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.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Rules for submitting comments:
1. No profanity. I maintain the pretense that this is a family-friendly site.
2. Stay on topic. A bit of straying and off-hand commenting is okay, but hijacking the discussion is right out.
3. No ad hominem attacks. Attack the subject, not the other person on the thread and keep the discussion civil.
4. No spamming or commercial endorsements. These get deleted immediately.
Tip: Beware of putting hyperlinks in your comments–especially at the end. For some reason, Blogger interprets these as spam.
Note: Due to the recent spate of anonymous spamming, registration for comments is now required.