And Then, One From The Kitchen Draw....

You’ve got one. I’ve got one. Hell, we’ve all got one. A kitchen draw full of useless stuff we keep ‘just in case’. All those screws and dowel pins and little plastic cup bits that are left over after you’ve built an Ikea ashtray. Stuff like that.

You know the draw I mean. The draw that has the ability, with passing time, to ‘disappear’ the bit you want when you need it. An example will be a plug fuse. In the draw, at any given time, will be, at a minimum, three three pin plugs with varying lengths of cut off wire. Why? Well, those of you of an age will know that when throwing out any old appliance, it’s an automatic action to cut off and save the plug. But the fuses will have mysteriously been ‘disappeared’ by the draw when you need one.

What to do? You buy a pack of four fuses, use one, put three in the draw. Those three will, scarily, drop on top of the fuses you couldn’t find before buying more fuses. Next time you need a fuse, go to draw and, trust me, no fuses will be found.

Well, I’m guessing a lot of you, and I include me and myself, also have a folder on your computer very similar to that kitchen draw. A sort of, better not delete that just in case. Hay, I may yet need to know how to hook up a cassette deck to a Commodore 64, right? Yes, that sort of stuff.

However, similar to the draw, that document you suddenly, really, really need will be impossible to find. True? Bet you’ve been there many times.

The other annoying thing is, every time we go to clean out the draw or folder, we can never quite bring ourselves to part with anything. This goes on for so long that eventually the contents of both start looking like they should be on display in some sort of folk museum and by then it’s absolutely impossible to bring yourself to ditch or delete a single thing.

It was during one such attempted folder clean-out operation, at which time a further four folders of nothing were added, that I clicked the missive below. Where did it come from and how long ago, I have no idea. I obviously ran into it, liked it, copied it, popped it in the ‘just in case’ folder and there he’s been a-slumbering.

I actually Googled the first sentence stupidly expected zero results. What did I get? I quote, About 5,070,000 results (0.63 seconds)  This sort of result would kind of point towards the pointlessness of stuffing certain stuff in a ‘just in case’ folder, would it not?

So from some time in 2007 or so, from my ‘just in case’ folder and five million odd other places, for a Sunday smile with many thanks to Mr Johnson-Hill, enjoy;

Dear Secretary of State,

My friend, who is in farming at the moment, recently received a cheque for £3,000 from the Rural Payments Agency for not rearing pigs. I would now like to join the "not rearing pigs" business.

In your opinion, what is the best kind of farm not to rear pigs on, and which is the best breed of pigs not to rear? I want to be sure I approach this endeavour in keeping with all government policies, as dictated by the EU under the Common Agricultural Policy.

As I see it, the hardest part of this programme will be keeping an accurate record of how many pigs I haven't reared. Are there any Government or Local Authority courses on this?

My friend is very satisfied with this business. He has been rearing pigs for forty years or so, and the best he ever made on them was £1,422 in 1968. That is until this year, when he received a cheque for not rearing any.

If I get £3,000 for not rearing 50 pigs, will I get £6,000 for not rearing 100? I plan to operate on a small scale at first, holding

myself down to about 4,000 pigs not raised, which will mean about £240,000 for the first year. As I become more expert in not rearing pigs, I plan to be more ambitious, perhaps increasing to, say, 40,000 pigs not reared in my second year, for which I should expect about £2.4 million from your department. Incidentally, I wonder if I would be eligible to receive tradable carbon credits for all these pigs not producing harmful and polluting methane gases?

Another point: These pigs that I plan not to rear will not eat 2,000 tonnes of cereals. I understand that you also pay farmers for not growing crops. Will I qualify for payments for not growing cereals to not feed the pigs I don't rear?

I am also considering the "not milking cows" business, so please send any information you have on that too. Please could you also include the current DEFRA advice on set aside fields? Can this be done on an e-commerce basis with virtual fields (of which I seem to have several thousand ares)?

In view of the above you will realise that I will be totally unemployed, and will therefore qualify for unemployment benefits. I shall of course be voting for your party at the next general election.

Yours faithfully,

Quote; Willie Nelson.

“I am not a pig farmer. The pigs had a great time, but I didn't make any money.”