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Talk Round-up
25 March 2011

"How do you scare a badger?" asked a frustrated HubertVonRumple this week. "The little sods have dug up most of my tulips and eaten the bulbs. Am too old and decrepit to stay up late and jump out on them. I was thinking about leaving out a nice plate of fondant fancies to tempt them away. Any other suggestions?"

"Leave a shaving brush on the lawn," suggested Ponders, with Guantanamo-like clarity. "No go, Ponder," quoth Hubert, with a noticeable sense of relief. "DH is an electric shaver."

Ponders began Googling <cough>: "'Frighten badgers away with scarecrows, portable radios, motion-detection lighting or sprinklers. Badgers are cautious animals and can be deterred by unusual changes to their surroundings.' So a motion-detecting, sprinkling, dancing scarecrow tuned into Radio 1 should do the job - simple!"

Thank goodness for Psammead, who off the top of her (lunatic) head, came up with: "Well, you could put out a picture of a steam roller and a zebra crossing. Or you could put out a packet of humbugs with the word 'humbugs' replaced with 'badger balls'. Or you could put Trinny and Susannah in your garden to tell it that its black bits make its white bits look cheap."

"All good suggestions," responded Hubert, before mono-blocking her entire garden to make a carport.

"Tonight Tesco home delivery substituted my much-needed bottle of wine with..." moaned peppapighastakenovermylife, "...a non-alcoholic wine. Really? Out of their entire store, they couldn't have substituted my bottle of white for another bottle of white? Are they trying to tell me I drink too much alcohol? Is it some government initiative I am not aware of?"

"Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha," cackled DeepPurple, demonstrating the support and kindness for which MN is famed across the world wide web.

"Wasn't there once a poster whose barn eggs were substituted with a wooden barn owl figurine?" roffled BehindLockNumberNine. And domesticslattern recalled the time "someone had their assorted nuts replaced with Nuts magazine".

"If only we had an Ocado," moaned peppa. "I'm sure these mistakes never happen there. Do you think I can write to customer services claiming psychological distress?"

"When you empty the dishwasher, do you ever get the urge to stick the kitchen knife in your belly?" was the perfectly reasonable question posed by Changebagsandgladrags this week. "Or is it just me?"

"Err, just you weirdo," counselled faverolles sensitively. MissPenteuth didn't 'fess up to thoughts of death by dishwasher, but did admit: "Sometimes when I'm driving, I think about how I could drive into oncoming traffic. Not that I would, of course, but that I could."

"Or you could open the car door when driving along the motorway?" suggested a cheerful Popolly. "I mentioned this once to DP - how curious it would be if I just flung open the door whilst driving at speed. He installed child locks shortly after and has been reluctant to go on long journeys with me ever since."

AITCHXXX

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