Life in the North

[shewhomust]

Yesterday's Observer magazine visits Lord Redesdale and his fellow members of the Red Squirrel Protection Partnership: "We only call ourselves the Red Squirrel Protection Partnership because if we called it the Grey Squirrel Annihilation League people might be a bit less sympathetic."

Journalist Tim Adams is simultaneously sympathetic and bemused: "A couple of years ago, [Redesdale] said, he felt he had been lacking purpose in his life. He had the peerage, his work, his wife, Helen (a lawyer), four wonderful kids, a house in north London, and the cottage and several hundred tenanted acres in the valley that bears his name, but he was lying awake wondering about the meaning of it all. 'Now,' he said, trying to suppress a giggle, 'I lie awake working out how to kill squirrels.'" In case you didn't recognise the name, he's a Mitford.

The article made me laugh quite a lot, but, for the avoidance of ambiguity, I am pretty much with Mitford on this one. Not to his level of obsession - I'm as susceptible as the next person to the impudent charm of the individual grey squirrel - but I can see that if the red squirrel is to survive, then large areas must be cleared of greys.

Comments

[twa-in-yin.livejournal.com]

That was a brilliant, and very funny, article -- thanks. By coincidence I had been reading this morning about Max Mosley's becoming an unlikely poster boy for sexual freedom. The Mitfords still seem to be quite an interesting bunch.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I just read that Max Mosley article. I thought the journalist was playing excessively naïve.