Robert McNeil: Six words that belie a saga of wild animals and savage acts of God

Published on Monday 23 March 2009 18:22

NO-ONE can be surprised to hear that a rabbit was living under the bonnet of Mr Tam Dalyell's car. Usually, right enough, the venerable Labour politician's bonnet (at least of the millinery variety) is a place inhabited by a bee, which buzzes uncontrollably in his cranial region whenever he contemplates the prospect of the Scotch controlling their own affairs.

But the fact that a dippy herbivore should have hung up the Dunhoppin' sign by the front of Tam's vehicle merely confirms the oddness of all that goes on at the Binns, Tam's hoose near that Linlithgow. It's a sinister place, as the following tale – told more fully here than in previous versions – attests.

One day, I was dumped at the end of his drive. It was the day after the devolution referendum, and my brief was simple. I was to poke him in the lapel and say: "Well, what do you think of that then?" I cannot remember why I'd had to cadge a lift but, anyway, I hoofed it up the long drive. There were so many doors and windaes in his hoose, I didn't know which one to knock on, so just tried a few at random. The place was as quiet as the grave. It's run by the National Trust but, even then, I couldn't find anybody in. So, I did what was often a feature of news reporting in those days: I stood about and waited. And waited.

I was a tad uncomfortable. The historic pile offered no outdoor lavatorial suite. Then, adding to my discomfort, I was attacked by peacocks.

When I say "attacked", I am laying it on a bit thick. They were young peacocks mainly, and seemed to find something edible on my trousers. I am a great spiller of food, and few of my shirts do not contain at least one indelible yellow splash from a roughly manhandled curry.

My troosers, too, are often streaked and spotted with comestibles, usually around the crotchular region to cause maximum embarrassment, for, yea, the Lord despises me and, lo, I abhor him too.

But these bimbos were pecking willy-nilly, from waist to turnup. There must have been something in the material. Then I remembered: the suit was made of millet seed.

No, only kidding. I don't know what it was, but these gaudy peabrains wouldn't let it go.

Then, to cap it all, the sky began to darken ominously and a deep chill permeated the air. I began to get distinctly uneasy. One of Tam's ancestors was Bluidy Tam, whose cruel ghost was said still to stalk Scotia. He'd done fairly sordid things to the Covenanters, poking them with implements and so forth, and was said to have played cards with the Devil. Did he haunt the Binns? Was that chill his presence? From where I stood, I could see the Forth bridges in the distance. Darker clouds and darker still massed there, then proceeded to head my way, like a meterological army from the gates of Hell.

Closer and closer they came. My knees started to knock, which set the peacocks off into a new frenzy, until the clouds came directly overhead and unleashed a vicious storm of hailstones oan ma heid.

Followed by the peacocks pecking at my breeks, I made for the inadequate shelter of a lintel over a doorway and, not for the first time, regretted not having taken up a career in life insurance or lion-taming: something regular and predictable. As soon as the storm cleared, I hotfooted it doon the drive, still pursued by the loony birdlife.

From somewhere, I secured a taxi to the train station. Back at the paper, I put together my story, with the readers little knowing the fearful experience that lay behind the innocuous observation that "Mr Dalyell was unavailable for comment".

Crushed between abs, eBay and burdz

AS EVERYTHING gets worse, I want to complain about two things that have become particularly rubbish. The first is eBay, the internet auction site where, back in the halcyon days of the now doomed "internet", one could pick up bargains from fellow citizens. Today, it's dominated by professional sellers, flogging mass-stocked items at a "Buy Now" price – ie, no auction at all – which is often dearer than available elsewhere on the wibbly web.

They also upgraded the site – to make it worse, in the traditional manner (you used always to be able to get a larger image of the item, for example, now you often cannot; you waste precious seconds waiting for a new window to open with a repeat of the image at exactly the same tiny size).

My other complaint concerns the classes offered at gymnasia. Nearly all of these are now called Bodysomething: Bodycombat, Bodyboxer, Bodypump, Bodyboke, Bodybatter, Bodybumble, and so on. And they're all aimed at women. The exercises are conducted to execrable disco music and are really just glorified dancing. No sane man, as Cicero said, will dance. However, if you look in the window at these classes you will always see the obligatory One Sad Bloke. I don't know what it's like in other cities but, in Edinburgh, this is the result of a by-law similar to the local council's "one nutter per bus" policy. No exercise class, ostensibly aimed at both sexes, can begin without the OSB.

There's nothing for men nowadays. Nearly every health story you read in papers and magazines is about women. Anything to do with employment: women. Leisure: women. Sex: women (with optional male accessory). It's all women, women, women. All men get are ridiculous magazines with the same front-page every time: How To Get Better Abs. Oh, stick your abs up your bottom! Yoga, that's another one: women.

Eventually, at my gym, I found one non-Bodybilge class but was told it was female-only, in order to encourage ethnic minority burdz whose blokes didn't like them mixing sweatily with other blokes. And the worst of it was: not one ethnic minority burd ever went to the class. Enough! It's time we had blokes-only classes, with no awful disco music, no ethnic barriers, no long T-shirts to cover fat butts, and no blinkin' Bodybaloney.