'All You Need to Know About Horses' by An Expert

All You Need to Know About Horses

The bond between humans and horses goes back many thousands of years.  It has always been a mutually beneficial arrangement. Horses, being placed on the food chain immediately between sabre-toothed tigers and grass, needed protection and humans needed transport that could, with encouragement, outrun a sabre-toothed tiger, so both parties were happy.  Fast-forward to the 21st Century and the situation remains very much the same.  Horses need somewhere to while away the hours between grazing and humans need something to fall off.  Both parties are happy, except those who have just fallen off.  In the photo above, the bond between horse and human shines through:  Shelley (right) gazes with adoration at her owner (or to be more accurate, at the carrots he is holding)

The Beast of Burden

Imagine a life without horses.  Life would have been much harder, although the horseless carriage would have been invented a lot earlier of course.  Horses have now been introduced to most parts of world, apart from those where there is no grass such as remote coral atolls in the South Pacific. The photo above shows a remote Pacific islander carry their shopping (banana leaves being a popular local delicacy it would appear) home from Tesco, which is even more ubiquitous than the horse.

The horse is still an important means of motive power in some parts of the world.  The average power output of a horse is one horsepower, which is convenient.  The heavier the load, more more horsepower is needed.  This driver in Uzbekistan has miscalculated the horsepower required to pull his vehicle and probably needs one or two more in order get his wagon rolling.  In the meantime his horse enjoys an unparalleled view of the marketplace.

Feeding your Horse

Horses love grass; in fact they could happily eat it all day, and usually do.  Fortunately grass is completely free and grows all over the place, with the exception of remote Pacific atolls, so your horse can eat its fill.  This makes horses exceptionally efficient as lawn mowers and the enterprising horse owner can often support their horse's upkeep by renting it out to neighbours.  A note of caution though:  horses do not discriminate and will eat anything that they think is vaguely grass-like.  Shergar (above) chomps his way across a neighbour's lawn having started with an entree of nasturtiums and enjoying a side salad of dahlias and crysanthemums.  On this occasion the lawn-mower rental is unlikely to be very lucrative for the horse owner.

Unfortunately grass is only a snack for horses, much as sweets and crisps are for children.  Despite spending all day chomping on grass, horses also need at least two nourishing meals a day.  These meals mainly comprise expensive chopped stuff with added carrots.  Horses would sell their grannies for carrots and a typical daily intake for one horse is shown above (in the horse's opinion).

The final constituent part of the horse's diet is hay.  After the carrot and chop meal, the horse tucks into a net or two of hay to while away the evening looking forward to the following day's grazing.  Hay is irritating scratchy stuff, especially when you have to stuff it in a haynet.  It would be simpler to just drop the hay in a heap on the floor of the stable, but if the horse didn't have a net to pull the hay out of it would have nothing to do all night.

Your Horse's Tack

You will need some tack to give you something sit on and grab hold of when riding your horse.  It also comes in handy if you need to lead your horse somewhere, such as out of your neighbour's flowerbed.  Without a bridle or head-collar to lead your horse by, you would have to stick two fingers up its nose, which looks untidy.  In the photo above, I am riding Hobo with a bare minimum of tack.  This is because I wasn't concentrating and forgot to put on his bridle.  And his saddle.  Fortunately a friend was on hand to grab Hobo before I came to a sticky end.

Tack need not be ostentatious or complicated, but don't let that put you off.  Horse owners love nothing more than to admire each other's tack and the more impressive it looks, the better.  My wife's new saddle (above) is a typically understated example.  Whilst a threaded gold inlay is not strictly necessary for riding purposes it adds to the aesthetic appeal, she tells me.

Riding Disciplines

Having gone through all the hard work of getting a horse and finding somewhere to keep it, you might now like to think about what you are going to do with it.  Horses like a spot of exercise as it is something to take their minds off where the next meal is coming from.  A bit of hard work never harmed anyone and horses can sometimes be persuaded to undertake moderate activity for up to an hour, as long as they get the following day off to rest and get over the traumatic experience of actually doing something other than eating or sleeping. In this section, I will introduce you to some of the exciting activities available to you as a horse owner.

