping it out of its case to give it a polish, as I did last week in a crowded train, had the effect of silencing the entire carriage with the exception of a few stifled sobs.  It is unusual but gratifying to see craftsmanship still move the travelling public, who I presume are working class, to tears.

And no wonder.  The detailing on the Carnagecaster is quite superb, and a great deal of thought has gone into its design.  For instance there is a sturdy rubberised grip at the end of the barrels meaning that when ammunition is exhausted, it can be wielded as an effective club.  That is of course if you have not decided to affix the optional 'Neptune' three pronged bayonet (which is also excellent, by the way, for digging potatoes).

Much has been made of the Carnagecaster's versatility, and rightly so.  Quad-barrelled shotguns have been with us for some time, but the Carnagecaster is one of the very few to allow different types of ammunition to be fired either singularly or simultaneously.  For my trial I elected a mostly straightforward combination.  Top left, a simple steel shot for game, manual load.  Top right, once again a straightforward choice for the rifle barrel, 'deerpopper 500' shells in a magazine of 20.  At Christmas of course, one can switch to the variety with the explosive tip, commonly known as 'red misters' for their effect on their surprised target.

Bottom left, always a popular choice, a blend of charcoal enriched iron shot and white phosphorous.  This is, I have found, useful not only for hunting at night, illuminating the target for a brief instant before cooking it, but is a remarkable deterrent against poachers.  The cartridges are belt fed but for the field come in a drum of a dozen, with one 'up the spout'.  Ask your munitions man for 'a baker's dozen gypsy candles' and he should be able to sort you out.

Bottom right, described by the manufacturer as the 'ordinance option'.  A somewhat difficult choice.  Originally I went with the 'Helmand hello!', a solid tungsten bolt used to blow the doors of opium traffickers off their hinges over there, before finally settling on another favourite from that part of the world; Depleted Uranium.  Manual load.  If you have to use more than one, you are advised to improve your aim.

The Carnagecaster offers excellent value for money (POA from Pressers & Co. of York), demonstrates that it is possible to be a master of all trades and ensures you are prepared for most rural challenges.

