There’s no two ways of saying it: I’m a massive bookworm, and damn it, I’m proud. So this morning, when scrolling through my Twitter feed for the latest news around the globe, I was overcome with the most bizarre mixture of excitement and disappointment that I have ever experienced in my life when greeted by the announcement of a project called the Future Library. Guardian Books brought the official report to me this morning, so if you want to read the full article on this, you can find it here.

However, if you’re happy with a clipped account of what the project is, and a boat load of excitement from me, then read on…

The Future Library Project is the latest project to be developed by award winning artist Katie Paterson. The aim of the project is simple: to produce a collection of literary works from popular writers over the next hundred years - enter my excitement - that won’t be made available to the reading public until 2114 - enter my disappointment! Over the next century, every year will see a new writer invited to contribute to this collection, with Margaret Atwood - insert girly, fan-girl squeal - providing the first piece of fiction that has been added to this amazing project. 

Oh, and alongside this amazing collection of work, there is the promise that it will in fact be made into a paperback print - none of that electronic nonsense - thanks to a forest of 1,000 trees that were planted earlier in the year, specifically in aid of this project. The plan, at present, seems to be that these trees will eventually provide the paper on which copies of the collection will be printed. 

Putting aside my utter disappointment that I won’t actually be around to read this collection, this project as a whole is definitely something to be excited over. If you’re a bookworm, at least; or, of course, if you’re a writer. 

Atwood, in the aforementioned Guardian article, has provided deep insight on how this will be for her, as a writer, who is constructing something that she will never receive feedback for. With the experience being described as both intimidating and freeing, it seems that it really is offering something fresh for everyone who is involved - even those involved from afar, plagued by intrigue and excitement at potentially some of our favourite authors producing works of fiction that we will never actually get to read. 

It’s essentially a literary time capsule that these artists are creating, and I think it’s absolutely bloody marvellous. 

Although I have to admit that what I would love, even more than being able to read these stories themselves, is being able to hear the thoughts of the people who will actually get to read them. I can’t even imagine what changes literature will have evolved through by the time this fiction goes to print - in fact, will print be completely extinct by then? Will it be all about the electronic word? Until, of course, this collection pops up in a 100 years or so. And, if that’s the case, will this reignite our love of the real, ink-on-paper, printed word? The possibilities are endless in terms of what will go into this collection, who will go into this collection, and how this will collection will eventually be received when it finally reaches its audience in 100 years… whoever that audience may be. 

C x

We wouldn’t be much of a news and reviews website if we didn’t at least acknowledge the return of ITV’s entertainment giant, The X Factor, which returned to television screens last Saturday. There’s been a massive amount of hype surrounding this series with a new judging panel, sort of, coming in to try and save the show from its steady decline in ratings. 

So, in case it escaped your attention, Simon Cowell is back; Cheryl Cole is back; and Mel B has joined. And, after only bothering to watch one of the two episodes that were aired last weekend, I’m pleased to report that the show is as annoying as ever…

And here is why:

Did you see these girls? Do you remember them strutting about like terrible, terrible Jessie J impersonators? Do you remember the judges all agreeing how annoying they are? Do you remember them being put through to the next round anyway? 

And that’s why I’m annoyed. 

Every single sodding year someone gets catapulted through this competition despite the fact that they are insanely, frustratingly, and undeniably annoying; and, without fail, they manage to crawl their way from one live show to the next with the judges asking how on earth they’re managing to do it, irrespective of the fact that the judges are responsible for them being in the live shows in the first place. 

Don’t pounce on me! I’m not saying that these two girls are those contestants for the year. They might not even make it through the next round of auditions, if Cheryl Cole has anything to do it with. However, you’ve got to admit that it was a poor start to the series to kick the auditions off with a group that the judges found ‘interesting’ and annoying. I mean, it’s hardly something you want on your album cover, is it? The interesting and annoying sisters from X Factor. I can think of catchier hooks… 

I’ve got Sunday night’s episode saved on my Sky+, and I’m building up the courage to watch it, because let's face it, we’d be a terrible website if we didn’t keep you updated on The X Factor - even if we are only moaning about it! However, given the mixed acts, opinions, and reactions to Saturday night’s opening episode, I can’t say that I’m entirely convinced this new judging panel is the answer to the show’s prayers.  

