Hey, lay off the boar.
So, there are boar in the UK these days. I just knew it. After centuries of what someone, who knows a lot better than we do what a true wilderness is, termed ‘a completely tamed ecosystem’, some clueless twat at university had the bright idea to reintroduce large predators and other dangerous animals into it.
And people wonder why I agree with Paul Calf about students …
The ones round here are not really dangerous ̶u̶n̶l̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶’̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶t̶u̶p̶i̶d̶ ̶y̶a̶p̶p̶y̶ ̶d̶o̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶o̶u̶g̶h̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶l̶e̶a̶d̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶i̶t̶’̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶w̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶o̶w̶n̶e̶r̶’̶s̶ ̶h̶o̶u̶s̶e̶.
Yes. They. Are.
The clue is in the name: Wild Boar.
In fact, there are two clues in that name:
- Wild
- Boar
Even I know that, and I’m a citydweller.
Even domesticated pets … like rotweilers or dobermans … can be dangerous, never mind a wild animal with lethal tusks evolved for the sole purpose of eviscerating other dangerous wild animals before they can do it to the possessor of said tusks first.
You just haven’t been gored by one yet, is all.
I’ve had some very sensible conversations with boar…
Along the lines of “Please, don’t gore me to death. Here, have my food, whilst I run away”, I take it — that’s the only sensible conversation I can imagine having with a boar.
There are, in fact, only two ‘conversations’ one can have with wild boar:
- “Oh, my fucksie, I didn’t see you there. Please, don’t kill me! What can I distract you with whilst I leg it?”
- “Hello? HELLO!!! I’m over here and have often wondered what being gored to death by a wild boar feels like!”
Anything else is just a variation on one of those themes, likely involving elements of “OhshitohshitsohshitI’mafuckingidiotIshouldn’thavedcomehereI’vegototrunohfuckohfuckohfuckit’sfasterthanme…”
But, by that stage, the ‘conversation’ (or ‘verbal suicide note’ as it is more accurately termed) has transformed into more of a monologue really, so it’s a bit of a stretch to suggest that there’s really any kind of conversation as such that one can have with boar.
much more sensible than some people I know. They certainly wouldn’t have voted for the current government.
Oh, dear … where to even start …
As I have pointed out before, the problem with Douglas Adams’ idea of sending the useless eaters off into space is that the laws of Nature dictate that, one day, genetic drift within the species will result in one being born with sufficient intelligence to examine the wreckage of the ship they crash-landed in, work out what it was, replicate it … and the buggers will come back!
This law of the Universe dictates that it must also happen here, on Earth, too.
So, the fact that you are one such example of it doesn’t actually prove much, does it? You might not be limited to a timeshare on a braincell … you might even have more than one braincell to rub together … but that says nothing about the other denizens of the godforsaken Zone 3 hellhole you are obliged to call home.
So, the fact that wild boar would not have voted for the current government isn’t really saying much, is it?
This isn’t me, by the way. I don’t have a selfie of me chatting,
That is clearly evidenced by the fact that you are still here … not gored to death, like the demented fool in the photo was shortly after it was taken.
boar don’t like mobile phones much.
I don’t like mobile phones much … I’m just obliged to have one by virtue of the fact that I am not wealthy enough to escape the idiocracy within which I find myself obliged to live.
Boar aren’t sensible for not having mobile phones, they’re just lucky, If I had tusks like they do, I wouldn’t have one either. If I had tusks like that and people said to me “You must have a mobile phone to take part in our society”, I would reply with “See my tusks …” and they would be all like “I take your point” (to which I would respond with “Quite.”)
If you want to take photos of them you either have to bribe them with food
What did I say?
(Or are you hinting the woman in the photo wasn’t suicidal but was actually bait?)
or wear camoflage & keep very still for a very long time.
I rest my case.
Bears may well be a different thing. There hasn’t been one round here since 1889 — see http://www.deanweb.info/history5.html — and even then they got the bad end of the deal.
Interesting.
In a “I’m morbidly fascinated and can’t tear my eyes from the vista of horror” kinda way.
RUARDEAN is a village and parish, 6 miles south from Ross, 9 north-east from Monmouth, 6 north-east from Coleford station on the Hereford, Ross and Gloucester railway, 2½ from Kerne Bridge and 119 from London, in the Western division of the county, hundred of Saint Briavels, county court district and union of Ross, rural deanery of South Forest, archdeaconry of Gloucester and diocese of Gloucester and Bristol, situated on the Herefordshire border and bounded on the west by the river Wye.
What?
If my eyes hadn’t glazed over as soon as I saw the word ‘village’, they certainly would’ve done after ‘parish’. It doesn’t matter how many times I re-read it, I know the word ‘diocese’ is in there somewhere, along with ‘archdeaconry’, but I just can’t see either of them, let alone remember what order they occur in, because my brain’s failsafe mechanism kicks in and refuses to let me do it to myself … (my eyes glaze over and it’s just a blur of text that I cannot recall no matter how many times I read it) … to prevent my large intestine from leaping straight up through my neck and throttling it.
Just show me the fucking Wikipedia entry — I’ll look on the map there.
