Brush with fame

Bridget Jones is going to send me an email next week*.  How do I know this?  Because she wrote to Robert Pattinson to tell him, silly. 

 I am sure you can imagine my surprise when a link to the afore-pictured blog turned up in my Google alerts late last night.

*No she isn't. If she emails anyone, it will be the literary agent who shares my name. Still,it gave me a bit of a start. 

Animal Trafficking is Absolutely Not Funny

Except it sort of is, when the media report it.  Take the story of Jeffrey Lendrum, who was jailed yesterday for trying to smuggle 14 peregrine falcon eggs (£70,000 worth) from Birmingham to Dubai. 

First he told police they were normal hen eggs which he had bought from Waitrose. I suppose if I was ever going to pretend to have picked up seventy grand's worth of rare eggs from a supermarket, Waitrose is the one I would choose too.  But then again that's exactly the the kind of detail I would overlook, causing my defence to come tumbling down around my ankles.  It's probably just as well I'm not a master criminal.

(Some reports are suggesting that one of the eggs really was a hen egg, which Lendrum  had coloured in so it looked like the others. This was meant to act as some kind of elaborate decoy, apparently. I don't think it worked.)

Next he claimed he had taped the eggs to his body because he had a bad back, and a physiotherapist had told him that strapping something fragile to his stomach would encourage the muscles to tense up.  I am no medical expert, but this sounds a bit dodgy to me.  Besides, there are plenty of things which are cheaper, more fragile and less likely, when crushed, to explode in a mass of oozing yolk than peregrine falcon eggs are.  Snow globes.  Fortune cookies. Chinese lanterns.  The possibilities are endless, and a lot less messy.

Something else which would probably make the average person's stomach muscles tense up, at least a bit, is finding yourself at the centre of an investigation being conducted by the West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit.  Which, coincidentally, is exactly what happened next.  The CTU got involved after John Struczynski*, a cleaner at Birmingham Airport, noticed Ledrum spending an unusual length of time in the VIP lounge shower, and raised the alarm. Mr Struczynski (who in my head looks exactly like Bennedict Cumberbatch) became suspicious when he noticed a) the shower stall was still dry and b) there were some empty egg cartons in the nearby bins.  He called CTU, they investigated Mr Ledrum, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The good news is that 11 out of 14 of the eggs were incubated succesfully, by a bird breeder called Mr Featherstone.  That's right, Featherstone.  Sometimes the jokes just write themselves. Some have already hatched. 

Until Mr Featherstone could collect the eggs, CTU officers kept them warm by storing them on top of their computers.  A CTU spokesman said "This isn't part of our normal business but we are pleased with outcome."  I always wondered why, in eight series of 24, Jack Bauer didn't get a single animal smuggling storyline.  (I can see it now: I promise I will return you to your natural habitat, if it's the last thing I do.  I give you MY WORD.)  Now I know.

That's not all from the world of international animal trafficking.   The Sky News website helpfuly displays similar stories at the bottom of their news articles, and you'd be surprised how often people try and do things like this.  Similar stories to today's include:  Wriggling snakes strapped to smuggler (good example of the power of adjectives; take out the 'wriggling' and it's hardly worth a mention), Frozen sharks stuffed with cocaine and my favourite, Man held over birds in his trousers.

Just quickly: the snake man was caught out because he also had a tarantula in his bag, which was discovered during a routine customs check. "Customs officers quickly realised the man was smuggling animals because his whole body was in constant motion." says Sky News. One of the customs officers chipped in: "He told us he was crazy about reptiles".

Meanwhile, here is a photo of the man with birds in his pants:

He is not wearing the pants here.  He was caught because an inspector noticed bird droppings and feathers on his socks, and bird tails poking out of his trousers.




*I had to read 4 different versions of the story, plus a press release, to find out his name even though he is clearly the hero of the piece.  Big up John Struczynski, I say.

Girl Talk

The internet thinks I'm a man. Well, not the whole internet; just one website, which analyses a web page and guesses whether it was written by a man or a woman. And not all of me, just 57%.   I suppose this is what happens when you blog about such manly topics as sharks, oil tycoons and largely overlooked but brilliant mechanics.  And, er, Rick Astley.

I can't decide whether to be slightly alarmed by this result, or to be proud of the fact that I'm not conforming to gender stereotypes. I'm leaning towards the latter; while I don't belong to the "life is too short to stuff a mushroom" or the "all men are morons" schools of feminism (I like canapes and my male friends far too much for either philosophy to stick), I'm hardly a card carrying member of the girly girls club either.  Far from it, in fact. 

Mainly I'm curious as to how the analysis works.  Which topics are on the "girly" list? Would I have to be writing about shoes, beauty products and the many, many failings of men before anyone noticed the distinct lack of y chromosones around these parts?  Or would a softer, less obvious choice of topics work - puppies, maybe? Recipes for cake? Perhaps all I need to do to shift the balance is keep my insightful opinions about Formula One and other major sporting events close to my chest?

The irony* is, I have just spent the afternoon engaged in an uncharacteristic flurry of toe-curlingly stereotypical, "girly" activities. In a blatant attempt to CONTROL THE INTERNET, I am going to tell you about them.  They included some or all of the following:

Painting my toenails for an unprecedented second time in one month.  Or, now I think about it, year.  Possibly even life-time.

Washing my hair, not once, but twice; the second after an unfortunate, sit-com style mix up between a container of leave-in hair conditioner and a remarkably similar looking container of foot deodorising spray (note: sit-com style mix ups are a lot less funny in real life)

Having a major wardrobe crisis, which is still not over. (This is a crisis of the "Why don't I have anything to wear? WHY WHY  WHY?" variety, not the Janet Jackson one, although given one of the dresses on my short-list, the latter is a distinct possibility.  Watch this space.).

Discovering a tube of "eye-repositioning cream" in my bathroom. I have no idea what this is, what I am meant to do with it, or where it came from. I also can't help thinking: is this how Picasso got started?  (If I was a (stereotypical) man, surely I would have applied this cream with reckless abandon, enjoying the adrenelin rush which came with not quite knowing whether my eyes were going to end up near my knees or down around my ankles. I did not; instead I put it carefully back in the cupboard.)

Applying one of those face masks which, if you are starring in a romantic comedy and wearing a white bathrobe makes you look endearingly sweet and kooky, but which in real life makes you look like a sea-monster.  Even with the white bathrobe.  This particular mask was one of the ones which once dried has to be peeled off in the style of a Scooby-Doo villain, magically removing, if the packet is to be believed, a layer of dead skin and all manner of pore-clogging goop in the process.  Resisting the urge to mutter "I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you medling kids" as I removed it remains my crowning achievement of the day.

I could go on.  But I won't, mainly because  I'm curious to find out how much difference this post has made to those percentages.  Also, there is a particular reason for this afternoon of girlishness. And it's not just that I am looking for excuses to avoid sorting out my tax, although my toenails have been a handy distraction in that regard. 

The truth is, I am off out somewhere. Am I going to tell you where, or who with? I am not. 
We women need to maintain a sense of mystery once in a while.

*(I use the term irony with some caution, but given this scenario passes my mental litmus test, namely "does it feature in the lyrics of an Alanis Morissette song? If the answer is no then it's probably ironic", I think I'm OK.)

---Update---- : It still thinks I'm a man, but percentage maleness has dropped from 57% to 54%.  Which is a start, I suppose.  I'm off to curl my eye-lashes now.