Gingerism

I visited JJ's blog and was greeted by this little snippet. I am immensely offended by that! I'm sick of society being ginger racist. If you can't say n****r word or p**i then i don't see why you should be able to say copperknob or ginger nut and the like. Ginger nut is not so bad, and indeed I don't mind being called ginge if it is said affectionately, but I do take offence to certain nicknames and the fact that it is still socially acceptable to use them.

When I was at school I used to get teased for having red hair. I used to get asked what colour my pubes were. Some boys used to lick their fingers, pretend to touch my hair and make a hissing noise as if it was hot. I was asked why I didn't dye it. Conversely, little old ladies and all my hairdressers have always said what a lovey colour it is. I have recently enhanced it using Lush henna dye.

I remember seeing Catherine Tate on Jonathan Ross last year. She was trying to get a kitten from Battersea and the first one they offered her had a problem. How bad? she asked. When it does a crap you'll have to push it's arse back in as it has a prolapse. We'll pass thanks.

A few weeks later she gets a call from the home. We've got another kitten for you but this one has a problem too. It's ginger. THE HATRED OF MY PEOPLE GOES DOWN TO CAT KIND she exploded. I gave her a round of applause.

Cumbrian Menagerie

Getting a train on the west Cumbrian coast railway has its ups and downs. The trains are all old and could do with being retired, there are usually several mad people you wouldn't want to sit next to and the carriages inexplicably smell of a mixture between manure and marijuana. However the views along the journey are fantastic and there is always plenty of wildlife to see.

I travelled between Whitehaven (a bit of the harbour can be seen above) and Carlisle on New Year's day. It was a fantastic journey. The first good fortune I had was that it was a brilliantly clear day so the views would be amazing; the second was that I was the only person on the train so had two carriages to myself. It stayed this way until Workington when one other person got on but he sat in the other carriage so it was still blissfully quiet and chav free. My third bit of luck was that the conductor's ticket machine was broken so I had a free journey!

The terrain changes from coast to fells as the train goes slightly more inland so there is plenty of opportunity to see a variety of wildlife. I think this journey is the best one for the amount of fauna I spotted as I speeded through the countryside. Oyster catchers, gulls, several herons, blackbirds, fieldfares, jackdaws, sheep, cows, a couple of ponies, a large rook or a raven and even a Vietnamese pot bellied pig!