Show jumping is sometimes described as freefall parachuting for people who don't like heights.  The aim is to canter around an arena persuading your horse to leap over a sequence of jumps, until your horse either dislodges you or fails to clear the jumps and brings the whole lot crashing down around its (and your) ears.  The fact that it would be a lot easier for the horse to throw you off than to go to the effort of ploughing through a load of wooden poles speaks volumes for its natural intelligence.  As a show jumper you become familiar with the supercilious sneer on your steed's face as you pick yourself out of the dirt.  Again.

If you don't like the prospect of show jumping your way into an early grave, the more sedate sport of Dressage might be more to your liking.  If show jumping is the equestrian equivalent of a demolition derby, dressage is ballet for horses.  Dressage involves walking, trotting or cantering round an arena lined by a series of out-of-sequence letters whilst someone shouts orders at you, then the judges give rosettes to their mates.  The sequence always starts with 'Enter at A at a working trot'.  You could, if you chose, enter at somewhere other than 'A', though this would involve jumping over the fence.  Whilst this might impress onlookers with your innovation and creativity, the judges are likely to mark you down for not following the routine correctly, and will give another rosette to their mates.  German riders excel at dressage, as in so many other equestrian disciplines.  The photo (above) shows German dressage champion Anton von Hockenheim and his horse Schadenfreude executing a special trot developed by the German Army in the late 1930s.

A more controversial activity is foxhunting.  Opinion is divided on the subject; champagne-quaffing socialists believe that the fox is the persecuted victim of rich toffs and so New Labour has banned hunting foxes with packs of hounds.  It is still permissible to shoot, gas, trap or poison foxes, and indeed to run them over with a tank or strafe them with a helicopter gunship, so for the fox this legal nicety is somewhat academic.  It is also legal, as I understand it, to attack a fox with two dogs while their doggy mates stand around egging them on and a load of people sit around on horses blowing horns and waiting for the dogs to get on with it.  People who live in the country, especially those who breed chickens or rabbits, maintain that foxes are verminous familiars of Satan who represent a threat to their way of life.  The exclusive photo (below) suggests that this view might have some credibility.

Hacking out is the cheapest and most straightforward way of enjoying your horse.  It is simply a matter of getting on your horse, taking it out on the road and enjoying a spot of peace and quiet accompanied only by cars, buses, lorries and boy racers.  It is a chance for horse and rider to bond and get to know each other.  Horses, having spent many millenia running away from things that might eat them, are now nervous to the point of paranoia and will jump at their own shadow.  Shelley, a generally well-balanced and gentle mare, fell out with a sheep in a local field and developed an unrelated and irrational fear of the colour orange.  For the rest of the time we owned her, she would only go past the field in question if the sheep had popped out to the shops.  Hobo, whilst fine with sheep and not colour-prejudiced, is frightened of Bradford and refuses to go past the sign welcoming him  to the outskirts of the city.  The photo below shows some happy hackers standing around in the rain while their horses compare phobias and look for something to refuse to walk past.

Horse racing is often called The Sport of Kings, because unless you own a small country it is highly unlikely that you will ever be able to afford to compete.  Horse racing involves standing in a field looking at a bunch of horses in the distance whilst losing money.  Much like any other horse-related activity in fact.  Racehorses must, by law, be brown.  In order to tell the competitors apart, the riders have to choose something distinctive to wear.  As they all seem to have the dress sense of golfers on LSD the result is sartorial chaos, as the photo below shows.

How Much Does It All Cost?

To pay for your hobby of horse ownership you don't need a barrow-load of cash (above).  You need a convoy of barrows arriving in a steady stream from the nearest cash machine.  The list of things to pay for might appear endless, as indeed it is.  First you have to buy your horse and rent a stable.  Don't forget to insure your horse, against illness or injury (to itself or others).  Then you start splashing out on everything else. Hay, carrots, feeds, treats, tack, grooming kit, body armour, riding hat, some more tack, riding crop, boots, rain rugs, travel rugs, rugs to warm the horse up and rugs to cool it down again, water buckets, yet more tack, head collars, lead ropes, salt licks, shampoo, fly repellent, hoof polish, show shine, mane detangler, coat conditioner and yet more bloody tack.  Vets bills when your horse is feeling a bit off colour.  Then you need something to take your horse to shows as it's too far to walk and horses aren't usually allowed on the bus.  So you have to buy a trailer and a vehicle to tow it.  Or a lorry, which will break down.  You'll need riding lessons for ever in order to feel ready to go to a show, then show club membership for each show, entry fees and food on the day.  Take some money with you to the show as there is always a blasted tack salesman there.  An interesting fact is that it would cost you about £25 for an hour or so at a riding school for a quick hack out whenever you feel like it, with someone else doing all the hard work.  Buy your own horse and the upkeep is about £800 a month. 

