Steve Litchfield

This is just really cool and heartwarming. OK, perhaps I exaggerate a little, but bear with me. This is our guinea pig run, complete with prowling neighbour's cat: We've had the guinea pigs since they were babies, which means they've only ever known friendly life forms. So when they hear us, they rush to the wire (probably wanting food, but hey...) They have ZERO experience of predators, the only other furry creatures they've EVER seen are each other. So they see this cat and quite happily go on grazing on the grass without a care in the world. For all the guinea pigs know, the cat is just another large furry friend. They have no concept of another creature that might want to tear them limb from limb. So we see the cat sitting there each day, occasionally trying to pounce and coming up against the wire every time, all the while its intended prey just point blank ignores it! I suspect that this isn't a reaction a cat is used to getting! 8-) Quite something, to live ...

I don't fly. Or at least not unless it's a dire emergency. I've tried to analyse my fear and can't really pin it down. Partly it's a fear of dying prematurely under circumstances not under my control - in a car or on a bike, even in a train, I can do a lot to reduce risk and escape harm. But in a metal tube 10,000 feet up there's really nothing that can be done to prevent the plane plummeting and crashing. As one did yesterday . And as planes do each month throughout the world, with annual fatalities well into the thousands.... Having worked in the aerospace industry I know how many things can actually go wrong. And the thought of being in a fly-by-wire aircraft with computers in (more or less) complete control just scares me rigid. Remember the near fatal 777 crash at Heathrow a month or so back when the computers failed and the plane plummeted? Add to that my gut feeling that man was not meant to fly. And just don't get me started on helicopters. And don...