Prawn stars

Warning: This blog is full of foul mouthed effin and blinding. Do not read on. Well, not unless you're a foul mouthed effin and blinder yourself.

I was rather hoping for a better readership than that. Tut, tut.

As the Big Yin once said, stay oot the sea! You don't belong! There's things in there that bite ye. Don't go in. Yer not welcome!

And he's quite right. In fact, Sir Billy is never wrong, apart from his choice of Glaswegian footie team. Don't know what happened there. I suppose every genius is flawed. I mean, Einstein was quite sharp but his hair was pants. World's strongest man has biceps wider than a tree but his tadger is probably the size of a button mushroom. Yin and yang. Apples and pears. Comme si, comme ca, amigo.

Anyway, I'm digressing here. See the sea - stay out of the sea. There are sharks, piranhas, jelly fish and other ravenous things who all agree that, you, as a human being, should bugger right off!
"Go on, get lost. Get oot o' here!" shout the prawns.

"Sod off back to the sand where you belong. You smelly polluter bastards that ye are and tell yer kids to stop weeing in here!"

How many warnings does your average hard working killer shark have to give? Every month or so newspapers are littered with "shock" headlines of "surfer mauled by shark"; "shark ate man for dinner" and "Man went in sea and didn't come back" .

On a lighter note, gangs of cuttle fish have been seen around inner shore areas...

By the way, prawns should be banned and not just because of their foul mouthed abusive language. Don't get me wrong, I can understand why some people enjoy them as they are reasonably tasty in a tasteless chewy chicken sort of way. But if you actually make the mistake of looking at a fully clothed one before you bite it, you might view them differently.

Twidling its rigid crustacean body round in your murderous fingers, you give it the eyeball. Or rather two eyeballs 'cos they've got two of them, black and beady, that stare at you. They have straggley whiskers and dangly bits that hang off their arse - probably piles or something as they don't have easy access to Preparation H. Then you have to snap off their heads, crack their body and expectantly peel the crust. If you're lucky you get half a centimeter of soft pinky flesh, which always has a fragment of hard shell. As you crunch on a mouthful with the whiskers dangling out the side of your gob you say "hmm, prawns are great" and hope no-one noticed you'd eaten half the head.

Not the most appetising. Bit like Nana Mouskouri but without the make-up. Who the hell would want to eat that? They're locusts in disguise. If you came across one in the garden you'd run a mile, unless you're a salivating Frenchie.

But no, 'cos they're from the sea, they are considered delicous, sophisticated even. Tiger prawn soup, prawn cocktail, grilled prawns on the barbie, salmon and prawn medley on a bed of caviare. All very posh. All very noncy noncy. Cook them to a degree of imperfection and you'll get nags and dysentry for the next four months.

"Are you sure they're cooked all right?"

"Aye. They've been on for two hours and forty three minutes."

"Oh. Are they supposed to be pink in the middle?"

"Aye, they're prawns."

"Oh. Mine's a bit cold at the top end. Do you think it's all right?"

"Aye. the prawns are fine! They're always fine. I always cook them to perfection. It's not rocket science! Only takes two minutes by the book. In fact you can put prawns on a barbie and go for a bath and forget about them. They're easy!"

I say prawn eating is disgusting and should stop right now. Same goes for all their other seafish insect-like chums. I'm talking whelks, scallops, mussels and shrimps. They are all ugly buggers. They are the insects of the sea. Do not eat them. If you really want to eat something disgusting, fry a glow worm then marinate it in a mayonnaise sauce. If you can do it without heaving you'll be on TV.

Australia is as inviting as the sea. It's territory that humans should have no business with, even though it looks tempting to go in.

You don't belong.

You're not welcome.

Think about it.

This is a place tha, when first discovered, the well mannered civilized Brits thought, "urgh, I'm not living there. Get me a boat out o' here sharpish. Let's send the murderers, rapists and dirty criminals there instead. That'll punish the bastards. It's worse than Newgate Prison..."

This was a most unusual evolution in terms of pioneering activity. Normally, a place would be discovered. The discoverer would say this is great! I'm staying! I'm a genius. I want a knighthood right now and a magic wee statue in my image in the city centre! Oh, and an indoor flushing toilet wouldn't go amiss either!

Take the Pilgrim fathers. They didn't do a runner when they discovered America, did they? No, they thought 'we'll plant some potatoes and make some hamburgers'. That's because the US is safe. Well, apart from the bombings, guns and murders. Nothing actually bites you there.

Instead the Brits came back proclaiming 'Go on! Get on that weavil-ridden boat, bugger off to Australia and don't come back!'

Over the years you're conditioned to think this was a very sensible approach to housing the filthy criminals swarming the streets of Londinium. Little did you know how inhumanly cruel people can be and if given the choice, your average thieving nasty bit of work would instead have chosen to be hung naked with complimentary public humiliation.