Austenmania

Last Sunday I spent a very pleasant hour reclining, listening to a fantastic BBC Radio 4 adaption of 'Pride and Prejudice'.  Hats, and bonnets, off to all involved, including what I am sure is a quite marvellous cast, who, wonderful though they were, merely provided a soundtrack to mental images populated by the cast of the 1995 BBC adaption featuring Colin Firth's wet shirt in a BAFTA award winning role as best supporting garment (informally known as 'the golden girdle').
Just what will be required to ever remove that particular adaption from the nation's collective memory is uncertain, although any future adaptions would do well to feature 3D, or dinosaurs.   Probably though, there's simply no chance of any subsequent version of the story unseating Andrew Davies's version as the definitive pride and prejudice.  It's certainly better than even the one written by Jane Austen, what with hers not being on telly and everything but instead being a print version, and apparently not even available on Kindle, initially.
Maybe it just aired at the right time.  Looking at it, the BBC obviously had access to sackful of loot, each episode obviously costing the sort of money it takes to run a Premiership football team for a week today.
It's easy to see how these adaptions might have an effect on impressionable young women.  Chaps may choose to invest wisely in, say, collectible replicas such as sonic screwdrivers, or limited edition DVDs.  Wise purchases to be sure, until you get a girlfriend and treasured possessions move from artfully lit shelves to boxes under the bed, on top of the cupboard or, in extreme circumstances, to being listed on eBay.  This is a particularly crippling way to part with a purchase as it reveals that the limited edition replica you shelled out a fortune for, one of only 10,000, is practically worthless.
Girls, one imagines, can get 'bonnet-fever' and indeed programmes such as 'Lost in Austen' and films like 'Austenland' have identified this as enough of a trend to wring a series or a feature film out of.
What, as a concerned parent, should one do - if anything - if your daughter shows signs of excessive Austen-mania, such as sighing, wearing bonnets, attending church and sitting in the front room embroidering.
First and foremost, you should just be grateful she's not self harming or reading the ''Twilight' books.  But if it all gets a bit too much, for instance her refusing to attend school as she is convinced that appearing too educated will put men off and prevent her from making a good marriage, then it's time to mount an intervention.
Do not be tempted to take the 'so you tried a cigarette, let's smoke the entire pack and see how you feel then' approach.  Last Christmas I happened across the 1995 adaption being aired, all six episodes back to back, and that was the rest of the day taken care of, and it was fantastic.  No, you need to, in a safe and unthreatening way, shock the hell out of her by showing what happens when people take these sorts of things to extremes.
Start with the blog of anyone who enjoys spending their weekends attending civil war reenactments.  Then visit the blogs of their children, who will point out that while their mates were going to Disneyland and Centre Parcs, their own holidays from eight to eighteen years of age consisted of touring various battlefields, dressing up, and being skewered by a pike before learning that the actual battle took place in the next postcode but hey ho there's always next year.  And lots of mud.  Just google 'resentful teens' and set your filter for 'period costume' (not, as many think, hot water bottles strapped fore and aft and a sweatshirt with ice-cam down the front of it, but usually something with a hat featuring a plume).
Such examples can serve as timely warnings that it's great to be enthusiastic about your hobbies and history, but that if you are having a screaming argument with another adult about the correct pronunciation of 'epaulette'  in relation to British army uniforms during the Peninsular war, it's time to either go for a beer, or complete that PhD.
Austen is seductive.  Which is ironic, given how repressed everyone is.  Who wouldn't want to inhabit a world where the men are handsome and wear very, very tight trousers and are rich, and wear tight trousers and everyone goes to balls, which you can see, because of, well, you know.
One can see how one would want to retreat from a complicated world into a selectively idealised past of balls and bonnets, but beware taking things too far.  How far is too far?  Easy - it's three bonnets.  One for everyday, one for best, that's all the bonnets anyone ever needs.  If you have three bonnets, seek help, or eBay, at once.

Technology today - The Social Knotwork

As anyone who has put two steaks and a jar of bovril in a blender, then hit the 'blend like fuck!' button in an attempt to make a meat smoothie will know, technology is a marvellous thing but in the wrong hands it can be messy.  See also, smart-bombs.  The problem with the democratisation of technology, of putting more computing power than took man to the moon into a mobile 'phone, is that that technology is now in the hands of idiots rather than astronauts, who use it to sodcast tinny tedious music choices to a public who are devoutly wishing that the mobile 'phone owner was indeed in deep space, preferably without the benefit of a space suit, and where famously no one can hear you scream, nor presumably hear Rizzle Kicks played through a Lillyputian PA.

The use of technology can also have unintended consequences.  Social networking sites were probably not invented by peodos to allow them to groom children.  The socially responsible original intention of sites like 'Friends Reunited' was, I seem to recall, to wreck formally happy marriages by putting ex-boyfriends and girlfriends back in touch.  The only pictures of schoolchildren on Friends Reunited in the early days showed them sporting flares and a nylon tee shirt, and any peado arranging to meet with one on the basis of their photograph would be justly surprised when a 47 year old accountant turned up, no longer sporting the choirboy outfit, or full head of hair, that originally captured the predator's attention.

As social networks moved from connecting you with people you knew to people you didn't know but shared an interest in hob-nobs with to, via the arrival of Twitter, connecting you with people off the telly, one wonders if the next obvious step as we all carry our computers round with us now is going to be to put us in touch with people who may share some of our interests and may be sitting in the same coffee shop.  Perhaps an app that uses a personality quiz and a list of your top dozen interests, combined with an honest assessment of 'how desperate are you to make friends?' with a scale of Robinson Crusoe to Not Really could let you know if like-minded ugly socially awkward people are nearby.

To really take off, of course, it's going to need Google glass, so it can guide you to these people and you an see if they are as attractive in real life as that photograph of them wearing that choirboy outfit on their profile page would have you believe.

