Silly Season Strikes Again

Well, that certainly showed me, didn't it? There I was, spending every August lamenting the decline of the traditional British 'silly season' story and what happens? That's right, over the Bank Holiday weekend we had an honest to goodness silly season story splashed all over the media in form of the 'Essex Lion'. I was doubly surprised because I really thought that those 'big cats on the loose in Britain' stories had finally run their course. But no - here we had what seemed to almost be the archetypal form of the story and, best of all, the local police had clearly never heard it before as they actually responded to it! I ask you, if someone phones up and says they've just seen a lion in field, but the only 'proof' they can offer is what appears to be a blurred photograph of someone's pet cat, would you mobilise the entire police force, complete with helicopters, tranquiliser darts and all the works? Obviously not. But thank God for Essex Police, without them we'd never have had such an entertaining Bank Holiday.

Clearly, they weren't aware of the Hampshire tiger incident of a couple of years ago, when half of Hampshire Constabulary, supported by a helicopter, surrounded a tiger in a field after a tip-off from a member of the public, only to find that it was a child's stuffed toy. Whilst I know that they always have to be 'safe rather than sorry', the police in this country should have realised by now that there are no big cats living in the wild in the UK. Logic dictates that if there were, there would be physical evidence beyond blurred photos of something that might be furry. Farmers would notice cattle going missing, half-eaten cow carcasses would be littering the countryside, not to mention footprints and piles of lion/tiger shit. Instead, all we have are supposed eyewitness statements, the least reliable kind of 'evidence' you can get. I know from personal experience that memories of even recent events can be deceptive. Even within minutes of an event, our recollection of it becomes hazy and our imaginations are forced to fill in details. A couple of times I've had to give witness statements to the police and, despite having a good memory, I found that I really couldn't remember many of the details of the incidents involved, even when they had occurred less than hour before. So I'm not surprised that someone having seen a very large domestic cat from a distance, when recalling the episode unwittingly exaggerates the animal's size and appearance.

Ah well, still a few days of August to go - still time for a few UFO landings, perhaps?