Scrotox and Trumpets

What an extraordinary couple of days,  when it seems that the whole world has gone mad, but as is often the way, the worst of humanity also brings out the best, so that when you are on the point of giving up and walking into the sunset something happens to make you think actually it’s probably worth sticking around. In my case, this was the march on Saturday through London. A gloriously sunny crisp day, a gathering of  of like minded strident humans, small large, young old, male,  female, a melting pot of solidarity, pink hats, banners and wit. Some perfectly sensible friends did not march because they felt ” there is no point, marches and protests  do not make any difference”.. well I do not agree. While I admit to having felt incredibly deflated after the last massive march against the Iraq war, when we felt so optimistic and yet Blair did not listen, if everyone just assumed doing anything pro active was pointless where on earth would we be now? Marching with  thousands of others (with  my daughters at my side )  felt empowering and life affirming.  If this is not a good enough reason to feel optimistic about our future then I don’t know what is. 

Talking of walking off into the sunset, I remember a story I was told when I was staying in Arizona. The lovely couple who were putting me up had both been married before and on a drive up into the mountains the wife was telling me about her first husband. He had, she said been a ” walker”. I imagined this meant that he enjoyed hiking . But no, she meant that one day, in the middle of the night, he got up, left the house  and walked out into the desert where his body got taken over  by an alien. This was told with complete solemnity as if it was as normal as popping out to buy a pint of milk and a packet of fags. A pretty extreme way to get out of paying child support if you ask me. Anyway, he eventually got in touch about a year later having changed his name ( to Drogan) but still to this day, 20 or so years later  lives somewhere out in the desert in a community of fellow “walkers”. There is hope I suppose that perhaps Mr Trump may feel the need for a similar stroll, though I imagine even an alien would struggle to take him on.

In this time of Brexit and the bizarre and  quite frightening events of the past couple of days in the USA I thought nothing could surprise me anymore. Except I was proved wrong when during lunch yesterday M  brought up the delightfully charming subject of SCROTOX. Yes, you heard right. Apparantly a new fad for men of a certain age, injecting botox into their testicles to turn them from their natural wrinkled prune state into firm plums or boiled eggs ( I did not make that up). Disappointed though at the lack of photographic evidence on the internet,   apart from some rather tame pics of said firm plums and shiny eggs and one rather scary image of a large pair of testicles that seemed to have been polished with radioactive powder. Unbelievable what people seem to want to do with their bodies. 

Though I suppose some people might think that the amount of alcohol that was consumed over our roast beef was pretty unbelievable too.