Dial M For Monkey

I really must stop trying to speed read the story headers in newspapers with a quick glance. It just leads to misinterpretations and (usually) bitter disappointment when I re-read them and realise their intended meaning. Today, for instance, I misread something in the international news section of The Guardian - I could have sworn that it said 'Kenya sets world first with monkey transfers by mobile'. My heart leaped with joy! What an achievement that would be - no longer would surplus monkeys have to be laboriously rounded up, caged and put on trains or lorries before enduring arduous journeys to wherever there were monkey shortages! Oh no! Now you can just transfer them by phone! Presumably, I thought, it would be a bit like taking a photo of one on your mobile. Except that as you clicked to take the photo, the simian would be transported, Star Trek style, to the location of the number you'd dialled! Incredible stuff! At long last monkey infestations could be dealt with humanely - instead of shooting the little bastards you'd just telephone them somewhere else.

However, the potential dark side of this new technology soon occurred to me. Perhaps Kenya was overrun by monkeys and this new technology was in fact part of a cunning plan to resolve the problem by stealthily exporting all the hairy little bastards by dialling them out of the country. Imagine, there could be a massed monkey mobile transfer in which hundreds of Kenyan game wardens pointed their phones at monkeys and dialled London numbers. Before you knew it, there'd be hundreds of the banana-eating bastards scrabbling up Nelson's Column, throwing their own shit at the Queen as she passes down the Mall, or masturbating wildly on the altar at St Paul's during services for school children. It'd be a national disaster. Even if not used as a warped weapon of mass destruction, this monkey mobile technology could still be used by pranksters to beam wild monkeys into the homes of unsuspecting citizens. Imagine the shock of answering your mobile only to have a blue arsed baboon leaping straight at your face!

At this point, I decided to actually read the article and find out if any of my worst fears were about to be realised. To my dismay, I found that I'd misread the headline. Sadly, it really said 'Kenya sets world first with money transfers by mobile'. Very significant, I don't doubt. But not as exciting as monkey transfers.