I appear to be suffering from an acute case of karmic consequences. Our Christmas turkey was brought around by Colin and Petra with a sock over its head, because they couldn’t bear to look it in the eye. It put up one hell of a fight, which was hardly surprising since it was engaged in a battle for its life, necessitating immense effort on my part to hold it down and prevent the kitchen looking like an abatoir; and I think I damaged ligaments in both shoulders doing this while my assistant (or was I the assistant?) administered the coup de grace. I had forgotten that that ludicrous wedge of solid breast meat was pure muscle.

Glad to have found the explanation of my aching arms and shoulders, I celebrated by climbing the chicken tree and catching the latest crowing cockerel who was quickly dispatched and cooked in Moroccan style.

Needless to say, we all played football with the head afterwards.

Quoted by the Times:

Kerry Packer had already experienced eight heart attacks and after one of them, while playing polo in Sydney, the Australian media magnate technically “died” on October 7, 1990. His heart stopped beating for seven minutes before he was revived.

The experience did nothing to change Packer’s robust, if tenuous grip on life. “I’ve been to the other side”, he said. “And let me tell you, there’s nothing there”.

Maybe a colour change?

Concerning Larium:

www.upi.com/inc/view.php?StoryID=20030221-111929-7532r

Also:

“… my friend just got back from india. she was given, before the trip, some medication called larium, a popluar anti-malrial pill taken weekly. it has very few side effects, but she and her friends on the trip only experienced one- incredibly vivid dreams. in fact, on all the searches ive done about it, vivid dreams is listed as a side efect on them all. my freind had one so intense about an elephant trying to squash her, she rolled off the bed. they all can tell me nearly all of thier dreams, its crazy. anyone experince this med, becuase i think id like to take some, just in case the terrorists strike nyc with malaria. u never know. and if they dont, ill just be having dreams like wild acid trips on a nightly basis. thooughts? i know taking anything to dream seems dumb, but this isnt a hallucinagen, and isnt particularly harmful in any way. larium.”

When Bill Bryson first arrived in England about a quarter of a century ago, landing in Dover on a boat from France in the middle of the night, he slept on a park bench because none of the bed and breakfasts were open. Crawling off to a newsagents in the early morning to buy something to eat, the first thing he saw was a newspaper hoarding being put out with the legend:

“England collapse against Pakistan”.

He had no idea what this meant; but it certainly sounded portentous.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

A jolly time was had by all:

And here we were, the day before, at Melbourne Road:

Toiling at the nursery, I was surprised by a rat jumping out from behind a sheet of plastic I was heaving at, and I leaped backwards, only to trip over a piece of farm machinary and land face downwards in the mire.

I hadn’t felt any pain but somehow my shin had connected with something sharp and was exposed to the bone, looking a bit like the flapping open end of a dead chicken. There wasn’t much blood, but I thought it might come gushing out any moment, so I clamped the two inch long flaps shut with my manure encrusted hands and hopped off to seek first aid.

Now I’m laid up, with all and sundry peering at my wound and wondering when it’s going to become infected. For my part, the pain and inconvenience make me glad it wasn’t worse. I mean, the way that machinery looked, if I’d fallen slightly differently, my leg could have been snapped like a Twiglet.