Tuesday, 1 August 2006

Another Nail

Lyme Regis' tradition of conger cuddling, a peculiar sport staged annually to raise money for Lifeboat Week and involves two teams hurling a huge dead eel at one another in hopes of knocking the opposition down, has ended after 30 years because of a single, anonymous e-mail that denounced the practice as "disrespectful" of eels and threatening to rain bad publicity on the town unless the inhabitants immediately kowtow to the New Order of Things.

Amazingly, the Lyme Regenians did exactly that rather than hit the "delete" button with a suitably dismissive West Country oath.

The people of Lyme Regis are clearly not the men their fathers were. When the mere threat from a lone animal rights activist can take away the liberty of one man to knock his fellow man down with a dead eel, then we have come to a sorry state of affairs.

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