So, c’mon, I want opinions! What did you think of the opening episode? Get in touch with us and let us know! 

C x 

It’s the back end of summer and, as a result of that, our music section has become littered with Disney princesses churning out their last upbeat singles of the year while it’s still sunny enough to dance to them. Admittedly, their sunny, sing-a-long tracks have been... ah... interesting (?) over the course of the summer, but they’ve sort of left me hungry for something a little more substantial to listen to. Enter Fury, with their new album The Lightning Dream…

I need to add a disclaimer here that I’m not a massive metal head, and while I loved the likes of Iron Maiden when I was an angry teenager, I’ve sort of been out of the game for a while. I’m not a self-proclaimed music expert, or metal expert, but The Lightning Dream is an unexpectedly brilliant album, as far as I’m concerned. 

The release kicks off with a track titled Into The Dark, and at the 25-second mark of this opening song I thought: ‘Oh man, this is actually going to be good.’ If I sound sort of surprised then it’s because I am. I didn’t know anything about these guys three weeks ago, and it was only through a chance encounter at a beer festival that I even found out they exist. A friend assured me that they’re the heavy metal band in Worcester, but I honestly wasn’t expecting such a fine-tuned and professional sound when I first put their album on.

I never do track-by-track reviews of albums, but there are some serious highlights to this record that need to be mentioned here. The second track, Saviour, has introductory instrumentals that make you realise these guys actually know what they’re doing; the same can be said of Prince of Darkness, actually, which is just unbelievably slick in the opening seconds. 

The second half of the album is where things picked up for me with Out Beyond The Stars introducing a welcome change of pace (at the beginning of the track, at least); Britannia, which makes an appearance towards the end of the release, is probably my favourite track on the whole album though. It’s a perfect mixture of calm instrumentals with metal injected in the right places, accompanied by brilliant vocals, too - what more could you ask for? While the vocals on the rest of the album are of a high standard - although I can’t help but think their poor vocalist might need a good cup of tea to recover from it all - there is just something special about this track for me. 

Okay, so I’m not a massive metal-head-person - whatever the right name is! But, if a metal album (although my iTunes seems hell-bent on branding the album as ’indie rock’) can get a good review from someone who doesn’t even listen to the genre on a regular basis, then surely that’s a glowing review in itself. 

Fury are performing at Worcester Music Festival next week (they’ll be at The Marrs Bar on August 29th) before they head off on tour with Attica Rage, and you can find specific dates and venues for that tour (and check out more music from these guys) by accessing their official site here. 

C x 

Since this website got going about a year ago, we’ve found ourselves with many, many loyal readers who check in with us on a daily basis. With that in mind, we need as many writers as possible on board to keep articles coming in, and ultimately keep readers coming in… And that’s where you come in. 

Consider this our open call for writers! 

We’re looking for people to join our team as writers and reviewers, and hopefully commit to one or two articles a week. Unfortunately, these positions aren’t paid - I know, I know, boo, hiss, it’s terrible. But! What I can offer you in a writer’s position is brilliant music, the occasional book, experience writing for an online publication, and the chance to be a part of a growing, friendly, and enthusiastic team of small writers, hoping to become a much bigger team in the near future. 

The site is generating much more attention than I ever expected, so your work will reach a massive range of readers from all over the globe and it will be a brilliant start to your portfolio, for any budding, young journalists who might be reading this and wondering whether to apply. 

If you’re interested in writing a test article for us, or you have some questions about the position, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can reach us through our contact us form which is available on the website, or you can drop an email straight to madhatterreviews@outlook.com and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. 

C x

This blog is usually littered with rants and emotional outpourings, so when a fellow writer friend asked me to take part in a blog tour of sorts, that would involve discussing the writing process, I wasn’t exactly sure whether it would fit in. Nevertheless, I’m going to give it a bash! So thank you to Dan Wyke for bringing me in on this blogging expedition, you can read Dan’s contribution to the blog tour by clicking here, and thank you to Dylan Spicer, another amazing writer who I’m lucky enough to know, for agreeing to carry the torch into next week (Dylan’s contribution will be uploaded to his blog, which you can access here).

