Today’s Daily Telegraph was rich in stories of the-world-is-going-mad genre. Here are three of my favourites.
A snake lover in Nottingham has died of a heart attack after being bitten by a king cobra, one of two dozen he kept in a compound behind his house, apparently for conservation purposes. Despite having been bitten twice, Luke Yeomans had always maintained that he was safe. He is quoted as having once said, “These king cobras know I provide them with food and fresh water so they’re not going to go out of their way to do harm to me when I do no harm to them whatsoever”. Just a playful nip then. It may have been that our reptilian guest, having been removed from a rain forest in India to live in a grimy industrial city in England, was occasionally inclined to be grumpy. Or perhaps it didn’t care for the food.
An inquiry has been launched by Essex police to find out why two of their constables found it necessary to go to the home of a 13-year old boy, close to midnight, to question him about throwing an apple at a boy in school five days earlier. The boy suffered a minor bruise. The father of the accused, a Mr. Clive Lindoe, described the constables’ manner as bullying, and said his son was left ‘traumatised’. A police spokesman said “An appointment has been made to speak to Mr. Lindoe to take details of his complaint”. Who says we need more policemen on the beat?
A rape defendant told a court he could not be found guilty because he suffered from “sexsomnia”, which he described as an inability to control his libido while asleep. An academic witness appearing for the accused told the judge the claim was “probably true”. The defendant was charged with raping a student who had fallen asleep on his bed. When asked by police if he had had intercourse with her he replied, “Not that I know of”. A former girlfriend said she sometimes had full intercourse with him without waking him up. What a player!
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