I wanna tell you a stoooory...

[Cyclefrance]

Todays 'short' from a previous existence:


Toads in the holes and similar matters of concern


There are a number of fondly nurtured British culinary delicacies that our friends across the pond might consider – such as 'bubble and squeak', 'pickled wallies', 'spotted dick', 'jam roly-poly', and 'rhubarb crumble' - to hopefully whet (split infinitive deliberately included as an opening gesture of friendship) and satisfy their collective appetites (literally and metaphorically)...

Yes, there are many strange English foods – strange not so much for their content, but more for their names. And I have left one of the best-known and the one that I remember (and eat) more than any other until last - toad-in-the-hole.

Aah, toad-in-the-hole (do you know, it's quite difficult putting/typing little hyphens in place of spaces, far more taxing than I'd ever imagined), English cuisine at its best!

But, that mention of ‘toad’ and ‘holes’ also got me laterally (and literally) thinking about the way we British take care of our wildlife, and, in particular, real, live toads. We will happily go to the expense of laying lengths of drainpipe horizontally across and under our highways so that amorous male toads may find their ways safely and securely to their reclining and sexily clad (well, to a male toad in any event) amoureuses (french pronunciation ignores the last 'es' to make it sound more like an attraction and less like a Birmingham accent - nothing personal Brummie readers - if there are any - it just happens to immediately fall into that regional drone, sorry, tone, if said as it appears).

So another type of toads in holes it is then (and I can forget the hyphens in this context, thank God), and, near my abode would you believe, badgers in tubes (not to be confused with old buggers on the tube - once came across one seemingly genteel old lady who boarded the London Underground (as ‘the tube’ is properly known) Victoria Line at Vauxhall and hissed at my (female) travelling companion for the next two stops - 'ssssssss, get off at Green Park, sssssssss' until my companion relented and gave snakey her seat, whereupon she smiled and said in normal voice' thank you dear, so kind...' - you might wonder why I didn't intervene, but I suffered a crisis of politeness - old lady or female companion - it's a tricky one, believe me), and big tubes they are, as you might expect, passing the complete eight carriageways width of the M25.

Can it really stop there, I began to wonder? For example do we want to offer foxes easy traverse of our highways and motorways (where are you off to then, Raynard?? - ' Oh just thought I'd take the tube over to Wilson’s farm, dearest, and say hello to the hens...!)? Perhaps not... but, if they don't have their own personalised cylindrical access, will they just muscle in on the badgers' ones instead (foxes can be like that I've heard)? A problem there it seems. Do toads sometimes happen across a badger tube and think 'my God, I've shrunk!', and then feel completely inadequate, unable to continue their journeys to waiting and clearly hot-to-trot (getting better/easier) females. Now, that's no good is it - potentially a major contributor to a declining toad population.

How should we deal with such misplaced trauma and the catastrophe it heralds for generations of wart producers? What of other creatures? Is there some strange method of communication between the species that stops, say, a squirrel going through the tube? How come hedgehogs (and rabbits!) never seem to realise they could use them too? You'd think with those splattered remains of their's all over the place they'd have cottoned on by now!

These are worrying times - and thoughts - as I am sure you will agree. Is there anything we can and should do to improve matters; to bring some sense of order to what I am sure constitutes an injection of chaos amongst nature's otherwise harmonious environment? Perhaps you have ideas? If you do that would be wonderful. Don't worry for an instant whether they may be borrowed or freshly conceived, just please do pass them on.


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