BADGERS

BADGERS

Every six weeks I do a stint at ‘Talking Newspaper’ where six of us (we are the A team) read items from our local newspaper whilst an engineer records us.  Then the tapes are delivered to local people who are visually impaired.  The powers that be don’t like us to read sensational stuff – under the erroneous impression that oldies will be shocked and we certainly don’t want to frighten them with dastardly crimes so a lot of it is run of the mill, births, deaths and council news.

In fifteen years I have disgraced myself a couple of times.  Once when I brought diet coke to whet my whistle – it exploded over the table holding our scripts and I got hiccups with giggling (now only water is allowed.)  and once when I became hysterical with laughter describing how someone was admiring a beautiful sunset through the frosted glass partition separating his dining room from his sitting room only to discover there was a small fire blazing away.  The fact that it could have had disastrous results only made my hysteria worse.

The other night I read about a Miss Onions who worked in a local super-market.  She and her boy friend were walking past the shops on their way home from the pub when they stopped to look in a shop window and admired a soft furry toy.  The toy suddenly moved and then darted out of the window display. It was a badger.  As they had both seen it they knew it wasn’t the drink so the shop owner was called along with an animal expert.  They surmised that although the back door of the shop had been open during the day – to combat the heat, there was no way the badger could have scaled the wall.  He must have wandered in through the front door – in full view of everybody – but obviously everybody had been looking elsewhere.

I had to brace myself because the story gets very sad now.  He must have been the runt of the litter as he had a wound on his back, was poorly nourished and had a heart murmur so had to be put down.

When we had finished recording one of the readers told us she was walking her dog alongside some cherry trees.  They were laden with fruit and the ground was carpeted with windfalls.  Suddenly she came across a family of badgers zonked out on the ground, They were completely oblivious to humans, dogs or the price of coal – legless on cherry brandy.
Have a nice week-end.