You call that minor?

Indiana Bones and the lampshade of shame

D the Dog had a couple of operations. I think the vet would describe them as minor, while D might not be in full agreement. Adding liberal amounts of insult to the injury, he's now modelling a fetching translucent blue headguard to stop him biting the stitches and unravelling the bandages. He's got to take it easy for a few days, not a simple matter for a ten-month old puppy full of energy.

They should make human versions of the lampshade of shame:

• Much less expensive than putting in a gastric band, but difficult to scoff endless burgers and kentucky fried when you have to throw your food ten feet in the air and catch it on the way down.

• Over-use of the mobile phone. Kids running up huge bills, commuters irritating their fellow travellers, that sort of thing. At the first sign of mobile dependency syndrome, on goes the lampshade, and without super-long double jointed arms, the phone and the ear are torn asunder.

• Getting schoolboys to focus on what's in front of them, rather than on what's going on outside the windows.

• Nail-biting, nose-picking, ear-investigating, that sort of thing.

There's a proud headline...

...35 years of IVF and five million babies later.

MM summed this up so very well:

In the blue corner, two people who want a baby, and can't have one.

In the red corner, a baby desperate for parents, who hasn't any.

In the way of the obvious introduction and positive outcome, scientists and doctors with syringes of sperm (or whatever).

I'm less eloquent and harder-hearted, and see it as just another example of a human species that has come to the point of stamping its feet and holding its breath as soon as it can't get exactly what it wants. That “I can't help being thick, you shouldn't be excluding me from having a degree” thing. That approach that would rather lower the height of the basketball hoop than disappoint a spoilt five foot two brat bleating on about the inequality of a National Basketball Association players roster skewed in favour of the strong and athletic and over six feet six specimens.

Good luck to all the couples and their IVF children. To the authorities funding and promoting the programme, shame on you for not taking a different line.

There was a kitten found on the tube...

...at Victoria. It's alive and well, and being looked after. Just as well it didn't pitch up on a Southeastern trains facility, or it'd be in pussycat clink right now for travelling without a valid ticket, under interrogation by some of their million jobsworths.