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Hoots & Havers - August 07

A sterile genetically modified mosquito has been developed. The idea is that it goes around copulating with its ladies who then fail to breed and thus the species declines and people are no longer are inflicted with malaria. It works thanks to the Darby and Joan behaviour of the female mozzie. Once shagged by a particular male, it will shag no other. But how is one of these sterile males to be recognized? Easy. They have fluorescent genitals.

It’s a shame that this trick is wasted on mosquitoes. Many years ago I had the snip and have not been a breeder since. If the operation had resulted in fluorescence in my nether regions, I suspect my strike rate might have been improved over the years. It’s not very often that the females of our species wish to become impregnated, but they sometimes quite like nookie and genitals that glowed in the dark would reveal the safety of one’s status. It would also be handy when it came to finding the loo at night, or changing car wheels. And a quick flash at the entrance to one’s snow hole would quickly lure the mountain rescue helicopter to one’s assistance. It is true that our culture currently demands the concealment of one’s naughty bits, but this is not beyond the wit of fashion designers to sort out. A little fabric window, appropriately positioned and frosted to preserve decency, would allow the light to shine through.

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The aforesaid snip was one of the very few times that I have offered up my body to the surgeon’s knife and I am aware that I am far luckier than most. However, last month I did it again to allow a minor imperfection to be excised under local anesthetic. The operator in Perth was a petal named Mohammed. He had a bevy of glamorous nurses twittering round him and a 1st year medical student.

It was the latter’s first time and we agreed that he would thus remember the experience. In the background blathered Radio Tay. Then the news came on and the nurses gravitated across for an update on Muslim bombers working as doctors in the Scottish NHS. So I began to make babbled conversation to keep Mohammed’s mind off this distraction.

‘My uncle’, I said, ‘trained here in PRI before the war.’ Mohammed raised his head from his work and gazed at me with puzzled brown eyes. And I realized that, to him, this meant very little. Had I meant the 1st Gulf War? The 2nd Gulf War? The Iran/Iraq War? The Yom Kippur War? The 6-day War? The 1st, 2nd or 3rd Indo/Pakistan Wars? Or even the War Against Terrorism? I could see the medical student looking equally blank. Perhaps I’d meant the Falklands War. Or the Vietnam War or the Balkans War? So I shut up, felt old and culturally isolated and watched Mohammed painstakingly continue to whittle away.

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Some years ago I interviewed a local councillor on Heartland and we talked about housing. He had a vision of a ribbon of dwellings either side of the road between Ballinluig and Loch Tay. And it’s well on the way to being achieved. I find this a bit sad since the basis of the charm of this area is its natural beauty and this is inevitably marred by too many people and too many houses, particularly when so many are made out of concrete blocks in the Tesco school of design.

There were more houses here a century ago but they were made out of local materials and looked as though they’d grown out of the hillsides. Now we smear ugly buildings across them. Several folk I know have already departed the area because of their perceived suburbanization of the strath.

But who’s to stop it? There’s a shortage of affordable housing, so it won’t be the rising generation of locals who will object. Any landowner, unless the possessor of great dollops of money earned outside the area, slavers at the price he can achieve for development land. And even great dollops aren’t enough for some who always like a little, or a lottle more. It won’t be those who fill the mailing lists of the local estate agents desperate to buy houses in these straths, preferably in enclaves to remind them of the suburb from which they escaped. And it won’t be the architects and builders who construct them.

Does one dare interfere with the free market? In an ideal world one would stop the building of all but affordable houses and let incomers spiral up the prices of the rest of the existing housing stock to whatever levels they can. Ideas have been put forward to alleviate the problem. Double council tax on all second homes, the money realized being handed directly to the local community who could either use it to enhance facilities or towards strictly controlled affordable housing. Or to hike considerably the tax paid on properties in bands G and H.

Those who already live in, or have already moved into, the area may strive to keep development down to protect their investment or their way of life, but Nimbyism isn’t that savoury an attitude and difficult to sympathise with or defend. So we’re down to the planners of P&K as the bulwark against overdevelopment. Alas! We’d better enjoy the beauties of Highland Perthshire while we can.

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My working life enjoys long periods of tranquility and then, for a week or more, it goes pear-shaped. This is because of computers. Recently I both changed my computer and needed to install a fresh broadband connection. Its eventual success can be measured by the fact that I’m writing this on a laptop in the garden, wifi connected, in the sunshine. Bliss!

But the angst one has to go through first. I’ve grown out of road-rage; I now only suffer from road-mild-irritation. But computer rage still courses hot and strong through my blood. I use a Mac, which puts me in an eccentric minority, and was persuaded to buy one of the provider’s own routers, but they didn’t tell me it was not their usual model.

Four times gentlemen in Bombay hung up on me because I was asking them things they didn’t understand and preferred to pretend being cut off rather than admit ignorance. Eventually one of them said ‘I’ll transfer you to second line support’ and I found myself talking to a Geordie in Newcastle – sorry, Newcassle – who was interested in the problem and sorted me out. Remember that phrase. Second line Support. Demand that and you can crash your way through the script-parrots and encounter a working brain.