“Did you wee in a jug last night, Dad?”
“Er, no – I forgot.”
“Mum’s gonna be cross with you! You better remember!” [adopts faux hypnotist voice] “Weeeeee iiiiiiin a juuuuuuug! Yooooooo wiiill remeeeeeeeember! Weeeeeeee iiiiiiin a jug!”
“Isn’t it time you brushed your teeth?”
It’s the foxes, see. They are bold as brass round our way. One night I was coming home late from a meeting, Killing Joke’s “Bloodsport” blaring out of my discman, when this huge behemouth, about waist height, just strolled past me. I half expected it to say “awright?” and give me a nod.
There was a TV programme about urban foxes where I live earlier this year. My neighbours (well not my neighbours, they lived over the other side of the area, in the posh bit) were suffering.
A posh lady had decided to keep chickens – “We’re trying to be GREEN! You understand? Trying to live with nature.” How more natural do you want to be? Human keeps chickens, fox kills chickens and eats them. It’s all part of the great cycle of life. “Nature” as Alan Watts once pointed out “is an eating competition”. She didn’t see it that way. To her it was an outrage that she would go to all the trouble of keeping chickens and then they might get snuffed out for someone else’s dinner.
[This photo is by my old friend Words, who runs a site called permuted.org which includes an amazing urban fox resource and gallery. I didn’t actually know that until I used google image search to find a nice photo for this entry. What a great find!]
Another couple featured in the programme took an insanely prurient interest in foxes fucking outside their house at night. I mean, yeah, it’s not a pleasant noise or anything (and can be a bit disorientating when they wake you up) but is there really a need to stay up and watch them at it – with night-vision goggles?
There was more huffing and puffing and outrage that animals might impinge on the peace and quiet of, uh, inner London. I swear I’m not making this next bit up. The bloke bought a gun to try and get rid of the foxes. Because if there is one thing Hackney needs more of, it’s sexually repressed blokes with guns, right? How safe would YOU feel with a neighbour like that, coming home late from the pub one night (Killing Joke on your headphones…)
So anyway, I digress. The foxes round our way have been digging up our plants. Apparently the solution to this is to surround said plants with the urine of a human male. I happen to be the only human male in our household, so the task falls to me.
At least that was my excuse last night when my neighbour bumped into me on the walkway whilst I was a carrying a warm jug of piss.
