An enthusiastic member of the Spies reported a driver to the police for carrying in his car a tiger, which turned out to be what our American cousins call a ‘plushie’. Details from the Ambush Predator.
The police did not prosecute the would-be informant for wasting their time, despite his having asserted to them that the cuddly tiger was visibly moving. The culture of delation must be sustained at all costs.
As to their ‘taking no action’ against the tiger driver, one wonders how they would have dealt with the late Mr. John Aspinall, who was very fond of (real) tigers and who, I am sure, would not have hesitated to pick one up were he to have seen it hitch-hiking.
One also wonders, if the police really do ‘encourage people not to carry things that disturb other drivers’, why they raise no objection to the regular carriage on flatbed vehicles of huge advertising signs, which could be argued to have no other purpose.
It is not comforting to suppose that one is surrounded on all sides by gormless, hysterical, television-addled drongoes eager to prove their loyalty to Big Brother by shopping on the spot everyone they see whose style and oeuvre transcend in any way their own self-satisfied, bigoted, circumscribed, scared little lives, even to the extent of merely being able to afford decent Christmas presents.
However, the great British tradition of practical joking, indulged in by such luminaries of the academic world as the late Professor Lindemann*, is, despite all the efforts of humourless, nannying killjoys, not dead.
I have a cuddly ring-tailed lemur, with authentically mad eyes and ingenious velcro-coated paws which allow him a certain freedom of expression. The next time Mrs. Underclass drives to the supermarket, he’s coming along. Should I observe any interest on the part of the great British public, I shall (being, after all, an ac-tor) endeavour to convey the impression that he is, despite my efforts, trying to hijack the vehicle. Target effect might be improved if he were to wear two garish badges, one of which reads “Hello, little girl, would you like a sweetie?” and the other “Allah Akhbar!” Does anyone know where these might be obtained?
* who, according to the similarly late Professor R.V. Jones, once left on a station platform (correctly expecting an attempt to be made in due course by a dutiful porter to remove it to the left-luggage office) a large suitcase containing nothing but a heavy and rapidly-spinning gyroscope.