The flip side is that this might encourage others to talk to you.  Cyber stalking is a truly first world problem, especially if you don't guard your privacy and deactivate those real time location updates.  Essentially, if somebody you have been avoiding sends you a message reading 'I see you're in the knicker aisle at M&S', it's time to go offline for a while.

Going after net nuisances can be problematic.  A few years ago, tiring of e mails from associates of the apparently countless deposed members of royal families in Africa who were keen to send me oodles of loot in return for only my bank account details, I tinkered with the notion of replying to these would be benefactors instead of simply deleting and continuing my daily routine of looking for diverting porn. 

My reply would read that this was an automatic reply, generated by 'Microsoft Curseware 2009 Beta', that the recipient was immediately and irrevocably cursed upon reading the first line of the e mail and that the curse itself was encrypted in the body of the e mail.

I never had the guts to try it.  On sober reflection, it's cruel and actually fairly irresponsible.  Also, I have read enough horror stories to know that these things invariably backfire.  But more than that I was always worried that if some poor sod in an e sweatshop in Nigeria read my e mail and then had a freak accident, possibly involving a goat falling on him or something equally newsworthy to net nerds, suddenly I'd be the bad guy.

Nature Notes - The feast of St Jude

A perhaps unintended consequence of improvements to long term weather forecasting is that the ever-speculative rolling news is now able to report news stories before they have even happened. 

So it was that when the Met Office started talking about fronts, wind and amber warnings, the weather forecasters suddenly found themselves not just tacked on after the news, but popping up during it.  At last, a chance to sit at the big shiny desk, not just hover in front of a bloody big map of the UK wondering idly where Droitwich is.

As the isobars pushed closer together than the boobs of a bird in a wonder-bra, salivation television began.  Two days in advance of the savage storm, we were left in no doubt that you should not travel on the day of the storm, nor should you go out without an unsecured wig, and that if you have pets, you should staple them to the floor.  Anything up to a pony.  Essentially, unless you were down a mine the weekend of the storm, you could expect trouble.

Actually, the weather forecasters earned their money.  The storm arrived as scheduled, was pretty intense and some damage was done, with branches down and travel disruption (that old chestnut of leaves on the line, except this time they were still attached to the tree).  But people were prepared, that was the key, those that would not be able to travel into work were able to make sure they had panic-bought DVDs and Xbox games to keep themselves amused.

The big concern was the ‘storm surge’, as the wind drove the sea onshore.  So terrifying was this prospect that many immediately took to the sea front armed with their mobile to take what would be, by the look of some of those waves, their most exciting selfie ever and quite possibly the last one they would ever take on their non-waterproof ‘phone.

And of course the storm was reported ahead of time, in real time and in the aftermath.  Because it was concentrated in the south of England, it received blanket media coverage, with even the strongest hair care products being tested to the limits as BBC reporters got a bit blown about.  Personally, it’s the squirrels I feel sorry for.

Professionals

Visiting a different part of the city, it’s increasingly obvious that different areas are home to different tribes.  For instance, in the City itself, you get an awful lot of people and bicycles.  This is not, I suspect, because they can’t afford the bus fare.  Looking at the bikes and the freshness of the lycra that these people sport as they pass in a day-glo swoosh, this is a two-wheeled tribe that have decided that public transport is simply not for them, possibly because they do not wish to become contaminated with poor.

Then there are men who look normal, except on their feet they have trainers in clown-shoe colours with soles of a thickness that would not look out of place in the glam rock era.  That’s right.  Men.  Wearing trainers to work.  What next, lip balm and hair conditioner?

The City is home to Professionals, making their way to work with the same sort of purposeful intent you see insects exhibiting in nature documentaries. 

Traditionally the definition of a professional is somebody who gets paid for what they do but lately I’ve been thinking that there’s more to it than that.  A mini-cab driver is paid for their work, but so is Lewis Hamilton and I know which of the two better defines the term ‘professional driver’.  Of course, this does not mean that you would want Lewis Hamilton as your mini-cab driver, as his habit of stopping for new tyres three times every trip might prove inconvenient, as might his habit of grabbing his fare’s bottle of fizz, shaking it up and spraying it all over the place every time he dropped somebody off at a party.