The typical look of anguish on the face of the partner of a horse owner (above), on receiving a vet's bill for £200 for sedating his wife's horse so that it could have a haircut.  Horse ownership puts the problems of the world into perspective.  They are mere trifles in comparison.  A few years later and we see the same man looking a lot happier.  His horse having eaten him out of house and home, he has gone completely mad and moved to a landfill site near Wakefield where he spends his time mumbling to himself and collecting empty boxes.

Chavair: The Way to the Bars

Chavair.com, the favourite airline of the great unwashed, has enjoyed another successful summer season, shipping thousands of fat spongers away from the dole queues to the beaches and bars of a luckless Europe. The happy passengers have been working hard for months to earn their summer break, cloning credit cards, feigning disabilities and submitting imaginative and highly dubious benefits claims to make sure they have enough beer money to pass two weeks in total oblivion. Beer might not be as cheap as it was on the Costas, but even if it was they would still be broke when they came back.

One of Chavair's fleet of Boeing 737-300 GTi aircraft taxis to its stand on arrival at Faro. You can tell it's Chavair: when the engines stop, you can still hear the whining. Spotters note: This particular aircraft, G-CHAV, is named after a prominent member of the underclass famed for his excess weight, predisposition to fighting, greed and lack of morals. For his embodiment of all that we love about chavs, we were delighted to christen this aircraft 'John Prescott'.

Running an airport is a complicated business, as the owners of any airport will tell you. You can stick some concrete down in a big field, put up a prefab terminal and wait for a budget airline to come and park on your tarmac. But to get the serious players you've got to pretend you are near a major city, like London (only 30 miles from London Gatwick). It also helps if you can link your airport to a famous celebrity or historical figure, for example Liverpool's John Lennon, and how many of us were aware that Robin Hood hailed from Doncaster? Our photo (above) shows the newly-rebranded Barton Aerodrome which now styles itself Salford Vicky Pollard Airport in an effort to drag the locals away from watching endless repeats of Shameless and persuade them to sample the delights of Benidorm instead.

It's not our fault that Ryanair and Easyjet have bought up the entire production line of Boeing 737s and Airbus A320s for the next five years. Just because their fleets are brand new doesn't make them any better. Our aircraft still work perfectly well, even after all these years, and most of them have never crashed yet.

Of course not everybody finds it convenient to make their own way to the airport under their own steam. The estate's pool car might have been seized by the local plod for no insurance or ram-raiding, and the ticket inspectors on Northern Rail are red-hot these days. So why not treat yourself to a chauffeur-driven ride to the airport from the remnants of your front door to the long queue outside check-in. Our expert drivers, Wayne and Baz, know all the rat-runs like the backs of their tattooed hands. And it's all totally deniable of course. If a marked Volvo stops you, just deny knowing that our pimped-up Metro has been twocked and you'll be on your way. Eventually.

We encourage customer loyalty as we want our customers to come back. As do the courts in most cases. The photo above shows members of Chavair's Frequent Fleers Programme as they queue up at Leeds-Bradford Airport having fled from Leeds Crown Court rather than answer their bail.

All decent airlines have their own in-flight magazine, and so do we. This month's edition is specially edited to make our passengers feel welcome. And so that they can cope with it, there aren't many words but plenty of pictures, especially in the Duty Free Booze section.

'One size fits all': that's the motto of our Uniform Requisitioning Department. Here Kylie, one of our senior cabin staff, proves that the outfit she was issued when she originally joined Chavair is still just as good today. Our staff get a generous uniform allowance. They buy it and we allow them to keep it.

Our flight deck crews are consummate professionals. Here Chavair's Chief Pilot consumes a bit of Dutch Courage before boarding the creaking old museum piece we've cobbled together and persuaded him to fly to Malaga. Bottoms up!

For a small extra charge you can enjoy the calm and luxury of Chavair's 'Pleb Class' non-Executive Lounge. Perks include complimentary salt and vinegar crisps, pork scratchings, kebabs and all the White Lightning you can drink.

