Thongs of Excellence

Scientists have long argued that rap music incites people to commit violence. One explanation suggests that the rhythms of rap correspond with those of the heart, causing blood pressure to rise and increase a person’s aggression. It must be true. I’m feeling really aggressive today and I’ve been listening to rap.

I feel so mean, I could strangle a squirrel.

A big red squirrel.

If there’s a dumber idea than producing a rap version of Wordsworth’s Daffodils, I’d love to hear it. Actually, I’d prefer listening to just about anything rather than the version of the dullest of all the nation’s favourite poems. I suggest that you don't visit Cumbria's tourism website.

Ms. Baroque and Arthur Clewley drew my attention to this little atrocity and each receive one of my new shining awards; or the Thong of Excellence as I like to call it.

Wear the badge with pride, fellow Thonglateers. Commemorative posing pouches are winging their way to you with tomorrow's morning post.

Ms. Baroque imagines ‘poor William Wordsworth, trying to do his bit so that we could have our bicentenary of the publication of "Daffodils," when all at once he spies a host, a crowd of rude boys outside his window...’ The problem with Wordsworth is I think people forget that he himself was something of a rude boy in his youth. The Lyrical Ballads were something new. He and his friend Coleridge were radical, revolutionary. Only now is Wordsworth plagued with problem daffodils and Coleridge is troubled by an albatross. It’s like Peter Cook only being remembered for his role in Bedazzled. People might get the wrong idea and think of him as a gentle comedian from the school of Barry Took.

Wordsworth needs to be remembered for something other than daffodils. Which is why I propose we begin to celebrate the eleventh book of his Prelude.

This last opprobrium, when we see a people,
That once looked up in faith, as if to Heaven
For manna, take a lesson from the dog
Returning to his vomit.

How about marking that with a special day of making dogs vomit around Windermere? The tourists are sure to love it.

Mr. Clewley has a point when he argues that ‘If we can ban Snoop Dog from coming across the Atlantic then surely we can ban a giant hip hop Squirrel Nutkin from crossing the Pennines and doing a break dancing Remains of Elmet.’

Here, however, I have to take issue with what is an otherwise admirable sentiment. I wouldn’t be so quick to ban the little fellow. Across England, the red squirrel is facing extinction because of the spread of the grey. It can’t be long before the grey squirrels make it as far north as Cumbria. We should then let nature take its course. We should stand back and watch, with great satisfaction, as the grey take over Nutkin’s hood in a spay of bullets from their Mac-10 submachine guns. Then we hear no more about these bloody daffodils.