The Writing Process

What are you working on?
Right now I’m focussing most of my time and attention on a potentially bizarre short story collection - which, I realise, warrants further explanation. I’m in the final stage of my Creative Writing MA, which involves producing a 25, 000 word document (20, 000 creative + 5, 000 critical) in a writing form of my choice. Writing short stories does feel like going against the grain for me, particularly given that when I started the degree I was predominantly interested in writing poetry; however, I now understand the importance of trying new things, so here we are…

The collection is based around gender stereotypes and how easy, amusing, and sometimes hard-hitting it can be when we subvert or manipulate them. I’m working with bizarre forms, and even more bizarre characters, so it’s proving to be quite an eye-opening experience. Ultimately the aim is to provide a collection of unconventional short stories that tell the same tales and have the same impact, and hopefully are as easy to read, as the conventional format that people anticipate finding when they pick up a short story collection. I suppose it’s somewhere between David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and aspects of Margaret Atwood’s Murder in the Dark… which will perhaps give you a deeper idea of how strange these stories are turning out.

How does your work differ from others of it genre?
I hate to potentially burst a big ol’ bubble here, but I’m not sure it does, really. The short story collection that I mentioned above differs drastically in that I’m writing short stories that don’t look like short stories, about women that people probably don’t want to read about because they make them quite uncomfortable. Putting it like that, I’m not sure it makes my writing different, as such, or whether it’s just doomed to only be read by those with a reasonably strong stomach.

Away from the collection, where I’m still writing poetry, I’m branching out from abstract and emotional nuggets of poetry and venturing into page-length performance pieces. It’s a relatively new area of exploration for me but these longer pieces, the pieces that I hope will one day be read aloud somewhere, aim to be truthful, relatable, sometimes uncomfortably accurate about humans (and our terrible decisions), but most of all funny. So ultimately, I love what I’m writing, but I’m not sure that my writing or myself are any more different than the next person trying to be a writer. 

Why do you write what you do?
Pff, that’s a question and a half. I write poetry because it has always come naturally to me. I’m not claiming that at the age of five I was knocking out the occasional sonnet and working out how I could manipulate the rhythm of a poem into a musical beat, or anything ridiculous like that. But I have always written poetry, and I have always wanted to write poetry. Thank goodness, I’ve developed slightly from the days of rhyming cat, sat, and mat, and presenting it to my mother with a gloriously smug smile plastered across my chops. Now I seem to rhyme words that you ordinarily wouldn’t, before I present it to anyone who is willing to read it with an embarrassingly self-conscious smile plastered across my chops instead. Other than that, I don’t suppose much has changed in terms of why I write, or indeed why I specifically write poetry. It’s because I feel like I have to. It’s an embarrassing cliché to present this idea that people are plagued by this need to write, and I hate that cliché immensely, even though I spend a lot of my time feeling like I conform to it. Poetry is a natural thing for me, and it is often a need, to the point that there are days when I’m thinking in rhyme and I think ‘I should probably write that down’, although that is in part for fear that I’ll turn into some kind of Dr. Seuss character if I don’t. 

Away from the poetry, the reason is quite different. The reason why I write other things is because I’m a young writer who has been published in nine poetry collections, but has little experience in the world of prose writing. Things such as the short story collection are for a much more deliberate and calculated reason: it’s because I don’t want to be pigeon-holed into writing one genre for the rest of my life. Much as I adore poetry, both reading and writing it, I don’t want to only be a poet. Also, there are certain things and ideas that I want to try that don’t lend themselves particularly well to poetry, which is another reason behind me trying different forms so frequently. 

Looking back on the question for this section, I’m still not sure I’ve even answered it. Maybe the simple and romanticised answer for this question should be: because I’m looking for a style that sticks. Or something like that.

