A wealthy landowner plans to introduce bears and wolves to his Scottish estate.
Paul Lister, heir to the MFI furniture fortune, is pushing ahead with his project to fence 50,000 acres of land in Sutherland so that bears may picnic and wolves may dance. This is fine by me as long as it all happens far away in the Highlands, nowhere near my back yard. I find the human varieties of bear and wolf frightening enough, thank you.
If the man from MFI has millions to spare he might consider preserving some of the rarer Scottish examples of the species homo sapiens. Such as the man in a boiler suit. These creatures used to proliferate in Scottish urban areas, notably in habitats such as shipyards on the banks of the river Clyde and dark satanic iron and steel works in the east end of Glasgow.
They are now definitely lesser spotted. Instead of oil-stained industrial apparel, these males now dress in sporting leisure wear.
This is ironic since in days of old in the shipyards, time and motion experts used to study work patterns in an attempt to make the men go faster and the reply of the shop stewards was "This is an effin biler suit, no a track suit."
The wildlife park to house homo bilersuitus would be a disused shipyard where the species could roam freely, tell jokes, brew bill cans of tea, and pretend to work when the foreman comes on the scene.
This is thought to accurately replicate conditions in various yards in Govan in the 1960s.
In an era of supermarket home deliveries, there are fears for the future of the genus wee wumman with a shopping bag. These shoppers were not merely bits of kit for getting the messages home. The bag, usually made of Rexine, provided the ladies with such a low centre of gravity they could not be blown over by even the strongest wind. Even when gale warnings had been posted, the ladies could stand, a bag in each hand, outside the Co-op and discuss how they didn't know what the world was coming to.
Finally, an almost extinct sub-species is the traditional Scottish bank manager. Looking a bit like John Swinney, the Holyrood Finance Secretary, this gentleman would not understand the concept of good bank/ bad bank. He would be too busy turning down dodgy mortgage applications and cutting up credit cards.
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