They showed this photo on the news last night. And I thought; ‘wow! a bird giving a… a something a lift; brilliant! Nature is so symbiotic and wonderful; ain’t life (other than cup finals) fabulous’. That’s what I thought. And it all happened in Essex. Which really should have at least made me question the ‘loveliness’ of it.

An amateur photographer happened to be in a park in Hornchurch (near Romford, the car theft centre of the world) and all it took was 1/250th of a second for him to achieve ever-lasting fame and the eyes of the world.

The bird, a green woodpecker, just like wot I get in my garden on my bird-feeder, for which I charge the birds a fee, has what turns out to be a weasel riding pillion. And weasels, like many in Essex, turn out to be not very nice. They are the smallest and most voracious carnivores on the planet. They eat their own body-weight in meat every 3 hours (I made that up), just like I did in Argentina. But they kill their meat themselves. Rather viciously. So this ‘friendly’ woodpecker is actually scared shitless which, according to the News, you can see if you look at its face. Yeah, right. The weasel had jumped on its back to kill it. Bastard weasels!!! And in a fit of reflex/panic/good thinking (??) the woodpecker just took off, with rodent still attached as sort of ‘carry-on luggage’.

Unlike the scorpion in the famous tale of stinging the turtle taking him across the river because ‘its his nature’, the hugging weasel here realised that killing the bird might give him some landing problems so he stopped the murdering process for the duration of the flight. Apparently the bird actually got away in the end and lived. Ahhhhhhhh.

Unlike Dave Mackay, who died on Monday.

The great Scotsman, and there are few who can carry that title, was one of Spurs most wonderful superstars. Not for him the glory of the strikers, though he scored plenty. Not for him the silky skills of a Hoddle or Ardiles, though skill he indeed had. Dave was a Hard Man. Perhaps the Hardest of them all. And an inspirational and fearless Captain who drove his teams on from the front, by example, by his fierce determination and presence. And a gentleman to the end.

Rest in Peace, Dave Mackay, who gave Spurs fans so much to be thankful for. When ‘we only won in black-and-white’, it was Dave who made it so.

Happy respectful Wednesday

A xxxx