Intensive training is what makes Chavair's cabin staff so special. That and their ability to relate to our passengers. Note cabin staff member (lower right) who has adopted the 'Council House facelift' so beloved of our clientele. This photo shows our Cabin Staff Training Manager, Jeremy Kyle, as he teaches a class in The Psychology of Contemporary Holidaymakers. Today's topic :"That baby's not mine; it's off that waiter in the Hotel del Sol, Benidorm".

A face that only a mother could love. The rest of us might prefer to punch it, which is why all our cabin staff are highly trained in conflict-avoidance. As soon as the halfwits start twining, the crew disappear into the galley and pretend to be busy. Well it never looks good to assault your customers does it?

Waiting patiently for their delayed Chavair flight to Alicante, these happy souls while away the hours in the departure lounge at Liverpool Airport. Above us only half the Premiership, eh? eh?

It's our passengers that make us unique and we celebrate the diversity of British folk we fly from airports across the country. Chavair flies from an airport near you, as long as you don't live anywhere halfway decent or remotely near a posh airport like Heathrow or Manchester. As long as it's cheap and cheerful, and there's a bar in the terminal. Come and join us on our flights from Liverpool Ken Dodd Airport, Newcastle, Southend, Stansted, Luton, Doncaster-Sheffield-Barnsley-Rotherham International and many others that normal people would try and avoid.

Aviation security is at the forefront of our mind as a responsible air carrier, of course. Which is why we will mercilessly hunt down the scallies who stole the alloys from this Chavair A320 whilst it was parked overnight at Liverpool Ken Dodd Airport. In fact, not content with the wheels they've gone the whole hog and taken all the paintwork, both engines and one of the doors as well. So if any of our competitors are offered knock-off Airbus or Boeing parts we'd like to hear from you. We've got a hangar full of Ryanair wings and Jet2.com engines which we'll let you have back as they don't fit our aircraft.

Edding Barwards to the Students' Union in the Sky

I was sad to hear today of the recent death of a friend of mine from student days at UWIST, Cardiff. When I arrived in 1977, Tim Edwards was President of the Students Union and as such the Big Cheese of the student world. At UWIST, student politics weren't really about Left or Right, so much as an anarchistic approach to relaxing and getting wrecked. Tim excelled in this area. Despite being exiled in Cardiff, carrying out missionary work as he saw it, Tim left no one in any doubt that he hailed from Leatherhead, and that Leatherhead FC was the the only football team worth following. In later years, it transpires that Tim went on to become chairman of Leatherhead FC, to the extent that he coordinated efforts to save the club from closure.

Tim's dry sense of humour was legendary, and all-inclusive. As editor of Impact, the union magazine, he wrote about the imaginary Splott Polytechnic, a spoof on the neighbouring University College, Cardiff, whose union took itself far more seriously than did UWIST. Even when he was succeeded by Dave Gerrard, Tim took an intense interest in Splott Polytechnic. No longer writing the article, he took matters a step further by setting up 396421 Squadron Conga Commando, and promptly led a lengthy conga line across the platform at the NUS national conference, to the bemusement of Trevor Phillips who was national chair at the time.

Tim's girlfriend at the time was occasionally on the receiving end of his humour. Seeing Tim in his office in a meeting, she rang him from his secretary's desk. Tim answered and told her 'I'm on the phone', at which she apologised and replaced the handset.

The chairman of the mythical Splott Poly Students Union, modelled by Tim on himself, was a beer-swilling character called Ed Barwards. In fact Tim lampooned his entire executive in typically unsubtle fashion, but in such a manner that to feature as a Splott Poly character was a sign of having 'arrived' on the union scene.

I personally owe Tim a lot more than he realises. He asked me to take over as editor of Impact when Dave Gerrard stepped down to concentrate on his exams. I modelled my own style on Tim's own, and have never regretted it.

Tim would not shuffle off this mortal coil; in spirit at least he will have announced to anyone standing around 'Right, the bar's open. Follow me!!'

Tim, thanks for everything mate. You'll be missed.

Heppy's Rough and Ready Guide to Gardening

Many of us have gardens but are a bit too busy to really do them justice. You work all week then, at the weekend have family matters to deal with, or if you are young and single you are generally too hung over to get out of bed. So meanwhile your garden swiftly returns to its natural state. There comes a point where you realise something has to be done. Usually this is about the time that you can't see out of the front window because of the dense foliage. Alternatively you get home and wonder where your house has gone.