Roughly, only 3% of people who get paid to do something are expert enough in it to be called ‘professional’ in the true sense of the word.  Normally, the deficiencies of the remaining 97% go unnoticed because they work in HR, or B&Q, or somewhere else with initials instead of a name.

Hence, I propose that the definition for professional be: somebody who earns enough to afford a pool and a hot partner, or can change a fucking till roll unaided.

Lawyers are a good example of multi-tiered professionalism.  For reasons far too dull to go into I’ve been wandering past the Old Bailey on a regular basis recently and, because the only thing I dislike more than huge corporations are bloody protestors trying to tell me where to drink my coffee, I’ve been popping into Starbucks for my java and really, really, enjoying it (secret recipe: full fat milk, one shot of Big Coffee and a pinch of guilt).

Obviously, there is the standard issue Man With A Beard writing something on his Apple Mac but in the Starbucks near the Old Bailey you also get trios of lawyers clustered round those little tables the size of mushrooms.  One has a laptop, one has a file, one has a mobile, all three have worried expressions and no wonder, in twenty minutes they are due in court and this is their prep.  There is evidence of muffin consumption.

Meanwhile, and example of the REAL professional was already standing outside the Court.  She has adopted the ‘pissed off raven’ look that all successful female barristers acquire when they reach the tipping point of assurance in their profession, with wig, gown and black tights it’s a look they lifted from Patricia Hodge in ‘Rumpole’ but have made their own with the simple addition of a fag.  Yes, while the boys and girls are in Starbucks drinking latte and green tea, the real deal is having their breakfast Benson & Hedges without even smirching the slash of red lipstick that proves they can be a successful lawyer and a woman too. 

This then is the lawyer you want if you’re in a tight spot.  The Starbucks Three are not the team you want defending you if you are facing a ten stretch being banged up in a cell with someone they call ‘The Fairy With The Enormous Cock’.  If you’re in trouble, you want your lawyers at the very least to be a) pounding fags and espresso or b) from off telly.

Nature Notes - Dogsitting

When I agreed to dog-sit my sister’s sprocker (springer/cocker cross) and springer, my first action was to scour the web for gundog training aids.  The dogs are, it’s fair to say, unrivalled as treat-seeking furry missiles but I wanted to see whaat they could do with something aa bit more interesting than a distressed tennis ball.

There are many gundog training aids, from realistic looking stuffed birds to the basic bean bags that I went for.  The bean bag is designed to let your dog learn how to carry a bird without ripping it to bloody feathery shreds and it’s fair to say that they were something of a hit.  Essentially they are nylon socks that are incredibly robust, with a lanyard at one end.  This allows the owner to pick up what very quickly becomes a muddy, drooly training aid, give it a couple of twirls and then slingshot it across the field with an over-excited dog in hot pursuit.  Repeat until your arm falls off.

The only moment when I questioned whether the bean bag was a good idea was when, after a particularly hearty throw, neither I nor the dogs could find the damn thing.  It was eventually discovered hanging from a tree branch.  Obviously, if it had had a treat sewn into the lining, the dogs would have been on it in an instant.

It’s not that they are greedy, although they can sometimes appear to emulate Greyfriar’s Bobby in their unswerving devotion to sitting beside the kitchen cupboard where their treats are kept (much in the same way that I will linger near a beer fridge), but they are proof positive that food can be used as a training aid.  In this case, they have both learned where the smacko’s are kept.

The golden rule of throwing the dummy was never to toss it anywhere where you couldn’t see it land.  The dogs are tenacious in their pursuit of the dummies and won’t let small things like ponds, or sudden drops , put them off.

There is an art to throwing the dummy, and an art to getting the damn thing off of the dogs once they have retrieved it.  This involves just the right amount of cajoling and shouting and, if all else fails, bribing them with a treat.