How does your writing process work?
If I’m completely honest, I don’t think I even know what my writing process is yet. Sometimes I stare at a screen wondering how the hell I ever convinced myself to try and be a writer, because there’s nothing for me to write; sometimes, I ditch a conversation halfway through because there’s half a poem in my head and I need to write it down before it runs. In terms of the short story collection I’m working on, I’ve been quite strict and regimented about sitting down and writing, whether I’m ‘in the mood’ or not. Typically I don’t give myself an amount of time to sit and write for, but what I often do is say ‘I’ll write x amount of words today’ and when I’ve hit that, then I’m finished. Unless there’s another five hundred words on the tip of my tongue in which case it always makes sense to carry on. 

I suppose if it’s a full project that I’m working on, then I treat it like I would any other writing assignment: I plan, I write, I revise, and I work really hard until it’s finished. If it’s anything else, or just something for me, then I usually wait until it’s ready - it’s another cliché, but my poems usually come out in their own sweet time. 

                                                                                                  ------------------------------------

I wish I had a gold star or something to give you for getting to the end of this. I feel like you really deserve one. Instead, I’ll just remind you to check out the next stop on this blog tour which will appear next week from Dylan, and I'll remind you that his blog is available here. And I’ll sincerely thank you for taking the time to read this post. 

C x 

In this day and age, we’re all fairly desensitised to most things. It has to be something pretty spectacular to band us all together and get us collectively fighting for the same thing; well it seems that Stephen Sutton, the extraordinary teenager who has been battling against cancer, is nothing short of spectacular, inspiring, and just plain wonderful. And because of that, it’s with heavy hearts that most people respond to the news of his passing this week.

Most people have become aware of Stephen and everything he has been fighting for over recent months. When Stephen was 15 he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, but it seems that even that couldn’t slow down this youngster who has done so much to raise awareness and donations for cancer charities since his diagnosis. 

I’m not going to write a long-winded account of everything this amazing man achieved in his short life, because you all know it. You all know how wonderful and brave this individual was without yet another website telling you about it. What I will say is that Stephen Sutton was an inspiration to us all, and that we could all stand to learn a lesson from this wonderful person who, despite his life being short, managed to achieve so many amazing things during the time that he had. 

Stephen was, is, and will be an inspiration not only to those battling cancer but also those fundraising, researching, and trying to find cures for this terrible disease. 

Our love and warm wishes go out to Stephen’s family and friends at this time. 

The MHR Team x 

It occurred to me on Monday morning that we didn’t have any news for the Technology section; so, despite rarely writing for that section myself, I set about hunting through some popular news websites to source a story or two. I didn’t realise that this would lead to the annoyance and, sorry in advance, the ranting that you’re about to read…

The Telegraph’s technology headlines on Monday morning were as follows:

Digital natives: how to keep teenagers safe online

TV could be next target for cyber hackers, says anti-virus chief

A little further down the list…

Convicted conman using LinkedIn to pursue new scams

And, possibly my favourite of the bunch…

Born to troll: Is risky online behaviour in our DNA?

Couple this with the increase in people treating Facebook like some sort of quick-stop for therapy sessions and I really have had enough of reading about advancements in technology, particularly given that it seems to be turning into just another method for humanity to balls things up. 

How to keep teenagers safe online? I’ll save you the hassle of reading this article and paraphrase it for any young and impressionable teenagers that might be reading this blog post: You need to check your privacy settings on Facebook because potential employers tend to worry about hiring people who are drinking yards of beer in their pictures. That’s the beginning and end of it. Okay, tutors and potential employers are now much more likely to check out your so-called ‘digital footprint’, but if the stuff that they’re going to find is ultimately going to be detrimental to your future as a student, or in whatever job role you’re applying for, then maybe you need to change your behaviour rather than your security settings. 

Also, when did the internet become a place for emotional tantrums and hurt feelings? It’s Facebook, not a counsellor. People are on there to share pictures of booze-riddled nights out and graduation gowns and, I don’t know, whatever other monumental experiences people want to share with people that they haven’t seen in the past ten years, but for whatever reason still feel the need to impress them - but that’s an altogether separate blog post, so I’ll hold that in for now. If there is one thing I truly hate about the growing world of social media, it’s this:

Omg cnt belive ths iz happnin - feeling sad.

