Olympic Torch Touches Westbury

Remarkable scenes have greeted the arrival of the London 2012 Olympic Torch as it passed close to Westbury on Trym during this morning's rush hour, cheered by vast crowds of would-be commuters and enthusiastic school children.

"The gods have come to us in petrochemical form," shouted Daisy Cutter, as she gazed across Westbury Road at the angelic-looking torch bearer, skateboarder Tony Cruiser, one of twenty locals chosen to carry the torch on its morning journey across the city. Tony, a former ASBO holder and son of a chiropodist, was turned off tagging and onto tailsliding by a McDonalds outreach programme that targets disaffected middle-class youths and works with them to re-engage with the professional aspirations of their peers. "I was really fed up with education, but after I read about the programme on a cheeseburger wrapper, I got myself sorted, and now I can't believe I've been chosen at random to carry the torch through my own hood."

Henleaze businessman Ivor Profit of TV Now was equally enthusiastic about the torch's journey through BS9. "It's great to see so many people out on the High Street so early, not only to greet the torch but to make the subliminal connection between sporting success and Panasonic televisions. It's amazing!"

As the torch made its way northward across the downs, reports began to filter through of the wider social effects that the Olympic spirit was starting to have on the Bristol region. A spokesman for Bristol City Council confirmed that a solution had been found to the Bristol City stadium re-building saga which has dragged on for several years. "I can confirm," announced spokesman Arthur Truth, "that all parties have agreed to abandon the judicial and democratic process and have agreed to the new stadium being built at Ashton Vale. We are grateful to our Olympic sponsors for lending their support to the process and can announce that the new stadium will be named the Cola Bowl."

Thousands of local residents rose early to catch a glimpse of the sacred flame, lit on the actual site of the ancient Olympics in Visa-soaked Greece by a solar ignition system specially designed for the event by General Electric. GE will be hoping to improve its public perception following its long association with Japan's Fukishima Nuclear Plant, whose six reactors were built by GE.

Southmead housewife Eva Ho noted that, despite a global profit of $14.2 billion, and GE having paid no US Federal taxes in 2010, she was pleased that the manufacturing giant was behind the torch relay. "If the flame goes out, you want to know that a big company can get it lit again."  The back-up to the sacred flame is carried throughout its journey in a support vehicle, guarded by 20 members of the Metropolitan Police's elite Sport Sponsorship Squad. Emergency legislation brought in by the last Labour government allow the squad to shove members of the public out of the way of the flame in the event that they err too close to the holy fire. "Good thing too," declared Ms Ho, whose eleven children were wildly waving union flags supplied by Visa as they awaited the flame's arrival

The flame was enthusiastically welcomed to the City of Bristol on Tuesday night and will start the next stage of its nationwide journey in Cheltenham. The flame's journey can be followed on its way to London here.

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Catch the Pigeon

There I was resting on my laurels and feeling unduly smug about the fact that in the course of a two-week stay-at-home-break-from-work (I believe the term is a staycation) I had managed to apply a layer of undercoat to not one but two interior window frames in my suburban semi, when a tap at the front door jolted me from my reverie.

"The pigeon's flown into your bedroom," announced a concerned neighbour.

The bird in question had arrived Mary Poppins-like on Sunday afternoon - unannounced and carried on the breeze - and had been loitering with intent for several days, eyeing up our meals, dropping feathers and other detritus on our patios and garden furniture and generally attempting to form a long-term relationship with the neighbouring households.

Despite numerous attempts to persuade the bird that it was not welcome, the squab had made up its mind to hang around between our fences and on low lying roofs in the hope of a good meal and a warm bed. The clue that this bird would be hard to drive away was in the two plastic rings fastened one around each leg. This was a domesticated rock pigeon - a racing pigeon who had lost its way home. Apparently, a group of about twenty such birds had been spotted over Severn Beach on Sunday afternoon.

Thus it was that, having wedged open one of the above-mentioned windows to allow the painted frame to dry, the feral beast had seized its opportunity and flown into bedroom number two.

Having received assurances from my neighbour that, in the unlikely event I were able to catch it, they would take the bird to "a man in Shirehampton" who knows about this sort of thing, I slipped out of my suburban casuals, donned my haz-mat suit, bullet-proof goggles and steel tapped boots and, after conducting a four-part risk assessment and health and safety evaluation, and having consulted with other stakeholders, I headed upstairs to engage the intruder.

My first thought on entering the room and observing the unwelcome guest defecating on the bed while simultaneously banging its body against our picture window was that here was yet another reason to not like Belgium. In its modern form, the "sport" of pigeon racing originated in Hercule Poirot's homeland and caught on over here when King Leopold II presented a collection of trained racing pigeons to our own royal family in the 1880's.

Rather fittingly, the same breeds of bird risked unpleasant deaths when Europe's least interesting country was overrun by the German army in 1914, homing pigeons regularly serving as military message-carriers in the days before Twitter. In a similar vein, the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo was conveyed to England via a pigeon in 1815 - presumably one whose homing instincts were considerably more developed than the hapless dove currently hurling itself into my bedroom window.

Xenophobic thoughts subdued, I boldly approached the intruder and, taking advantage of its trusting nature, smothered it in a large towel and held on to it despite its feigned attempts at escape. Safely placed in a cardboard box (yes, of course it had air holes) the lost dove was escorted to Shirehampton to be reunited with its fancier.

Which just left me to conduct a thorough decontamination of bedroom two, including the previously-painted window frame, to wonder why Duncan Ferguson is so enamoured of pigeon racing, and to comfort myself with a well-known brand of Belgian chocolate.

Humph.

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