Now all I need to find is a fluorescent pheasant and the dogs will be ready for action.  With advances in GM food being made the way they are, I’m confident I won’t have long to wait.

The Pope - one year on

A year ago the Pope shocked the world by being just about the only world leader not to use Twitter to make an important announcement – he’s off!

Pope news!  The Pope announced he is to retire.  This came as something of a shocking surprise for, well, absolutely everybody, as the firm belief held by all was that Popes were supposed to expire rather than retire.  Following the announcement there was a lot of speculation about why the Pope had taken this unusual red-shoed step.  The common reason; being able to spend more time with your grandchildren, does not apply in this case and, if that is the real reason, is unlikely to form part of any official press release from the Vatican.

The announcement allowed the media to do what they increasingly love to do most of all, which is look up the entry for the subject they are reporting on Wikipedia so that we don’t have to, rephrase it to avoid copyright infringement, don’t bother with a fact check because in this case the more outlandlish the reported fact the more likely it is to be true, and then broadcast it.  There was also  endless speculation, especially about who the new Pope will be.  Let’s be clear, speculation is simply gossip distributed by people wearing ties.

The most intense speculation was about whether the new Pope will be ‘non European’.  ‘Non European’ means coming from either Africa or South America and is possibly newspeak for ‘Black’.  One could tell from the way the newsreaders said the phrase that they were not sure about it, is it a racial slur, or just a quick way to describe somebody not of European heritage?  Safe bet is that if it is the latter, then it’s the former too but hey, who’s got the time to say ‘from Africa or South America’ and, if you do, is it ‘Africa or South America’ or ‘South America or Africa’?  Better to just say ‘foreign’ and nod meaningfully, like you would if you were in a pub in the home counties.

An African or South American Pope would, apparently, have been a big deal, but hardly a surprise.  Whilst Europe has lurched towards secularism, mostly as a result of smirking smart-arses writing the word ‘Jedi’ next to ‘Religion?’ on their census form and thinking themselves positively Wildeian, Roman Catholicism is very much a strong force in the emerging religious markets of Africa and South America (or South America or Africa depending on your geographical bias).  This is because they are both full of developing countries where the promise of a better afterlife, possibly including meat for dinner three times a week and a whole month going by without some ghastly ethnic violence or natural disaster, is very attractive.  No wonder these places like religion, it’s just like the old testament.

Of course, the real reason that the Pope decided to step down was probably connected to Twitter.  It’s one thing to get a news report, every day, that another person in your organisation is a peado, it’s quite another to have to face it when you fire up Twitter because you just have to retweet that link to a hilarious Youhootube clip of an squirrel and a row of vodka shots, and find that are the subject of quite a number of messages referring to you as ‘kiddifiddler in chief’.  

When you’re Pope and find out that in addition to having fewer followers than Stephen Fry you get droves of unfollowers every time another peadopriest is exposed, it can get a bit wearing.  

For any figure of authority, Twitter should be treated like a toxic substance, that it is the source of a cavalcade of condemnation is the polite way to put it.  The reality is that if you attract the ire of Twitter, a river of shit meets a tide of abuse and, accordingly, surfing is unpleasant.

Being Pope is, I suspect, something of a thankless task.  It’s something that you take on once you are past retirement age (like a job at B&Q but without the benefit of nicking stuff to supplement your wages) and you get the blame for everything and the credit for nothing.  It’s unfair, and unkind, to expect somebody to work until they drop, not even B&Q do that, officially.  

The art of the loaf

The art of loafing is nothing to do with twisting some seeds into your dough, calling the result ‘rustic’ and charging three quid for it, rather, it is dedication to relaxation.

Not that I have anything against work, industry and achievement, as long as it’s done properly, for instance the production of traction engines rather than the industrialisation of penguin genocide.

Don’t worry, this is not going to be another bloody post extolling the virtues of the shed.  But I will just point out that, generally, anything produced in a shed is likely to improve the world.  Brass clockwork novelty delights are made in sheds.  Destructive ideologies are not.  They, like bummers, are made in prison cells or public schools.  Workshops too turn out useful components and a number of workshops combined can turn out, for instance, charming cars.

