EL CHEEKY STOAT

'Scuse me while I shake/shiver me little furry bod free (flea) of water like a dog fresh in from the rain.....
There you go. Nice out, isn't it?
( "Yes, now put it back in again " - Eric Morecambe.)

So we're all off to a flying start this 2008 heh? I sense waves of January joy and optimism flooding the land along with the record deluges.
A couple of items to increase our mirth in the form of stoat observations the past day or three.....

Nice try by Lady Diana's ex butler to paint the Duke of Edinburgh and the rest of the parasitic royals in a typically fawning light at the inquest the other day...(what a crawler that man is.)
"Prince Philip would have been highly unlikely to have described Dodi Fayed as an oily bed hopper"

Is that right Paul? ( and looking a bit oily yourself there, if you don't mind my saying.)

Not ten years ago the Prince of Royal Darkness was in fact pulled up short by the media during a trip to the Great Wall of China, when a reporter overheard him describe the Chinese as a " bunch of slitty eyed dog eating peasants".
Leopards & spots there methinks, your highness!

Meantime up in Jordy land like, the re-appointment of Kev'" I'd luv it if we beat 'em " Keegan as new Magpies manager evokes a mass collective intake of breath.
Talk about Forward to the Past!

The Yorkshire tea boy talks a great game, but when it comes to pressure situations he has tended to droop with performance-related anxiety. Even as a player he used to dribble quite a bit before he shot

Wee Keegan's famed hollow blustering at its best. Second only in the windbag stakes to Neil " Well Allright!!!" Kinnock the pillock.

" The fans must have patience" is his opening line to the long-suffering Toon army.
I have a stoaty feeling in my fur-lined slug & field mouse-filled gut that that's going to be the understatement of the year, our Kev'.

Meantimes yet more glad tidings from the NHS with new stat's citing 17,000 more patient deaths per annum caused by "failings in the system" than in any of the other 5 top Euro countries surveyed.

As the song goes.... Ehhhhhhmigration time COME ON!TM

Meantime every time I have switched on me ol' 5 " B & W beat-up portable battery driven Sanyo telly I dragged fromp't local skip recently, there are moving images of zillions of starlings silhouetted against miserable dusk skylines, doing their acrobatic synchronized swarm performances.
Alright, its interesting, but not that ferkin' interesting - except maybe for a hungry stoat..

Hmm yes, suddenly those "small to medium-sized passerine birds'" ( luv me Wikipedia) with their speckled and insect shell-shiny plumage have assumed a new interest.

For I have never ripped up and munched on one of these...yum

The Common Starling - somewhat under-appreciated.

So hows about a " Starling Appreciation Week "?
I'll second that!

CHEEKY STOAT