Seriously, all the page needs to say is “Situated perilously close to Wales — see Wikipedia for more detail, if you’re desperately bored and/or looking for something to tip you over the edge and give you the courage to finally end your life as you realise that nihilists are insanely optimistic.”
Who killed the bears?
Dear God.
Someone needs to talk to the PR Department and tell them that
“The last time anything at all noteworthy … not interesting, just noteworthy … happened in this godforsaken dump was over 130 years ago — that’s right, more than a century-and-a-quarter.”
… is not a fact they should be advertising to the World at large, if they want to encourage new blood into the area.
Seriously …
Nothing … nothing … says “webbed feet, hare lips and one enormous eyebrow between them” louder than
Seventy five years after the brutal killing of two performing bears in the Forest of Dean the villagers of Ruardean and Cinderford are still accusing each other of the crime.
And as for Dennis Potter being inspired to write ‘A Beast with Two Backs’ (broadcast in 1968, as part of the Wednesday Play series by the BBC), well, look …
- Is it any wonder that he’d be inspired to pen a cautionary tale about the perils of inbreeding? Ruardean has got it all: a population of twelve in a hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere for hundreds of years — what better exemplar of the horror of that could there be!?
- It was the late ’60s-to-’70s … the trend at the time was for ‘kitchen sink drama’ with suffocating plots taking place in suffocating environments, draining the reader/viewer of the will to live (if they even had any ²).
It has often been claimed that the men involved in this incident were not from Ruardean. Unfortunately census and gaol records now available end that speculation.
First of all, this is not confirmed by Wikipedia. Is the person who wrote this a fifth columnist … or, perhaps, a descendent of one of the people … from Cinderford, wreaking some twisted vengeance of the kind that lurks in the hearts of those with fuck all else to occupy them their entire, wretched, existence? Doubtless, perspiring minds want, even now, to know and this should probably be cleared up before there’s some kind of incident that, unfortunately, means that there’ll be a new entry on the website and/or Wikipedia as a result — meaning that the dreadful carbuncle on the backside of the planet doesn’t, mercifully, fade into obscurity after the last of its Morlock inhabitants dies.
Secondly, who investigated and determined this? I need to avoid them at social gatherings.
I shall not bother to mention the long list of people whose only contribution to the history of the place appears to have been that they were born there and, subsequently might have left or, equally, might have stayed — it’s just too dreary for words (I never even found out if whatshisface Horlick is the same Horlick who produced the drink no-one alive today remembers ever having tasted, it was that long ago and that generation has long since died, it was so interminably long and dull a story and I just gave up in despair).
The tale of Fanny Bennett, however … I notice there is no opprobrium directed at Charles Bennet, without whose stipulation that he continue being a c*untryman after death, none of her later children need have been killed.
Mind you, maybe he was worried the evil witch might poison him, if she thought she’d inherit without any contingencies. Maybe she was a bitch and he thought he’d spare any poor sap foolish enough to fall for her wiles the misfortune that would accompany his marrying her by making it impossible to do so. I mean, the fact that she wouldn’t marry the idiot but preferred to keep the house doesn’t speak well of her. Although, on the other hand, maybe it was because she figured they could be as happy together with a roof over their heads as not and to Hell with outmoded custom that served no woman’s interests.
Who knows, but … given this is the first thing to have happened in the entire history of the place that wasn’t simply yet another entry in the long litany of people doing absolutely nothing even as pitifully less banal than ‘born, lived, died’ as did she … maybe Ruardean owes him a debt of gratitude for being the catalyst for it?
I don’t know … and, frankly, I don’t give a toss either. All I care about is the fact that the most … again, noteworthy (if it can even be called that) rather than interesting … thing to happen in Ruardean besides some dancing bears passing through a very long time ago indeed, took place all but two centuries ago and that it took nearly fifty years for the bears to come along afterwards … that you could’ve lived and died there and the most interesting thing that would’ve happened would’ve been not only mindnumbingly boring in and of itself but have happened before you were even born … that nothing even that boring happened in your lifetime … and that, since eighteen-eighty-fucking-nine, nothing … absolutely nothing … even as wristslittingly tedious as the bears has happened there.
“The Horlicks factory in Stoke Poges Lane is today described as perhaps the most beautiful historical industrial building still standing in Slough.”
Dear Lord, take me now!
Have you seen Slough?
Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
Ruardean Castle?
Ruardean pile of rocks more like!
Is that where the local youth hang(s) out?
It’s no good … I just, as they say, can’t …
It’s been fun … and not altogether uninteresting … learning about Ruardean. But there are limits to what even I can draw from its shallow well (and genepuddle) for the purposes of entertainment and humour — I’m noted for my stamina and doggedness but there comes a point where even I cry from exhaustion (and I haven’t cried, for any reason, since 2001! ³)
Suffice it to say that I remain unconvinced that wild boar do not present a real and present danger to anyone idiotic enough to approach a wild animal known for its dangerous tusks, bad temper and habit of hunting in packs.
—
¹ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uTALssbCsA
² It’s bad enough outside London (or equivalent metropolis) today, never mind back then!
³ I’ve been ambulantly catatonic a few times, but I haven’t cried … not even from exhaustion — which tells you a lot about Ruardean.
