Embedded Files
The story of the badger is a long and complex one, best beloved, but you can take it in easy stages.
On "Handling the Badger".
It came about one day that my sister (a trainee teacher) had a boyfriend (also a trainee teacher), who happened upon a dead badger, by the side of the road, in the UK. And he did think unto himself "this could provide a handy skellington, Biology for the teaching of". Therefore, with much grunting and heaving, he thrust the dead badger into a plastic sack in the boot of his car. And did unto it such things as are needful for attaining the aforementioned teaching resource. Think no more, with woe, upon the fate of the sadly deceased badger, gentle reader, for he or she now exits our story to rest in peace. However.
The said boyfriend, best beloved, did suffer a grievous fate, in the form of an itching visited upon those regions of the body that must not be mentioned. He did visit to a wise man of medicine, who rubbed his chin thoughtfully and pronounced that this was very odd, unless the patient had been handling wild animals. "What? Even a dead one?" he murmered. The 'badger in the bag' being admitted to, a cure was given, in the form of oinkment to rub upon the afflicted area, along with the caveat that a pronounced burning sensation would be felt. Although punitive, the cure was effective. It is not germane to our story, but it is entertaining to note that, further to this event, the father of our hero complained of a similar ailment, and was given the cure (without the caveat) by his son, who lurked outside the bathroom, most ungentlemanly, to hear the howls as the burning sensation took hold...
Thus, the dangers of 'handling the badger' became known to me. And from me they passed to Pont, who made much of the innuendoic properties of the phrase.
On "Dwile Flunking or Flonking"
One fine April morning in the early '60s, dear reader, Aunty Beeb, also known as the BBC, saw fit to celebrate April Fool's day with a piece about a little known 'tradition'
of some imagined part of bucolic rural England, know as Dwile Flunking or even Flonking. Accordingly, they dressed and instructed a number of actors to perform this ritual outside a pub. It involved a rag, a bucket of beer slops and stick(s) to throw the rag. This entered the consciousness of the (very young) writer and was stored away somewhere.
Much earlier in England's somewhat murky history, a rather revolting game was played by bored yokels in which some kind of small fast animal was released into a crowd of men and boys armed with sticks, and they attempted to hit it (and usually each other too), until it was dead. After which it was flung about from stick to stick. Yuk. This may or may not have devolved into doing much the same with a rag. Well, you can probably see where this is going. Your writer confounded these two things, and is now convinced that all this stuff is true. And somehow involves badgers.
Why the badger? Well, England, somewhat eccentrically, is determined to rid itself of native mammals (and indeed some birds too), such as beavers (leading to
puzzlement among those reading about Narnia) and recently badgers. The problem appears to be TB in cattle, so, instead of trying to prevent cows getting TB, the British Government has set its heart on exterminating badgers. Despite scientific evidence that this isn't going to fix the TB issue. Anyway. Hopefully they are trying to do it in a humane manner and not as it was done in days of yore, by training badger baiting dogs, digging up setts and bashing badgers to death with cudgels. Given the thickness of a badger's skull, a very inhumane practice. So. The plight of the British badger is to be advertised.
On "The Badger Dance"
In Jack Frost Morris' rough-hewn way, we mashed up a dance, originally called Upton Upon Severn, depicting us hunting the badger and bashing it with sticks. All very jolly. It mentions 'handling the badger'. At the end a stuffed badger is brutally smashed. We do this because we love the badger and want badgers saved, and to draw attention to the plight of the badger. Don't ask me to explain how on earth we expect this to achieve anything. It's tradition. Living tradition.
Our stuffed badger is called Jaques, and he is a specially trained stunt badger, who is not actually hurt during the dance.
On T-shirts
Our T-shirts depict the British badger, in all his stern and pugnacious glory. They come from The Daily Mash, who kindly gave us a discount on a quantity of same, which I imported from Britain to New Zealand by wearing them all. This fact is as true as any other story told by Jack Frost Morris.
On "Badger Woman"
One day, a member of Jack Frost Morris mistook me for the badger, while dancing the badger dance. You can imagine the incident report! I sent him a picture of a badger and a picture of me, to help him tell the difference between a woman and a badger. He sent me back "Badgerwoman!":
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse