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Category: Tadpole

214 • Skintext

214 • Skintext

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This morning, a bolt from the blue:
Our tadpole has got a tattoo.
Neatly lettered in black
On the small of his back
It reads ‘What would Lord Attenborough do?‘

I confess I find it distressing when the young choose to disfigure themselves with texts they may well regret in adult life (I spent a small fortune getting ‘What would Jesus do?’ lasered off the mons veneris of my Significant Other). It’s perhaps not surprising that animals look to Sir David Attenborough OM CH CVO CBE FRS FSA as a saviour, but any responsible tattooist would have known that ‘Lord Attenborough’ refers not to the well-loved environmentalist but to his brother Richard, a noted squanderer of frog DNA in his role as the unconvincing proprietor of ‘Jurassic Park’ in the eponymous blockbuster movie.

099 • Tea on the Lea

099 • Tea on the Lea

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When Gandhi set sail on the Lea
And fancied some tadpoles for tea
The beadle of Broxbourne
Brought five pints of frogspawn
And charged but one single rupee.

Jesus’s supposed UK excursion is celebrated in song all over Britain (‘And did those feet‘ etc); whereas Gandhi’s teatime outing on a relatively-obscure Thames tributary is commemorated only in this five-line fragment. Likewise the generosity of Hertfordshire officialdom.