The Guardian

The Guardian is a left-of-centre "quality" newspaper in the UK. I often buy it - especially on Saturdays, when it has among its many sections a colour magazine - not least because one of my parrot cages is lined with newspaper rather than wood chips. My dear little Rio used to throw the wood lining out and make a real mess of the room.

There were two items of interest today. Bear with me to the end. The first is funny, but the second is, well, odd, and I'm only sorry I can't find the accompanying picture anywhere on the internet. Probably just as well, as I think it might turn a few stomachs.

Anyway, the "problem" page contains the following letter:

We're in despair. We bought two hens for the garden, but it has turned into a nightmare. They are bossy sods with strange alien eyes and weird dinosaur feet. They amuse themselves by terrorising the neighbour's cat and "singing" their special egg song at six o'clock every morning. They freak us out by pecking at the back door, so they can "be with us". Their fastidious appetites and mind control skills mean that we now spend a fortune on the special hen treats they insist on - so much so, in fact, that each egg we get now costs us roughly a tenner. And we're vegetarians, so we can't even kill or eat the feathered horrors. what can we do?

I laughed like a drain as I read this. I can just see myself in this situation if I didn't have a sleection of cats ready and willing to murder any poultry I decided to keep, not to mention the local foxes.

However, the really big surprise was on the penultimate page of the main section, where they routinely have an "Unsettling Animal Picture of the Week". It was a naked woman with a huge fish diagonally across her body, the head slightly above her right shoulder, the body hiding her fight breast and a fin almost but not quite hiding her left nipple. She is holding the tail in front of her at groin level, with a smattering of thin pubes showing.

The name of this weird woman? Great Skanky, of course. Missing Gavin, honey?