Comment 1: whatz up bbe

Person who wrote the status: inbox me yh? I dnt wnna tlk abt it ere

Oh, you have a problem that you don’t want to talk about publicly, but you wouldn’t mind having a chat to a close friend about it, to see if they can make you feel better about whatever is making you sad? That’s cool. I get that. SO DON’T WRITE A STATUS ABOUT IT! If you don’t want to talk about something, then don’t talk about it. That’s kind of how it works. In real life, away from your iPhone or laptop or whatever else you can use to update a status these days, you wouldn’t walk up to someone and say this:

‘You know, I’ve had some really bad news today, it’s made me really sad, but I don’t want to talk about it.’

NEWSFLASH: That’s not how a conversation works! 

Also, for those internet-users who are guilty of this, I don’t care what you had for dinner, or how long it took to make its way through your digestive system. Lovely as it is for you to upload a picture of your roast dinner complete with onion rings - honestly, what is the matter with you? - if you could not clog my newsfeed up with that sort of thing, then that would be absolutely cracking. 

Reading back over this, I can see that the rant seems to have swerved away from the internet generally and made its way over to the social media side of things. With that in mind, it’s probably a good place to add that I actually like social media - I’m an avid-user of Twitter, an occasional-user of Facebook and a daily-user of Instagram; I’m afraid I’m not really technology savvy enough to understand much beyond those three, although I am frequently assured that there are many more sites that I could be a part of, if I had the inclination. 

So, to conclude, if you’re young and find yourself frequently using the internet, and you also happen to be applying for a new job or maybe even university, make sure that your privacy settings are as tight as they can be, oh, and make sure that you aren’t getting pissed in your profile picture. And, irrespective of your age, if you’re having a hard time and you feel like you might need to talk to someone about things, then make a phone call to a friend rather than a Facebook status to 1, 378 people who don’t actually remember where they met you. 

C x

About five years ago I had my hair cut - okay, it’s not the most exciting opener to a blog post but stick with me here - and it went from super-long to super-short in one quick motion. Since then I’ve been growing it - do you have any idea what five years of growth looks like? Well my friends, you can see from the picture above that I’m battling back a fair amount of curls every morning, and while I constantly moan about not knowing what to do with them, the truth is that I’m weirdly proud of my shabby hairstyle. 

So now that I’ve introduced you to my hair, I’ll introduce you to my friend Catherine. A lovely girl who’s currently training to be a hairdresser, Catherine recently asked if she could ‘borrow my hair’ for a restyle exam; I told her that I could probably afford to lose a few inches, so why the hell not?

Since then the thought of lopping off my locks has been an anxiety-inducing one - I don’t even remember what I look like with short-ish hair, it could be terrible! But the prospect of losing a few inches of hair was quickly put into perspective when I realised exactly how many young girls out there are losing all of their hair due to severe illnesses; suddenly, losing a few inches didn’t seem like much to moan about at all. In fact, I decided that I could probably stand to lose a little more than that, so I started doing some research…

I quickly stumbled across the website for the Little Princess Trust, which you can check out for yourselves by clicking here. The website is dedicated to providing real-hair wigs for these children and because of that, they take real-hair donations from anyone that can spare upwards of seven inches. Can you see where this is going?

One fundraiser profile page later and here I am, asking - maybe even begging - that you get behind this charity that is working to help so many young girls feel like little princesses, which, I think you’ll agree, is an experience that every girl should have at some point during her childhood. Okay, I’m not moving mountains or curing cancer; I’m not running a hundred miles - hello, have you seen me? Like I could ever run that far - but I am trying to make a teeny, tiny difference to kids out there who deserve a difference to be made for them. So on April 2nd, at 9:45am, I’ll be losing seven inches of hair, maybe more, if I’m feeling particularly brave on the day, and packaging it off to the trust to contribute to a real-wig for a little princess somewhere out there. However, while hair donations are great, it would be lovely if I could send more than just a wad of curls, and that’s where you guys come in…

I know, I know, charity begins at home; times are hard; we can’t afford it! Believe me, I know. I don’t want or expect you to donate more money than you can afford, but if everyone who reads this blog post can afford £1, then we could make a lot of money between now and April 2nd, and we could make a little difference. And wouldn’t that be nice? 