Things start to go wrong when you industrialise on a factory scale, because not long after you get fed up with all the whinging and move production somewhere with a far more relaxed attitude to the minimum wage, where quality control can be enforced through the occasional execution.  The downside to this is that your workers will occasionally either try to smuggle themselves out of the country in the boot of the car they have just built, or record an impassioned plea for better conditions on the ‘phone they are boxing up.

The British Empire was, of course, founded on outsourcing and foreign labour.  We exported the British brand, and the pox, around the world and imported all sorts in return, like a lingering sense of entitlement and assumption that everyone should speak English.

Actual work can be measured thusly: do you start with a task that has measurable goals?  Do you end with a sense of a job well done and a well deserved pint?  Then that’s work.  Anything else is just dicking around.

In the twenty first century, it’s getting harder to relax.  Otherwise, why would there be a whole industry dedicated to helping us do so?  Time was, relaxing was easy.  You toiled until you were shaky with fatigue then drank cider until you were lying down.  Uncomplicated. 

Now, we think we are relaxing when we are in fact not.  For instance, sitting in front of the television might be considered by some to be a form of relaxation.  And it is, if you are watching a DVD of; a flickering fire, a lady playing the harp or a blank screen.  Anything else is too much stimulation.  Soaps now frequently end not just with a drum roll and an actor holding an expression in a manner unencountered in real life outside of anyone pictured straining for a shit, but with a help line for people affected by issues.  And ‘documentaries’ that are ostensively intended to make us feel better about ourselves by chronicling the dysfunctional lives of those with for instance amusing mental health issues, an addiction to biscuits, being fucking clueless about how to organise a wedding, a predilection for acts of self pollution involving Pot Noodle or just being chavs, simply result in the viewer being made to feel simultaneously uncomfortable and sad.

Mobile ‘phones have put an end to the micro-loaf, those few minutes where one might reasonably be expected to not think about very much at all.  No bugger looks out of train windows any more, they are all either playing games or updating their status to from ‘on platform’ to ‘on train’.

Loafing takes effort.  First off, you need a free afternoon in the week.  Then, you need to get into your pyjama trousers AND to be comfortable answering the door in them if required.  Then, you need find somewhere comfortable to lie horizontally that is not a bed.  Finally, you need to go through all the tedious things you should be doing instead, and realise that they are either not that urgent, not that important, or will be so much better achieved after a rest.

After a while, you will wake up.  With luck, the light will have drained from the sky meaning a) your attire is socially acceptable and b) you can now uncork dinner and move to phase two: unwinding.

Nature Notes - Catquisition

‘Catnapping’ is such an ugly, emotive word, don’t you think?  That’s why what happened over the bank holiday weekend can much better be described as ‘catquisition’. 

Simply put, we seem to have acquired a cat.  Over the past few weeks we had noticed that the neighbour’s cat was asleep on the roof of our shed, then on the garden furniture.  How it crept steadily closer to the house like some sort of amazingly lazy stop-motion amble I’m not sure, because prior to this weekend I had never seen the thing awake, never mind moving.  Then at the weekend I was walking through the kitchen, stepped over the sleeping cat, got myself a drink and walked out again, once more stepping over the cat.  The cat, it would appear, had decided that the back door being open was an invitation to spend some time out of the hot sun sprawled on a cool kitchen floor.

The morality of this is quite straightforward, it is obviously wrong to steal somebody else’s’ cat.  But is it wrong to, well, offer them a bowl of water on a hot day?  The golden rule was that we would never ever feed the cat.  That evening, we were explaining to our guests round a crowded dinner table over the traditional blackened meat barbeque feast why there was a cat perched next to one of their children, being stroked and purring like an exceptionally contented outdoor motor.  Wine flowed and conversation progressed, the cat, as cats do, wandered around a bit, circulating.  We were explaining the golden rule when one of the guests, who had been bending over in his chair, straightened up with something of a guilty expression, and half a sausage in his hand.