No, the real reason they sent them there was not the distance. After all, if it was distance they were after, they'd have sent them to the moon or twenty leagues under the sea. It was the torture element they were going for. Send them to Oz, let them live there. That'll teach them to repent from their life of crime.

Silly thing is, if your average criminal had an ounce of sense, they could just have got the return ferry back. How difficult would that have been?

Go somewhere like Renfrew, for example. Don't like it? No problem. Get the ferry back. Simple.

Boat arrives from Plymouth full of convicts, bursting for the khazi and a decent pint, dumps them off in Oz. Picture the desperado wanting to return home on the quay at Sydney.

"Err, excuse me, captain."

"Yes, you flea infested scurvy ridden piece of scum?"

"Excuse me, captain. Thinking of going back to Old Blightey. Any room on the ship?"

"Are you a fellow of disrepute, violent tendencies and psychologically imbalanced personality?"

"Err, not with you captain."

"Are you a murderous, criminal, mental bastard?"

"Oh-arr, that I am, captain! At yer service!"

"Excellent."

"Does that mean I can come on board?"

"Certainly. Once ah get rid of these extremely dangerous criminals. I just need to be up the old sea dog and Roger the cabin boy. Plenty of space on here. Hop aboard."

Distance is irrelevant. They got sent there 'cos Australia is full of things that want to kill you.

Things that crawl, things that creep, things that eat.

On first impressions the crims would have thought, "woah, this is a bit of all right! Sun, sea, sand and beautiful beaches. Brilliant!

Then, before they knew it, the insects would be giving it large.

'Cos there's only one thing you need to know about Australia. It's dangerous. Forget about the barbeques, the blonde birds on the beach, Home and Away and Bonza mate. It's plain dangerous...

Even a harmless pursuit like jogging can put you in casualty.

I know, because every lunch time I go for a run down a cycle track which runs parallel to a creek.

Every lunchtime I come back with brown shorts having had a near-death experience. And this is not in some Abo Bush area with digeridoo musak in the background. This is in the middle of sky scrapers, industrial enterprise, science parks and central business districts.

The insects, lizards and snakes don't give a monkeys about that. This is their turf and you're tresspassing, mate!

What's more, I don't need to eat my sandwiches when I return to the office. To open your mouth or indeeed any orifice when running in Oz is madness. You'll consume flies bigger than fists, and jumping spiders that get stuck in your gullet. Mozzies the size of birds and flying ants that reverberate down your windpipe in time with your lungs. No point in trying to cough them up. It causes a gigantic panic, you'll hyperventilate then have a Russell. Just take it like a man and swallow hard. They'll fight it out amongst themselves in your intestines, to see who's first out.

Along the route, I hear things rustling through the grass, wee slimy fast bastard things that follow me along, just waiting do get a dirty big bite of some Scottish beef.

I run much faster now than I used to in Britain.

And that's just the insects. There are other things too. Things that even David Attenborough hasn't met cos if he had he'd now be dead. Bigger things that don't even try to get out your way or subtely attack you. They're so hard they go for a full frontal mugging.

I'm talking brazen gangs of lizards, who do not give a monkeys that God decreed, you as man, should have dominion over them.

"Hoi mate. What do you think you're doing on my path?"

"Err nothing, my reptilian scaley friend with the probing tongue. Just passing through."

"Oh, is that right, is it? Just passing through?"

Within seconds his mates have arrived, a whole gang of lizard mafia things. They swarm round and jostle you.

You probably think I'm exaggerating. I can tell you I'm not. The first time I saw one of these blighters was through my bosses office window. It was eating cars in the car park.

"Argh, there's a dinosaur in the car park!"

"Oh no. Good-day mate and bonza. Kylie, Kylie. That's nothing. That's just a blue dragon. They're really tame. Crack open a tinny mate. Everyone needs good neighbours."

"Well, where I grew up we were told dragons were very dangerous. Only really hard people called David could give them a pasting. Or was it Goliath? Always getting them mixed up. Oh no it was George, the MP for Dumfries and Galloway..."

First time you see one of these, the last thing you're thinking is whether you've got room in your house for one. You're more thinking there's been a breakout from the zoo - get the police!...and the ambulance!

Next time I saw one was when when the gang leader broke into the grounds of our house to go for a swim. No kidding, he did like 50 lengths. Breast-stroke, a bit of back-stroke and then got on the boat for a chill.

"Look, daddy, there's a lizard on the boat. You'd better get him!"

"Aye right ye are kids. Daddy's got to go to work now."

"But it's dinner time. You've been to work already."

"Oh, right, yeah, right. I mean no. No. Honestly, got to go."

"Darling, what could possibly be more important than getting this dragon out of the pool?"

"Err. I'm cooking dinner. Remember?"

"So?"

" Just got to check the prawns on the barbie. They're my favourites."

"So?"

"Need to make sure they're cooked properly. Don't want anyone getting ill, dear."