You can access my fundraiser page by clicking here, where you can read about the challenge and donate, if you fancy it. If you decide that it’s stupid to pay someone to have their hair cut then don’t feel obliged to donate. The one thing that I will ask is, if you’re reading this, please share it? On Facebook or Twitter or whatever else is popular nowadays, because even if people read this and don’t donate, then they’ll at least close down their browser knowing a little more about Little Princesses and how we can all try and help them. 

C x 

I get it, I really do. Somewhere between playing with lego and turning eighteen - it might have even happened at a younger age for some people reading this - life became a lot more serious than we expected it to be. Things became hard, sometimes unbearable, and being happy actually became an effort rather than a given. It’s my opinion that everyone has days when they really hate everything - and if you don’t have those days, or you’ve never had one of those days, then please feel free to drop me an email and let me know what meds you’re taking, because there’s got to be something keeping you emotionally up all the time (that, or I really am just a miserable bugger).

Ironically, life tends to get in the way of life sometimes, and when you get home from what feels like a thousand-hour-long shift at work and you have to make dinner, tend to the children, husband, wife, and whatever else you have waiting at home for you, being happy seems to slip behind the sofa somewhere while you’re scoffing dinner and catching up on the soaps. And why shouldn’t it? It’s been a bloody long day and you deserve to be grumpy at the end of it. 

Unfortunately, along with our grumpy human nature, it seems that it’s also human nature to take things for granted; it’s only lately that I’ve realised how guilty I am of taking things for granted myself. So when I saw the ‘100 happy days’ project on Facebook, I thought it might be the kick up the backside that I needed. 

The premise of the project is that every day, for one hundred days, you take a picture of something that makes you happy. They’re not moving mountains, and they’re not asking you to be happy every second of every day - we’re humans, not cyborgs - they’re just asking that for the space of time it takes to snap and upload a picture of something to a social media site of your choice, you remain happy. 

According to their website, a staggering 71% of people who signed up for the challenge actually couldn’t do it, so I’m imagining that it’s much harder than it sounds on paper… And I suppose, after an absolutely pants day, being happy and taking pictures is the last thing you want to think about, but that’s probably the reason why this is such a good challenge. 

Being happy at least once a day shouldn’t be too much to ask for from life, right?

Well, in order to try and find an answer to that question, I’m going to have a good go at the challenge. You can sign up yourselves by heading over to their website, which you can access by clicking here. During the challenge you’re required to upload pictures to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, where you can display your chosen pictures alongside the hash tag #100happydays (as above).

So, if nothing else, you’ll have some smiley pictures to look back through in a hundred days time! 

Stay happy, folks! 

C x 

I’ll be the first person to admit that I’m a massive hippy when it comes to animals. In fact, hippy to my core, I’d rather scream and run away from a spider than stamp it to death, so I realise that my opinion on the following story might be somewhat tarnished by my personal feelings - but hey, isn’t that what this blog is all about?

All weekend my newsfeed on Facebook has been littered with stories about a giraffe, that I deliberately avoided reading. I knew that it would upset me and frankly, I didn’t want to know what was happening to this poor creature because whatever it was, it was enough to get even the hardest of hearts feeling sympathy, so I knew my pink and fluffy heart didn’t stand a chance of dealing with the news particularly well. However, late last night I gave into temptation and read one or two articles about this infamous animal. Needless to say I was absolutely disgusted by the events that had taken place and, as if the monsters responsible aren’t being given enough global attention already, I decided it would be the topic of this morning’s blog post, too.

On the BBC’s website last night, the headline read:

‘SURPLUS’ GIRAFFE PUT DOWN AT COPENHAGEN ZOO

SURPLUS? 