I freely admit that until this point, most of my knowledge of cats came from Tom & Jerry cartoons so, sure, keep them away from frying-pan wielding mice, bulldogs and sassy black maids with brooms, but now that the cat had tasted free range pork sausage, I thought I had better learn a bit more, starting with are cats allergic to free range pork sausage. In case you are wondering, they are not, although they do get very agitated if you try and take their free range pork sausage away from them, but then so do I.  

Balls!

'Fast ball!  Fast ball!  Fast ball!'

Ah, the Six Nations.  Good because it’s rugby, good because it’s a major tournament, great because it’s one of the rare sporting events that is broadcast on the BBC.  If Sky and ESPN continue their domination of sports broadcasting, the only sporting choice left to those too tight to pay to watch their team perform disappointingly is going to be Little League and fights in pub car parks.

The thing about the Six Nations is that one starts the tournament with such high expectations and, because it is stretched out over a number of weeks, it takes a while for those hopes to be crushed.

'One can’t help but feel that cricket might be improved if the batsman occasionally 

chased the bowler around the pitch with his bat in response to irresponsible bowling'

There is also spectacle.  At Murrayfield they have a piper and a field gun, presumably to keep order if Scotland actually score a try.  There are the anthems, everybody singing, everybody crying.  There’s also the ever present threat of a bit of off-the-ball action, which is what a punch-up between players is referred to as.  This is not the sort of behaviour one would expect to see from professional sportsmen, although one can’t help but feel that cricket might be improved if the batsman occasionally chased the bowler around the pitch with his bat in response to irresponsible bowling.

The downside to watching the Six Nations is the commentary.  For some strange reason, the BBC’s rugby commentary team seem to be afflicted with a disproportionate number of old women.  Not that I have anything against old women, old women are lovely, it’s just that when an ex-rugby player is being unswervingly negative about a team who, whatever their performance, are sweating and bleeding and steaming in the driving rain in order to win the game, it does rather detract from one’s enjoyment.

This is the year though, when I add social media to the mix.  Have you ever watched a sporting event whilst following it simultaneously on Twitter?  It’s fantastic.  It’s like going to the cinema, watching a film and having everyone talking at once, sharing their ill-informed opinions and giving advice to the characters, all in neat little soundbites, but in real time and with the added bonus that there is plenty of ‘off-the-ball’ action between Twitterers (Twonkers?  Twypers?) who do not share the same opinion.

Following Twitter and watching telly has been something of a short-term craze for me this past week.  Once you get into it, it’s hard to stop until you have a breakthrough moment that you’ve seen it all before and, actually, it’s not adding to your enjoyment of ‘Bargain Hunt’ as much as you thought it might.

It is a great idea, real time updates on social media from people who are having the same experience that you are.  Like with so many great tech ideas though, it’s the execution that lets it down.  That and the users.

Because what you are really looking for is somebody to make amusingly cruel comments that add another layer of enjoyment to whatever you are watching.  There’s even an app that allows you to filter social media comments about live television and, in the short term, it is gigglesome but in the long term depressing that so many people are at home at five thirty on a Saturday night watching ‘Jurassic Park’ in their pyjamas.  That’s my thing, that’s not your thing, alright?

I’ve been in a stadium watching a rugby match as part of a social network known as a ‘crowd’ and the comments are, generally, kept to a minimum of ‘ooooh’, ‘ahhhh’ and ‘fast ball!’, which seems to get shouted an awful lot, along with hints and tips and advice for the players and the ref.  These do not, generally, make for good tweets.  Mind you, neither do the things actually being tweeted.

So I’m just going to assume that a live sporting occasion is a shared experience without relying on any actual evidence, and I am going to go on believing that the sort of people who tweet really do have better things to do on a Saturday night than watch ‘Jurassic Park'

in their pyjamas.

They are wrong, of course, there is no better way to spend your Saturday night.