There are several ways of avoiding this state of affairs:

• Retirement: you will suddenly find that you have an immaculate garden with fine, close-cropped grass lined with white bricks. You will also discover that a greenhouse has materialised in the middle of your lawn and that you have become an expert on begonias or dahlias. The drawback with retirement is that you have to stop earning money and start living off your pension so you might not actually be able to afford a lawn mower.
• Hire a gardener: This might lead some people to think of romantic trysts as in Lady Chatterley's Lover (I don't know if her lover was a gardener but I seem to remember that there was a potting shed in there somewhere). The reality, however, is that you will get some chav who's just been kicked off the dole or else a banjo-playing yokel who will speak incomprehensible rustic drivel about ripping out the chrysanthemums and planting mangel-wurzels.
• Pave over your garden: This has often occurred to me as an ideal solution, and would appear to get round the upkeep and maintenance problems. For the same reason, it occurred to me to ask my dentist about pulling all my teeth out and replacing them with false ones, so that I wouldn't have to have any more fillings. He talked me out of this course of action, probably because it would ultimately be less of an earner for the dental industry. The good thing about lawns is that your seven-year-old son can fall over all day without coming to grief, which cannot be said for playing football on tarmac.

So I have written a guide to gardening for those of you who don't have a horticultural bent, the money to employ gardening staff or the inclination to take early retirement..

Gardening is actually very easy if you follow a few simple rules, most of which are common sense. It need not be difficult, or expensive

1. Lawns Grass grows everywhere, by itself. If you look at fields as you drive past them, you will notice that this is true. No one planted the grass, it has always been there. Just try leaving a flowerbed for a few months and you will see that it sprouts grass without any effort on your part. This is the secret to happy gardening. Leave it to its own devices and it will be fine. Lawns don't need any food or a complicated sprinkler system. They might go a bit brown occasionally, in which case you spend the summer pretending you have emigrated but come the rainy season (July to June) they will come back OK. So all you need is a lawn mower and a pair of edge cutters. Once a week is great for very short grass; if prefer the lusher look, give yourself every other weekend off. Other plants thrive on your lawn amongst the grass stalks but as they are green as well you won't notice them.
2. Weeding This is one of the most tedious parts of gardening but you can benefit from the decades of research into chemical warfare by buying selective weedkillers. Personally I don't recommend them as you never know what carnage they might wreak, especially as you will usually have too much, not want to waste it and wind up storing the surplus in a lemonade bottle, which your child will probably want to drink. So it's a case of falling back on physical effort and removing the herbaceous interlopers by hand. Once again the Rough and Ready Gardener will employ some basic decision making and act decisively. The golden rule is that it is your garden and you can leave or remove whatever you want. If you like the natural look, you can rest assured that you will soon play host to a wide range of native plants. Many of these will sprout colourful bits in summer and actually look quite pleasant. The exception to this is the dandelion, which is the pigeon or rat of the weed world and deserves no less than total extermination. You can recognise dandelions by the fact that they are yellow, and everywhere. They have deep roots as well, which means that you have to dig them out with a spade or similar implement. For everything else, just take a good look and remove anything that looks like it shouldn't be there. Remember, the choice is yours.

1. Plants The golden rule for plants is 'Keep It Simple, Stupid'. There are lots of decent native plants that evolved here over millions of years and these will survive your best efforst to kill them. These include things like roses, for example. Daffodils are quite straightforward, if somewhat transient whilst heather is also hard to get rid of. Problems usually start when you get adventurous and plant something exotic, such as anything from a garden centre in a little pot. The exception to this is the Nasturtium. I bought one of those at my old house and very shortly my garden was a vision of orange foliage. It is possible to have fun with some plants, especially if you are planning on moving house. Before you move, simply stick some crocus bulbs in your lawn to spell out a cheery message to the new owners! Especially if they drove a hard bargain when negotiating the purchase. Come Spring they will be delighted to read your good wishes in blue, yellow and orange as the crocusses wake up.
2. Trees A tree is for life, not just for Christmas. They are great, trees, and you can never have too many, except that as they grow their roots will make your house fall down. However by the time this happen, you will probably have moved so it won't be your problem. Of course, you can always warn the new owners through the medium of crocus. The other thing about trees and their smaller relatives, bushes, is that they need pruning from time to time. Again, it is possible to be too pedantic and worry unnecessarily about chopping the wrong bits off. Don't worry! It's not possible. I've spent years pruning trees and have never found one that didn't grow back all its missing bits. Just lop off anything you don't think should be there. A word of caution though; do this from ground level. Don't do what my neighbour once did and sit on the branch you are sawing off.

