The badger in my living room relaxes on the sofa, feet crashing through the window, his head resting on my Howard Hodgkin print: After Visiting David Hockney 1991-92. He by-passes the TV remote and switches on BBC1 telepathically. I say 'telepathically' but maybe he has some other digital mechanism I don't fully understand. No sooner has he munched his way through my large fries than he's convulsing in laughter on the floor. The news linkman in his best BBC accent has just said that the government has had to extend the cull of badgers in Somerset because the shooters didn't blast enough of the little blighters. In fact, the minister has said that 'the badgers moved the goalposts.' Shall I repeat that for the benefit of those who imagine that the first qualification involved in becoming a government minister is sanity.
'The badgers moved the goalposts.'
Badger, you may remember, are black and white creatures of the night and are not known for their footballing skills. Otherwise, Barcelona would have an entire squad of them by now.
(I have to say, all of this and the game of badger football was foretold in The Badgers of Beechen Cliff, which describes a game of badger football, and which, if you haven't already bought it, will provide hours of harmless fun for all the generations in your family.)
Big badger picks himself up from my Rajhastani rug and pops some more cheese straws and pecan nuts into his canernous mouth. Now he's channel-hopping for more news of badgers. But all the time I'm thinking, this isn't real. This creature is not the real thing.
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