Diary of a Hunter-Gatherer
Picture the scene.
Last weekend, I camped with my family at a barn-raising party on the western foot of the Quantock hills, in Somerset. On Saturday I crept out of the tent at 5am, when the faintest skein of red cloud netted the sky. Below me, mist filled the valley floor. I slipped through the sagging fence at the top of the field and found myself in a steep, broad coomb, covered in bracken. I climbed for a while, as quietly as I could, until a frightful wail shattered my thoughts. I crouched and listened. I could see nothing on the dark hillside. It came again, from about 50 metres to my right, half-shriek, half-bleat, a wild, wrenching, desolate cry, a cry that the Earth might make in mourning for itself.
Yes, dear reader, we’re visiting the pages of the Guardian. Specifically, the latest transmission from the strange, anguished mind of Mr George Monbiot:
Walking without a map, I reached the valley floor too soon and found myself on the main road. In some places there were no verges and I had to press myself into the hedge as cars passed. But on such early walks, almost regardless of where you are, there are rewards.
Wait for it.
Just as I was about to turn off the road, on to the track that would take me back to the barn, I found a squirrel hit by a car that must have just passed me, dead but still twitching. It was a male, one of this year’s brood but fully grown. Blood seeped from a wound to the head. I picked it up by its hind feet, and though I had played no part in its death, I was immediately gripped by a sensation so discrete, so distinct from all else we feel, that I believe it requires its own label: hunter’s pride.
Gasp ye at the dark, animal side of a Guardian columnist:
It’s the raw, feral thrill I have experienced only on the occasions when I have picked up a fresh dead animal I intend to eat. It feels to me like the opening of a hidden door, a rent in the mind through which you can glimpse a ghost psyche: vestigial emotional faculties that once helped us to survive.
Ah, the savage romance. Of roadkill.
I showed the squirrel to the small tribe of children that had formed in the campsite, girls and boys between the ages of three and nine, and asked them if they’d like to watch me prepare it.
Creepy man waves dead, twitching squirrel at bewildered children.
I borrowed an axe and sharpened it on a stone, told the children what I was about to do, in case any of them had qualms, then chopped off the head, tail and feet.
Creepy man now has axe in hand. Run, children, run.
It was exquisite: tender and delicately flavoured.
As this is apparently still breakfast we’re talking about, I’ll settle for coffee and some toast. However, George seems to have opened a psychological floodgate. A confession ensues:
I’ve eaten plenty of roadkill. I’ll take anything fresh except cats and dogs (my main concern is for the feelings of the owners, rather than the palatability of the meat, though it would require an effort to overcome the cultural barriers). But I was never before foolish enough to mention this eccentric habit on social media.
Happily, Guardian readers can now peek inside George’s head, his “ghost psyche,” and behold the passions therein. While pondering the various health concerns raised by peeling flattened squirrels from the roadside and, after waving said objects at any passing small children, reaching for the camping stove.
To seek enlightenment, about ourselves and the world around us: this is what makes a life worth living.
That, and the contents of the Guardian.
… and he once equated air travel with child molestation.
I wonder what he would call waving a dead squirrel at a bunch of kids. Oh.
Pace Greg, whose grandfather knew a choice morsel when he saw one (he would have been appalled at the waste of the squirrel’s brains ), the reason Mr. Moonbat does not consume the brains of the squirrel is that he doesn’t want to wind up with more cerebral matter in his stomach than in his cranium.
As my sweet grey-haired grandma used to say, the tricky part is always disposing of the body.
Oh, nonsense. You just have no imagination.
R.Sherman,
Perhaps he’s angling for a “Hugo”…
I’d say the Bulwer-Lytton Contest committee can cease accepting nominations; this year’s winner is here.
He was at a barn-raising party??
Shudder.
I grew up in the countryside and have long nursed a desire to return there, perhaps in my retirement.
Unfortunately, it looks as though all the agreeable places in England will now be infected by the likes of Monbiot and his obnoxious snooty friends. Why can’t they all just piss off to Tuscany and live with Polly?
