You're a Man If ...

But what is happening to people? Are they getting soft?

My grandmother and her daughter drowned the farm kittens. At birth,
into a sack a bucket of water and a brick on top. Now we have a multi
million pound industry for rescue and recuperation that attracts people
to rescue like moths to the flame.

I have been called by a woman in a field ten miles from here who discovered
a nest of bald pink rodents. What should she do? Who should she call?
Would I care to drive out and attend?
How about just covering them over with the earth that has been disturbed?
I suggested. "Eek!" she eeked. "What if something eats them?"

"Well" I empathised. "In one sense they ARE someone's dinner!"
"and what is more they may be more out there and dying pigeons and
all kinds of mortality its called NATURE just walk away (and resume rational life)!

The dippy models of the '60s, tottering home from the night-club prior to sleeping
until the late morning shoot, would constantly discover ailing pigeons in the 'areas'
of Knightsbridge snob blocks. "Squeak!" they squeaked. "What shall I do?"
"Why you must take it home and feed it! Lest I wring its neck or the expensive
pharmacological equivalent". They would return all runny mascara and wailing
"It shits all over my apartment and keeps waking me up. Waagh"!

They would agree to euthanasia faced with the stark reality of city pigeon prospects
and exhausted of the rescue fantasy, If they became philosophically haughty with me
I would point out the fate of the pigeon thousands in the London Parks and urge them
to throw up their careers and patrol!"

Last weekend on duty (a particularly frenetic one) was punctured by such requests.

Three able bodied men found saw a cat knocked over by a car. They carried it to a
phone booth and called the RSPCA. The duty Inspector (30 miles away) rang me
would I see it? "Of course!" I boasted "Ring " she went. "They say they cant move it!
"Will you go and give a pain killer?"

"Of course! Delighted. Tell them must wait with the cat until someone comes and injects
it and then returns after the injection works and transports the cat carefully here. About an hour in all.
You might, alternatively suggest that they scoop it up and get here immediately instead
of pratting about!"

She rang back "they are coming in straight away"

They did! They took a deep breath and held hands. The cat had a cracked pelvis
and a brass tag with its address. It is fine. "

But people are getting soft In the Vietnam horror many more soldiers became
battle casualties. The medical personnel largely did not.
After the Soho bombings of the Admiral Duncan Pub a number of the casualty
staff at the nearest Hospital have reported sick with PTSD! This is new!

Today a prison warder who guarded Rosemary West the serial murdering person
is suing the Crown for "stress and lack of counselling".

Are we getting soft? Are we getting dangerously soppy? Or is this the perfecting
of the loving, touchy feeling liberalisation of Humanity in which case can we afford it?

The women who raised me could dispatch, butcher and divinely cook any creature
that they could overpower manually. When we had a farm accident. a boy donated
a leg to the hay harvester, a cowman ran head down into a barbed wire fence,
a bull gored my stepfather - they ran with towels and whatever was needed and
succoured and saved without swooning and squeaking.

Then they had lost four children between them and got on with life.

They were brilliant women. Their shades stand behind me in judgement my deeds.

Writers drivel on about sex roles!

In my youth you were man if your womenfolk said you were!"

Copyright, Robin Walker 1999, all rights reserved

Replies:

The Lady and the Sewer Rat, by Robin Walker, 5/25/99

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