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Authors: Jeremy Clarkson
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in Mallorca, or Devon, or Cornwall, and having a lovely time, and I was consumed with a jealous rage. Why wasn’t I there, too? Kids, you know; they don’t grow up twice.
By June I was absolutely knackered. By July I think I was starting to go a bit doolally, and by last week, after three months without a break, I’d had enough. So I made my mind up. I would go home from the last shoot on Sunday and I would retire.
I began to long for it; dream about what I’d do. And what I would do, mostly, is absolutely nothing at all. It became
all-consuming, to the point that I was counting the hours until it was all over – something I hadn’t done since double physics with Dr Jones back in 1975.
And then the day came. I woke at seven and went downstairs, without shaving, and I read the papers until about eight, when I had a good stretch and made another cup of coffee. Then I was bored.
I decided to look in the fridge but it was empty, so with absolutely nothing to do, I read the business section of the papers, even though I had no idea what any of it meant. By ten, I was so desperate that I was reading the
Daily Mail
and trying to understand why it had published a picture of Kelly Brook. I failed, so I went to look in the fridge again. Then I looked out of the window.
As the clock ticked round to midday, I thought it would be nice to meet friends for lunch. But they were either away on business or on holiday. My children? That was a no, too. They were all too busy with 600 of their closest personal friends.
I thought then that I’d have a wander round the garden to see if anything needed doing. And I found a tree that needed planting. ‘Excellent,’ I thought. ‘That will keep me busy for ages.’ And I was right.
It took me a full fifteen minutes to find the gardener and another six to explain what I wanted. Then I had another look in the fridge to see if perhaps there was a cold sausage that I’d missed earlier.
There wasn’t, so I went for a walk to see how things were getting along on my farm. I noticed immediately that the barley was ripe, or medium rare, or whatever it is when barley’s ready for harvesting. So I rang the farmer and asked him to fire up the combine. Then I went home again and, because no cold chicken had hatched in my fridge, I tuned in to a programme hosted by a man with a bright orange face in which
people tried to sell stuff they’d found in their attic. Apparently, many retired people watch this, and after half an hour most determine that it’s better to be dead, so they have a stroke. I didn’t want a stroke, so I decided immediately to start a hobby.
But what? I dislike golfers, I am to DIY what Nicholas Witchell is to cage fighting, and I happen to know you can’t put a ship in a bottle using the only tool that I can wield with any confidence – a hammer.
Undaunted, though, I came up with the best pastime in the history of man. What you do is find an aerosol tin of spray adhesive, such as you would use to stick posters to a wall. You then lie in wait and when a wasp flies by, you leap out and give it a squirt. Bingo. One minute it’s flying; the next it’s tumbling silently out of the sky with a confused look on its stupid little face.
I realize that these days you get into terrible trouble if you say you’ve shot a baboon in the lung but this is different. Because there are not millions of baboons flying around in your garden, ruining any attempt to sit outside and have lunch. Baboons don’t sting you for fun, either. And anyway, gluing a wasp together in mid-air requires patience and skill and gives the creature a sporting chance.
Plus, putting a paralysed wasp in the bin while shouting, ‘Ha. Now what are you going to do, you little bastard?’ is much less cruel than enticing it into a jam jar and letting it suffocate in a pile of its mates’ corpses.
In fact, I shouldn’t be surprised if the RSPCA doesn’t give me a medal or a certificate of some kind.
The only
By June I was absolutely knackered. By July I think I was starting to go a bit doolally, and by last week, after three months without a break, I’d had enough. So I made my mind up. I would go home from the last shoot on Sunday and I would retire.
I began to long for it; dream about what I’d do. And what I would do, mostly, is absolutely nothing at all. It became
all-consuming, to the point that I was counting the hours until it was all over – something I hadn’t done since double physics with Dr Jones back in 1975.
And then the day came. I woke at seven and went downstairs, without shaving, and I read the papers until about eight, when I had a good stretch and made another cup of coffee. Then I was bored.
I decided to look in the fridge but it was empty, so with absolutely nothing to do, I read the business section of the papers, even though I had no idea what any of it meant. By ten, I was so desperate that I was reading the
Daily Mail
and trying to understand why it had published a picture of Kelly Brook. I failed, so I went to look in the fridge again. Then I looked out of the window.
As the clock ticked round to midday, I thought it would be nice to meet friends for lunch. But they were either away on business or on holiday. My children? That was a no, too. They were all too busy with 600 of their closest personal friends.
I thought then that I’d have a wander round the garden to see if anything needed doing. And I found a tree that needed planting. ‘Excellent,’ I thought. ‘That will keep me busy for ages.’ And I was right.
It took me a full fifteen minutes to find the gardener and another six to explain what I wanted. Then I had another look in the fridge to see if perhaps there was a cold sausage that I’d missed earlier.
There wasn’t, so I went for a walk to see how things were getting along on my farm. I noticed immediately that the barley was ripe, or medium rare, or whatever it is when barley’s ready for harvesting. So I rang the farmer and asked him to fire up the combine. Then I went home again and, because no cold chicken had hatched in my fridge, I tuned in to a programme hosted by a man with a bright orange face in which
people tried to sell stuff they’d found in their attic. Apparently, many retired people watch this, and after half an hour most determine that it’s better to be dead, so they have a stroke. I didn’t want a stroke, so I decided immediately to start a hobby.
But what? I dislike golfers, I am to DIY what Nicholas Witchell is to cage fighting, and I happen to know you can’t put a ship in a bottle using the only tool that I can wield with any confidence – a hammer.
Undaunted, though, I came up with the best pastime in the history of man. What you do is find an aerosol tin of spray adhesive, such as you would use to stick posters to a wall. You then lie in wait and when a wasp flies by, you leap out and give it a squirt. Bingo. One minute it’s flying; the next it’s tumbling silently out of the sky with a confused look on its stupid little face.
I realize that these days you get into terrible trouble if you say you’ve shot a baboon in the lung but this is different. Because there are not millions of baboons flying around in your garden, ruining any attempt to sit outside and have lunch. Baboons don’t sting you for fun, either. And anyway, gluing a wasp together in mid-air requires patience and skill and gives the creature a sporting chance.
Plus, putting a paralysed wasp in the bin while shouting, ‘Ha. Now what are you going to do, you little bastard?’ is much less cruel than enticing it into a jam jar and letting it suffocate in a pile of its mates’ corpses.
In fact, I shouldn’t be surprised if the RSPCA doesn’t give me a medal or a certificate of some kind.
The only
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