File under “Religion”
George does seem to be gripped by an ersatz religious fervour, a kind of eco-mysticism. What with his “portals,” “ghost psyche” and the “ancient soul of humankind.” As if scavenging roadkill and pretending to be pre-modern somehow makes his existence more real and authentic. His mind is an amusing place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to be stuck there.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3213631/Environmentalist-skins-butchers-cooks-dead-squirrel-live-BBC-Newsnight-seven-swings-axe.html
Scraping animal carcasses off roads and eating them for breakfast is good, Sunday roasts are “an oppressive outmoded practice” that should be done away with.
So if I want to enjoy a grilled steak this weekend I’ll have stand by the tracks and hope a cow is hit by a train.
But you can use it for the column, too!!
Exodus 22:30
And ye shall be holy men unto Me; therefore ye shall not eat any flesh that is torn of beasts in the field; ye shall cast it to the dogs.
The dietary restrictions of the Old Testament always seemed superfluous to me, if not useless. Why would limiting what people eat help them tell right from wrong? Maybe it was supposed to help tell right from CRAZY.
George is obviously an asshole of immense proportions. But, however much it pains me, I have to point out he is one of the few writers on the Neo Left to take issue with Noam Chomsky, over the latter’s contribution to ‘the Politics of Genocide’. The highlight of this demented tome describes how the Tutsis were actually the engineers of the Rwandan genocide and how a vast conspiracy has kept this truth from us. George’s ‘attack’ on Chomsky may have fizzled out in a disappointing fashion, but along the way he did at least show the latter up as a complete and utter cunt.
Here’s a more vegan friendly alternate scenario:
George happens upon a head of lettuce that fell off the back of a delivery lorry and was subsequently run over by the next car that followed.
(said quietly)
Bloody hell. He’s headed this way. Red alert guys.
It does strike me as odd that, for years, lefties despied country folk and country ways. Any talk of rural tradition and of being connected to the soil and the ancient ways was sneered at as superstition and sentimentality on the part of the in-bred peasantry. Yet here we have George getting all atavistic and aquiver at the sight of a dead rodent. It will all end badly.
Yet here we have George getting all atavistic and aquiver at the sight of a dead rodent.
Heh. That, as they say.
I think there’s ample room to doubt this story top to bottom. Video or it didn’t happen.
“I crept out of the tent at 5am”. The children’s tent I’ll bet.
The dietary restrictions of the Old Testament always seemed superfluous to me, if not useless.
A huge part of the law of Moses was to help the Israelites be different from their pagan neighbors — separate, apart, unmixed, unadulterated — so that they wouldn’t acquire their depraved customs such as child sacrifice and ritual prostitution. If the Israelites found it hard to socialize with their neighbors at mealtime, for example, they’d be less likely to seek approval from or try to fit in with the pagans. (A losing battle, but a battle nonetheless.)
(All other regulations that emphasized separateness fell into this category [Leviticus 19:19]. Oddly enough, the psychological rigor that accompanies not mixing wool with linen helps people keep the precept of separateness in other contexts.)
As a Mormon with my own dietary restrictions (no coffee, tea, tobacco, alcohol) I find that avoiding those four substances — which almost all cultures use in friendship rituals — forces me to Be Separate from the off. Having to ask for cocoa instead of coffee, herbal tea instead of regular tea, soda instead of alcohol (or turning it down outright) is uncomfortable and awkward and annoying and indeed thwarts the full impact of the friendship ritual. If we all went out to dinner, I could enjoy your company well enough but I’d still be the one not quite integrated into the group.
So all that stuff about being holy (non secular) and a peculiar people (chosen, apart) got reinforced in customs great and small.
What mojo said.
Charles C.W. Cooke calls our attention to a proposed new writer to join the Guardian fold, but alas, he is dead.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/423221/hypocrisy-culture-kills-crowd-charles-c-w-cooke
A barn-raising party? Save me. Unless you live in Lancaster County, PA and are called Jacob Stoltzfus you have absolutely no excuse to be doing anything so utterly twee. Mongbat wasn’t camping. He was on safari.
On point. Trust me.
http://www.madmusic.com/song_details.aspx?SongID=20787
I quite like this.
I quite like this.
That’s awesome.
“a bridge long enough to get over yourself.”
Too bad it takes some many characters to make it work.
It is rather pretentious, but I give him credit for being willing to butcher and clean his own meat. 98% of us never see where meat comes from, and would prefer not to, I think.
Something about culinary recommendations seems awfully familiar . . . .
