The Weasel

"This is the time of year when wars break out," wrote Cyril Connolly at the start of Enemies of Promise, and, as usual, he got it right. Midsummer bloom-time, when everything is burgeoning and the fruit is ripened, and the corn is as high as an elephant's whatsit - that's the hour of maximum danger. I know, believe me. Because the very boskiness of my surroundings has embroiled me in a war with Lambeth Council.

It started two months ago. Through the post came a cheap little card from Lambeth Environmental Services, citing the 1980 Highways Act: "It has been observed", it warned like a school prefect, "that the hedge and tree and shrub from your premises overhangs the public footway. I should be glad, therefore, if you would arrange to have the hedge and tree and shrub pruned back as soon as possible please." The atmosphere at breakfast was electric. "Hedge and tree and shrub?" asked Mrs W. "We haven't got a hedge or a tree. Can they mean...the buddleia?"

We examined the offending flora. It looked OK, sprouting fat lilac blossoms in classic, sylvan-English style, and it poked out about six inches over the disintegrating pavement outside Weasel Villas. "Dickheads," said Mrs W shortly and retired to change the new Weaslet's gynaecologically-correct nappy.

That should have been the end of it. But blow me down if they didn't send two more nasty little cards in the next two weeks. Clearly, they meant business. The multiple-choice option of hedge/ tree/shrub has whittled down to "shrub" - the other natural phenomena crossed out in pencil. Mrs W's eyes narrowed.

Then we got the final summons. They promised that any more non-cooperation from us and they would bloody well come round in person "to lop or cut the said shrub so as to remove the cause of such danger, obstruction or interference". At the end there was, at last, a signature: our tormentor, it appeared, was a "Chief Street Inspector" called PT Condon (I am not by nature a suspicious chap, but I suspect there's probably a whole entry in the Dictionary of Local Government Ailments for the delusion that you are - or at least share a name with - the head of the Metropolitan Police).

Anyway, we took one more look at the buddleia. Was this inoffensive plant capable of endangering anything? Did it turn at midnight into some kind of flowering triffid and leave the quiet Camberwell pavement a battlezone of felled pensioners and stamen-lashed schoolchildren? Would Mr Condon emulate his namesake and claim that 80 per cent of street crime is perpetrated by violet-coloured floribunda? Was it really enough to occasion the arrival of a bailiff with a billhook or a beadle with a chainsaw, or some other civic gorilla, in the 96 degree heat?

As I write, Mrs W has been on the phone for 35 minutes. She has sternly argued that, on their way to lop, cut etc, our plantlife, they will have to step past Matterhorn piles of - apparently council-sanctioned - dog-poo, and dodge the acid rain from the lime tree in the garden of the council house next door, and when would they realise that...

Me, I'm off to man the redoubt in the front garden, armed with the junior Weaslet's Power Rangers waterpistol. This could be the start of a full- scale, inner-city riot.

It is difficult to imagine what sort of man would wish to splash on "the great smell of Platt", but that would seem to be the target audience for "Team England", the Football Association's range of male grooming products. The noisome unguents, on sale in Boots (that's the chemist's chain rather than the packaging), include shower gel, shampoo, conditioner and deodorant as well as a range of unforgettable male scents: Essence de Jock, Gazzissima, Les Nuits de Craven Cottage and Possession. I jest about the last bit, of course. According to the man flogging the real stuff, it's a "light, fresh, crisp fragrance which is subtle enough to wear during the day, yet sophisticated enough to wear in the evening", which makes it sound rather like a shell suit.

Confusingly, though, it seems to lack the true scents of the beautiful game: the aroma of hot dogs made out of mechanically recovered horseflesh, the whiff of coffee made out of ground-up beetles, and a fragrant top- note faintly reminiscent of overflowing urinals.

I could, of course, get away from street inspectors and bottled footballers, but I just know that the skies over Europe will be choc-a-bloc, not to mention the airports. America might be a better bet, but it is difficult to feel much enthusiasm for that option after reading a Time magazine report on air-traffic control, States-side.

In Chicago, it seems, air-traffic controllers sit staring into their screens with aircraft circling above them when suddenly a message comes up: "Not updating time and display," it says, innocuously enough, suggesting that the controllers shouldn't rely on the little clock on the computer screen. What it actually means, though, is that the system is about to crash. Naturally, there is a backup, but with one slight problem: it has no way of issuing a warning when planes are about to collide. And all this happened three times during July.

Even more entertaining is what goes on in Washington, where, it seems, planes sometimes vanish from the screen altogether. But at other times, by a bizarre form of compensation, planes which don't exist start to appear. A particularly enjoyable incident took place on 1 July, no fewer than six planes showed up at once, all heading in different directions and at different speeds. Other aircraft took immediate evasive action, only to find that all six were figments of the ageing computer's digital imagination.

Nor do the problems end with air-traffic control. In some US airports, there's also a bit of a problem actually communicating with the planes. In Miami, the ground-to-air radio system has failed 12 times since January. At La Guardia in New York, ground staff had to communicate with flight crew via their mobiles. Margate gets more attractive by the minute.

The weasel, it must be admitted, is not the most popular member of the animal kingdom. I am almost inured to having nasty things written about me, but am stung to see a fresh set of calumnies appearing in that magazine for the prematurely senescent, the Oldie.

According to one columnist, weasels are feared by the Scots because they believe us to be dangerous. Stumbling across some dozing traveller, I read with incredulity, we whistle up our fellows until we have sufficient numbers to attack in force. Not only that, we have the ability to mesmerise our prey by some mechanism as yet unexplained. We don't even need to stare into its eyes, apparently. One minute the rabbit or mouse or bullfrog can be lolloping happily along, the next it drops to the ground where it serves as a handy takeaway lunch.

This is clearly a wonderful gift, but it's absolutely news to me. I have often wondered why people's eyes have started to glaze as I have told them some hilarious anecdote from my youth, or offered my views on the correct way to anticipate shifts in the interest rate. Now I realise that they were merely paying mute testimony to my mysterious psychic powers. I shall be more careful in future