The View from the Hill on Tuesday 8th June

I finished my audio book yesterday whilst traveling to Lincoln via Sturton Le Steeple (never been there before) and this meant I was forced to listen to the radio - You and Yours on Radio 4 was about Retirement and Nursing Homes and as I have already picked out my choice for both my parents and in-laws, I had no need of the information they were sharing.

On twiddling the knob, I found myself in the world of Jeremy Vine - and what a world it is.

They started out talking about the children attacked by a fox in London - including contributions from animal rescue workers, a retired farmer and a man who keeps several of the animals as pets.
There was also a reporter who was obviously standing outside the house where the attack occurred, describing in very severe tones what she believed had happened and reporting how the mother had been escorted to the hospital through the throng of reporters - and that she was wearing a stripy top!

Why was there a throng of reporters I wondered? Were they all from the Daily Mail and will todays headlines read something like - This would never have happened if we hadn't banned hunting!

Meanwhile the reporter intoned how pest control had caught the fox and it had been humanely destroyed...Vine quickly asked "was it the same fox"? The reporter went quiet for a second before commenting that obviously there was no way of knowing.

Where were the CSI team, they could have made sure that the real offender was in custody but no - we just start killing foxes because they are all killers!

There was a man who rang in to say that he had lost millions of chickens over the years to killer foxes, that foxes had picked the locks on a secure barn and basically butchered his chickens and then painted rude graffiti on the walls bragging of how they would come back and dig up his cabbages too!

Luckily some sanity was restored with the man who kept pet foxes, he reported how they were better than dogs because they like to nibble his ears!

So, that was half an hour of Jeremy Vine - luckily I then arrived at my destination and when I came out of the appointment I was keeping they were talking about a council taking an overweight dog from it's owners - didn't ask what they did with overweight children?

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Then old Mother Flipper-Flopper jumped out of bed,
Out of the window she cocked her head,
Crying, "John, John! The gray goose is gone,
And the fox is on the town-o, town-o, town-o!"
Crying, "John, John! The gray goose is gone,
And the fox is on the town-o!"

The Fox - Peter Paul and Mary