Read Online Holidays in Heck by P. J. O’Rourke - Free Book Online Page A

of chickens at a conference organized by Compassion in World Farming. . . . They are intelligent, sensitive characters.
    â€”
The Times
, March 31
    Nine New Forest firefighters were involved in freeing a frog from the spout of a watering can. A gardener took the trapped frog to the fire station. . . . It was released after half an hour’s vigorous cutting with a hacksaw.
    â€”
The Times
, March 28
    As for the well-being of people:
    A middle-aged teacher is starting a six-month jail sentence today because she decided to fight back against “yobs” with a pellet gun. Linda Walker, 47, . . . was being driven towards breaking point by groups of youth “terrorizing” her neighborhood. . . . She rushed out of her house at night to confront a knot of teenagers. . . . After an exchange of abuse . . . Mrs. Walker squared up to one 18-year-old, firing off several rounds from the [compressed air-powered] pistol into nearbyground. . . . Mrs. Walker was found guilty of affray and possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence.
    â€”
The Times
, March 30
    Of course, there’s always the possibility that barmy Britannia—or a certain political part of her—is crazy like a . . .
    The more aspects of life that can be moved from private reign to public realm, the better it is for politics. Politicians don’t exactly want to ban hunting or forbid shooting teen goons with BBs. Politicians just want to turn everything, right down to what the dog chases, into a political matter. And they’ve succeeded. The day I arrived in Britain Tony Blair was beginning his run for reelection. The campaign issue making headlines was school lunch menus.
    Ordinary people have ordinary knowledge: how to make things (including lunch), grow things, fix things, build things, and, for that matter, kill things. Politicians have extraordinary knowledge: how all things ought to be. Never mind that politicians do not, as it were, run with the hare
or
hunt with the hounds.
    All things ought to be, as far as I’m concerned, the way they were on Michael Thompson’s farm. When the dinner after the stag hunt was over, at one in the morning, Michael got up from the table and said, “I’m going to change my trousers and have a look at the lambing.”
    More than 1,000 of his ewes were giving or about to give birth. A vet comes with a portable machine and gives them sonograms—better service than yuppie moms get. If a ewe is having one lamb, she can be left on her own in the fields. But twins can confuse a ewe, especially if it’s her firstlambing. She may not know if both or either is hers. Michael went into a shed the size of a modest railroad station, where hundreds of sheep were in twenty or so pens. Then he climbed onto a wooden railing separating two banks of pens and, though he is seventy and had done as much justice to the wine at dinner as I had, walked the rail’s length looking for newborns. When he spotted a pair, Michael would jump among the sheep, hoist each lamb by a leg, and begin backing toward the pen’s gate. This would cause at first a few, then a couple, then, usually, just one of the ewes to follow him—the others dropping back with, frankly, sheepish looks as they (I guess) realized they hadn’t had any lambs yet. Then mother and children were put in a stall to bond.
    The lambs were still damp from birth, making their first steps, quad-toddling with each little hoof boxing the compass. They were adorable. Also, rather frequently, they were dead. Scores of dead lambs lay in the aisle of the lambing shed, nature being profligate with adorability. As man is. The living lambs would be dead soon enough. Delicious, too.
    Tempting to meditate on how vivid and real the lambing was compared with politics. Except that Michael’s farm is itself a political construct. Sheep farming is heavily subsidized in Great Britain. Without the subsidies the green grazing in the