So there you are, an instant expert's guide to gardening. Next week I will explain everything you need to know about cookery. As long as I haven't poisoned myself by then. Happy pruning!!

Welcome Aboard Chavair!

"Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, and all you scallies and slappers on a stag and hen weekend. Welcome aboard this inaugural Chavair flight from Liverpool to Ibeeza. Your pilots today are Wayne and Daz, with their mate Baz leaning over from the jump seat urging them to go a bit faster. Your cabin staff are Shazza, Courtney and Kylie, who shouldn’t be flying as she’s up the duff again but wants her attendance bonus.

Please ensure that all your Kwik Save carrier bags are safely stowed in the overhead lockers or shoved under the seat in front of you.  Those passengers who have sat in the emergency exit rows thinking you will be able to get off of the plane first or who want the extra legroom so you can sprawl out admiring your white Kappa trainers will need to ensure that all items of hand baggage and spare trackies are stowed in the overhead lockers for take off and again for landing, including when we divert to Barcelona to kick off the drunk ASBO-holder in Row 6.

Please ensure that items you try to place in the overhead lockers such as baby buggies, bottles of Duty Free White Lightning, tamazipan and ghetto blasters are stowed securely as they could fall out and injure yourself or someone else. If you require any assistance at this time please do not hesitate to contact a member of Injury Lawyers 4 U who will shortly pass through the cabin to hand out claim forms and business cards.

You should now make sure that your seatbelt is fastened in preparation for departure. In the interest of safety and good taste your I-pod should be turned down to less than 120 decibels whilst the aircraft is on the ground. The use of electronic equipment (that’s anything that requires batteries) is not permitted whilst the fasten seatbelt signs are illuminated so please take off your Securicor tags now.  Mobile phones must now be switched off and remain switched off for the duration of the flight, even if you have only just lifted them from the Carphone Warehouse shop in the terminal building.

We shall now take you through our safety procedures and equipment onboard this Boeing 737-300GTi aircraft what Wayne has Twocked off the apron.  In the seat pocket in front of you, you will find a safety instruction card, unless the last passenger nicked it to flog on E-bay. Please take time to look at the pictures and avoid dribbling as you move your lips while trying to read the words on it. It highlights important safety information such as escape routes, lifejackets and the sprinkler system that will hose you down if you try to have a crafty smoke in the toilets. It also shows the bracing position which must be adopted in an emergency landing to protect your medallions, sovs, and unnecessarily large hoop earrings.

Emergency exits are located on both sides of the aircraft; they are clearly marked and are being pointed out to you now. Unlike other emergency situations that you might be more used to, you will not be able to do one out of the window.  There are two doors at the rear of the cabin, (please note, these are not the ones marked ‘Toilet’), two over-wing exits for those of you weighing less than twenty stone, and two doors at the front.

Please take a moment now to locate your nearest exit, which might be behind you. To help you find your way, additional lighting is provided in the aisle at floor level so you can crawl out on your hands and knees, bit like going home on Saturday night.

If the cabin air supply fails, cans like these will automatically be presented from the panel above your head. When the can appears, extinguish your cigarette (shame though it is to waste your last one), place it over your mouth and drink normally. Do make sure your own can is empty before helping yourself to others.  A designer lifejacket is located in a pocket beneath your seat. For those of you who are unable to swim, you have left it a bit late to learn. Place the lifejacket over your head and secure it to your shellsuit by means of this tape. Do not inflate your lifejacket until you are well outside the aircraft. You will know you are outside the aircraft as you will be very wet, especially those of you weighed down by too much fake gold jewellery from Argos.  At this time your seatbelts should be fastened. Extension belts are available for those who are in possession of loyalty cards from Burger King.

