a pot-bellied piglet in a local park
As most readers will be aware by now Prince Charles has taken over as president of the World Wildlife Fund.
I mention this because the annual barrage of charity material is already peppering the world's letter boxes.
The WWF thanks me for saving the snow leopard from extinction (I didn't know I had) and informs me that this particular big cat has never killed a human being. My reward is an advent calendar.
Recalling that Jesus himself is said to have driven evil spirits into a herd of pigs thereby forcing them to commit mass suicide, I sadly fail to make the connections between the manic hype of the Christmas season and the sorry and dreadful plight of the world's endangered species - of which Man, living ever more precariously and with the increasing threat of nuclear holocaust, could soon be one. UNSTABLE MINDS ARE RUNNING OUR AFFAIRS.
Perhaps the WWF deal is that animals deserve a Happy Christmas too?
Try entering 'Prince Charles in Galapagos Islands' in this blog's search box if you need some light relief.
Or below, an after hours poem for Padraic Colum*:-
The grunting of pigs
The grunting of pigs
waxes over your sleep
the moon climbs high
3 o'clock you wake up
people pass by
laughing
shouting
and coughing
the moon climbs high
a cellar door slams.
The squealing of pigs
waxes over your sleep
6 o'clock you wake up
people pass by
the jingling
of harness
the rolling of barrels
a cellar door slams
the moon falls down.
______
gw2011/
*Colum assisted James Joyce with the transcription of Finnegans Wake
I do know what you mean Gwilym. The trouble is that if you do choose to give to a charity at Christmas then they continue to bombard you year after year with requests.
ReplyDeleteAnd "bombard" ia an APT WORD.
ReplyDeleteI must admit that I can't really believe it is because they spend so much (it can be up to 40%) of your donation on "expenses" e.g. fly first class around the world to international meetings, stay in the best hotels and invest money in lucrative offshore accounts for a rainy day etc.. but some insiders and whistleblowers do claim it is so . . .