Robert McNeil: ‘Starseeds’ from ooter space have heids in the clouds

However, I can exclusively reveal, from my own intuition, that the real purpose of this sort of thing is to sell books that prey on adolescent fragility. Are you sensitive? Feel you don’t belong? Do you love nature? Do other people have difficulty understanding you? Do you feel overwhelmed and need to be alone? Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Then you are from ooter space and have been sent here on a mission to save the planet.

But all adolescents feel these things. I still do, apart from loving nature, which looks nice but, underneath, is smelly, cruel and abhorrent.

As one who has made serious efforts to find why I am so at odds with my fellow person and never fit in anywhere, I have often been driven in the direction of this Starseed sort of thing, and something else called Indigo Children.

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The latter features the same sort of schtick: folk were bunged here at the start of the Age of Aquarius – my generation; hippies and so forth – to make the Earth a better place. Well, you can shove that.

I don’t like this planet and couldn’t give a damn about it. I think I cared and tried when I was younger, but now I can’t be bothered and think it all a waste of time anyway. The Earthlings are incorrigible. In my home planet’s official travellers’ guide to the universe they are listed under “Vegetation”.

Without a doubt, I don’t belong on this planet, but believe I was sent here by mistake in a typical bureaucratic cock-up that, I’m afraid, still exists on more advanced planets and probably in the afterlife.

Maybe the latter will be like that scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian where prisoners are asked by a nice Roman chap with a clipboard if they are to be crucified or go free.

“Crucifixion?”

“Ah, no. Freedom.”

“What?”

“Freedom for me. They said I hadn’t done anything so I could go free and live on an island somewhere.”

“Oh, that’s jolly good. Off you go then.”

“Nah, I’m only pulling your leg. It’s crucifixion.”

Same in the afterlife.

“Heaven or hell?”

“Heaven for me. They said I’d been really nice generally, had fed the garden birds, opposed the woke tyrants, and hadn’t started any wars or killed anyone.”

“Oh, well done. Straight ahead, turn left then take the lift to the top floor. Nah, only kidding. It’s hell. Oh, ha-ha! In that case, you want the corridor on the right – it’s clearly marked – then go down the stairs towards the sound of screaming.”

A polluted English river (Image: free)

Water mess

I HOPE you are not at breakfast as it behoves me to speak of effluent.

It is being dumped in the sea beside the beaches of Bonnie Britannia, more so in Englandia than here. It’s the sort of thing you thought could not happen in these technologically advanced and hygienic times.

You can buy toilets that massage your buttocks and read you a comforting story, but we’re still bunging poop in the water.

All in all, swimmers and paddlers have been warned in the UK-wide study to avoid 82 beaches, all of them in Englandshire (none in Wales either), including Gorleston Beach, in Norfolk, recently named “best beach in the country” (UK; lordy, sorting out this UK/England “country” business in reports is exhausting).

The “hidden gem”, as it was described, turns out to have hidden ordure. All that said, across the country (England), the dumping is backed by decent ratepayers at many beauty spots as at least it keeps the surfers away.

Indeed, the above-mentioned research was carried out by outraged surfers.

Keep pumping in that poop!

Happy days

THROUGHOUT their long and appalling history, Earthlings have sought to get high, to escape their grim environment by altering their perceptions through stimulants.

These days, it is difficult to tell who is taking what. In happier times, there was just cannabis and LSD. True, there was also darker stuff like heroin and morphine, but decent ratepayers avoided these.

This week, one reads that the younglings are inhaling nitrous oxide, which sounds properly scientific and acceptable until we learn that it is … laughing gas.

Some are taking 150 cylinders a day to experience temporary feelings of euphoria. But folk were not put on this Earth to experience euphoria. They were dumped here to struggle and suffer.

Although laughing gas sounds quite jolly, neurologists have warned that the side-effects make it “more dangerous than cocaine”.

You see, younglings? Give up the search for euphoria. The best you can hope for is mild happiness. And, even then, believe me, while not incurring the full wrath of the gods, you will pay for it.

Keep off the plastic grass

Fake plastic lawns should be as socially unacceptable as blowing cigarette smoke in a baby’s face. Not nearly as much fun either. Gardening groups are launching a “no” campaign against the environmentally damaging feature. The sort of folk who install it won’t worry about deleterious effects on wildlife. But they should be telt it looks awful.

Bullies telt

News from Abroadshire, and Spain could be poised to join civilisation after a poll showed nearly half its inmates now favour banning bullfighting, a “sport” that sees animals killed for the pleasure of baying crowds of psychopaths. That said, it is one of life’s pleasures to read about “matadors” being gored.

Land grab

Much furore over small plots of Australian land included in Oscar nominees’ doggie bags this week. At last year’s Oscars, it was bits of Scotland that were given away. Do they ever learn? Again, it’s all supposedly politically sound and respectful. But, given the histories, it’s just another insensitive gesture in supposedly woke Luvvyland.

Unfunny money

Pennsylvania Yoonie researchers have found a link between larger incomes and greater happiness. However, levels of joy level off at incomes over £60,000, and some folk remain miserable no matter how much dosh they have. Interesting. Give me 60 grand, and I might start to think life worth living. Though I doubt it.

New Declaration

Yon Declaration of Arbroath is to go on display, at the National Museum of Scotland. It’s 700-odd years old now. Surely time for a new one: “As long as but three of us remain alive, we will never agree on anything. For it is not for glory or riches that we fight but unisex toilets and a bottle deposit scheme.”

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