We will shortly be commencing your inflight service. This evening we will be giving you an opportunity to choose from our wide selection of bling, tax-free Lambrini and a range of snide Liverpool, Man U and England shirts. By the way we have anti-tampering alarms on all our trolleys that spray you with Burberry check dye should you try to rob from it!  Onboard today we have on offer a choice of Super-sized Big Mac meals, chicken tikka masala or kebabs. We accept UK sterling or Euros as well as major credit cards which must be in your own name. You will find in the seat pocket a price list and full details of outlets and fences for your tax-free goods.

Finally, on behalf of all of us at Chavair, may we thank you for flying with us today. We hope that you enjoy your flight and we look forward to seeing you when your licence is revoked and you are recalled to prison in a few days time".

Author's note:  This was written and performed as a sketch for a 'Wings' ceremony for cabin crew of a leading low cost airline.  No one thought it was unduly ironic.

The 7.20 to King's Cross (Part One)

I am new to blogging and arrived here more or less by accident. My urge to blog was born of the urge to avoid driving to work. If you live in West Yorkshire, you will know that our road system is appreciated by everybody else, mainly because they don't live here. So when I started work in Wakefield I decided to commute by train. The comedy potential of British Rail was legendary, on the basis that if you didn't laugh the only alternative was losing the will to live. British Rail, as a national entity, was known to everybody so the jokes travelled even if the trains didn't. Somehow poking fun at Northern Trains or GNER would not work as well if you live in Guildford or Basingstoke. Admittedly GNER has disappeared and its trains have mysteriously switched allegiance to National Express, which I always thought was a bus company but it's so easy to lose touch.

But if the operators are not particulary amusing in themselves, the system certainly is. Forty minutes commuting in each direction, five days a week, gives rise to familiarity and familiarity breeds a certain degree of contempt. Shoehorning a couple of hundred people into a sealed compartment when they don't particularly want to be there is always bound to generate a certain amount of irritability. It's human nature after all. And humans are territorial and don't like anybody else invading their space, which explains the urge to plonk a bag on the seat next to you and stand by to repel boarders. Having become fed up with asking people to move their bags so I could sit down, I succumbed to the inevitable and went to sit on the suitcase rack instead. At this, a woman promptly came up to me and told me that I shouldn't sit there as she wanted to put her bag on it. This demonstrated that I had fewer rights than a piece of luggage, which seemed grossly unfair as you don't actually have to pay to take a bag with you. Though if Ryanair ever follow Virgin and start a train company, watch this space.

Everyday I change trains at Leeds City station. I don't often go to other major stations so I can't say whether the Health and Safety neurotics have taken over all transport hubs. However there is an unremitting cacophony of safety messages, which seem to play on a constant loop, interspersed only by announcements that the train to Manchester has been delayed, usually by criminal activity involving signalling cable theft or having been left on bricks when the wheels were removed as it paused at Rochdale to let people on and off. We are constantly told that we can't skateboard, cycle or rollerblade along the platforms. I would have thought that was self-evident but it does appear that some people need to have it pointed out to them that if they disobey they are likely to die horribly under the remaining wheels of the delayed train from Manchester Victoria. At least they haven't yet seen fit to warn us not to try hang-gliding or tightrope-walking along the 25 kV overhead wires but once someone is daft enough to try that, someone will have to squeeze in that particular piece of advice.

The weather is also a topic of great concern to the Passenger Safety Manager. At the merest hint of precipitation there is a degree of panic worthy of Peter Kay's dinner lady shouting "It's spitting! Everybody inside!" We are warned not to slip on the platforms, fall under a train or drown. However, bearing in mind that Leeds City Station is almost entirely under cover this appears to be superfluous. Unless of course they know something that we don't, and the roof is about to spring a major leak.......

Part Two to follow as I haven't actually got onto the 7.20 to King's Cross yet......

The Cat's Out of the Bag

Molly shamelessly steals a tuna sandwich carelessly left on the wheely bin by my son William (7)

"She'll be around here somewhere..." Abi wondering where the next attack is coming from. Here's a clue: she's on the wheely bin eating William's tea, Abi.