Possibly the most insensitive, inappropriate, and idiotic word that those who issued the statement could have possibly used. Surplus? Perhaps they need to reassess their definition of the term because from my hippy standpoint, no life is surplus - although, perhaps we’re edging into a different territory altogether there, which is best saved for another rant. I think the thing that infuriates me most, not only in this particular scenario but in the general attitude felt by many people, is the outright disinterest and lack of respect for animal rights. If someone described a human’s life as being surplus, before loading, pointing and shooting a loaded pistol and that person’s head, they would be in prison; they wouldn’t be on every news channel that would host them trying to justify their actions. So what I really want to know is why the hell no one has stepped in and, rather than prancing about with protests, actually done something, anything, to stop these gun-wielding knuckle-draggers from playing Darwin with whatever other species they have in their ‘zoo’. 

To add insult to injury, zoos across the globe, including the UK’s own Yorkshire Wildlife Park, offered to take the giraffe into their enclosures, providing him with a new home where his genetics wouldn’t be a problem or a concern - which, incidentally, is allegedly the whole reason behind this animal’s execution. The zoo had concerns about in-breeding. Although, you can’t blame them, a certain amount of in-breeding must have been involved with the staff themselves - I can’t see another reason why such idiocy would ever, ever seem like a good idea! So, while these Neanderthals are busy turning down offers left right and centre - are you ready for this, because this might be the worst bit so far? - they’re also loading up a bolt gun rather than a lethal injection, because the injection would contaminate the meat, and that would mean that they couldn’t then feed the meat to the lions. 

Feed the meat to the lions. 

I’m just going to leave that there for a second, just to let that sink in.

Following on from the execution of the animal, they proceeded to do a live post-mortem, which was broadcast on the internet, during which they allowed a crowd of visitors, both adults and children, to watch the animal being dissected, skinned, and thrown into the lion’s den, literally. Stenbaek Bro, a member of staff from the zoo, spoke to Associated Press about the live autopsy, explaining that: ‘I'm actually proud because I think we have given children a huge understanding of the anatomy of a giraffe that they wouldn't have had from watching a giraffe in a photo.’ 

Well done, Bro, at least you’re proud of this behaviour. It’s just unfortunate that the rest of the world is disgusted, outraged, enraged, and embarrassed. And they’re the tamer reactions. Some of animal rights activists are wondering how politically correct it would be to suggest that your life one day becomes ‘surplus’ and someone kindly puts you down. Out of curiosity, what does Copenhagen Zoo define ‘surplus’ as being these days? Because that’s another burning question I’ve had for the past twelve hours.

Faith has been slightly restored by the outrage voiced by Wildlife parks around the globe, who seem to be collectively suggesting that zoos, generally, but specifically Copenhagan’s, need to reassess their perspectives on the treatment and preservation of animals. Robert Krijuff, director of a wildlife park in the Netherlands, where Marius was also offered a home, instantly released a statement on the slaughter, claiming: ‘I can't believe it. We offered to save his life. Zoos need to change the way they do business.’ Which begs the question, once again, as to why the zoo were so hell-bent on putting the animal down when they could have simply re-homed him. With multiple offers from all corners of the globe to take Marius off their hands, where is their logic here? If indeed, there is any logic at all? If anything, the knowledge that so many other wildlife organisations were willing to home the animal, but Copenhagen still opted to slaughter it on a live internet feed, just makes this event more callous, disgusting, and every other unsavoury word you can think of. 

Ultimately, I realise that I can stamp my feet and throw my toys our of the proverbial pram as much as I want to, and it won’t provide anything towards helping Marius, the two-year-old giraffe who is the victim in all of this madness, but maybe if enough people stamp their feet, our collective earthquake will prevent things like in the future. I don’t care whether you eat nothing but grass or whether you eat twenty-seven steaks on the average week, and you shouldn’t care either. The thing that we should really care about now is drawing a line, and while those who have committed themselves to caring for some of the world’s most exotic and sometimes endangered animals, have instead opted to employ their own version of natural selection in order to preserve their idea of good genetics, it seems a damn good time to draw that line to me. 


C x