I’m debating whether I should send an email to the Prime Minister:

Subject: Paint

Dear Prime Minister

I am currently decorating my house, and would like to find a hard wearing paint for the front door. I have noticed that the doors to numbers 10 and 11 always look very smart. I’m assuming that this is not a trick of the television. What brand of paint do your use? I’d prefer not to have to repaint every year, and have the added problem that my street is not closed to traffic and guarded by a significant police presence, so there may be damage from terrorism that your door would not encounter. Nonetheless, what is good enough for you, is surely good enough for me.

With many thanks, in advance, for your advice,

Alex

I got in with the wrong crowd. They forced me. Led me to my fate – its inevitable that a stabler should lead to a filing tray. Admin screws you up. I know it now. Maybe I should go cold turkey. Stand by the shredder. Who knows.

There are a meagre 9 months until the target day: the culmination of efforts to establish a new market for an alternative snack, one that will feed children around the November bonfires whilst helping to alleviate pressure caused by a certain population. Toffee pigeons. Held via the stick of the legs, each bird can be cooked amongst the embers before being dipped in warm sugar. An ideal way to feed two cold children as they watch the fireworks. Or one particularly hungry child. Or a cat with a sweet tooth.

You may think that’s a crazy. That I’ve got the wrong solution. The wrong target. That the pigeons should be targeted second.

Don’t worry. They will be. Earlier – Halloween – there will be squirrel bobbing. No longer the dull pursuit of chasing fruit. With squirrel bobbing there will be the excitement of a live target. Of real sport. And of avoiding your face being sliced open by the claws of aggravated, drowning rodents.