I'm not the world's biggest cat lover, it has to be said. I feel that felines are somewhat neglectful of social niceties, such as the convention that you should not sit on the floor licking your own bottom whilst the rest of us are having our tea. Despite this, we have two moggies. Abi, your classic black 'witch's familiar', has been with us for four years now. She and I have reached something of a truce, especially since Molly, the other one, came along. Molly started off by demonstrating a cavalier disregard for Abi's tenure as House Cat by making her life a misery. So much so that Abi now requires a security escort when moving round the house, as Molly generally lies up waiting to ambush her. I therefore feel a sense of duty to protect Abi, so usually help her by carrying out a forward reconnaissance. If contact is made, that gives me the chance to chase Molly out of the house so that Abi can get stuck in to the cat food.

When we got Abi, from the local Cat Rescue people, we were told that she would insist on fresh tuna every day and settle for nothing less. As a moggie born and bred in Leeds, I don't even know where Abi got her taste for tuna. Living in Leeds it is a bit inconvenient nipping to the dockside everyday to buy some straight off the trawler, or whatever you use to catch tuna, even supposing that tuna are regularly landed in Hull or Grimsby. So we weaned Abi on to tuna-flavoured Go-Cat (this is not a sponsored blog by the way, I'm simply stating fact). I think it's got some other expensive fish mixed in as well: Pacific Salmon and Angel Fish or something. That's another thing; why do the cat food people flavour the stuff with animals that cats never eat in reality? I bet if you asked them, 9 out of 10 cats would prefer hamster, budgie or goldfish-flavoured kitty nibble.

Over the past few years I've managed to get Abi to accept Asda's Tiger cat food. Strangely this does not include the sort of flavours that 90% of tigers might prefer; goat, donkey or careless tourist for example. We have the odd tantrum of course, such as when we run out of Tiger and I can only be bothered to nip to the local Late Shop, so she has to put up with the late shop's own brand stuff. This causes the cats to go on hunger strike until I feel sufficiently guilty to pander to their foibles. The two of them can't even agree on this however; one will eat a particular brand so the other promptly boycotts it.

What they are both particularly partial to, though, is the local wildlife. Abi started it, at our old house, when her food was temporarily being supplied by Morrisons. Having decided that nipping up to the shops herself would not be an option, Abi taught herself to hunt. Of course, she might have learnt this as part of her vocational training at Leeds Cat Rescue, though I expect they only bothered to take her big game fishing. Even though we lived near some trees, which is what passes for countryside round here, I hadn't noticed any signs of rodent infestation. So it was a surprise when one day Abi brought home a baby mouse. Having relieved her of it, and given it a decent send off in the wheelie bin, I thought little more of the matter. Unfortunately it would appear that Abi had murdered the offspring of an influential rodent fundamentalist. We suddenly became the focus of a sustained onslaught of mouse-generated terrorism. Mice would appear all over the place, nibbling at anything they came across, including plastic plates and electric wiring. Fortunately they weren't able to lay their paws on any explosives otherwise I am sure that the house would no longer be standing. In the end we moved, having been driven out by the cheese-loving midget freedom fighters.

Since Molly arrived, both cats are now trying to outdo each other in the rodenticide stakes. One of them left an impressively-sized rat on the doorstep the other day, which I think is asking for it. So when this morning my wife told me that she had fed the pets but Molly was sitting outside chomping on a mouse, you can understand my sense of foreboding......

This afternoon I have been fighting a War on Weeds. I found a dodgy dossier saying that the weeds in the flowerbed could overwhelm the lawn in 45 minutes, so I have invaded the shrubbery. My richer neighbour who has lots of garden equipment encouraged me to do this, offering to help. Unfortunately he has sprayed friendly weedkiller over my flowers, who have sustained casualties. I plan to withdraw from the flowerbed by 2012. After I withdraw I will be holding a public enquiry in a locked cupboard so that the public don't get to know what I have done.

When I had finished, I hadn't actually found any Weeds of Mass Destruction, but by then I had uprooted several plants and arrested all the garden gnomes left there by the previous owners. These have been shipped off to a special fenced-off part of my neighbour's garden where they have all been painted orange. Meanwhile, what to do with the weeds? Waterboarding having been deemed unacceptable I decided to ship them off somewhere else. Luckily Leeds City Council have given us all a special brown wheelie bin so we can practice Horticultural Rendition. I have proof that the council is complicit in all this, as I have seen their staff emptying wheelie bins full of weeds into council wagons and taking them away.

I tried to contact my MP about this but he was too busy supervising the weeding of his moat to get back to me.