I’ve touched on the subject of  pigs before. It’s not that I’m particularly fond of them but I resent the way they get picked on by the uber-touchy PC brigade. That’s why I always wear my enamelled pig pin on my coat when I’m in England. One solicitous friend actually worried about me wearing it to travel on the London Underground. Which of course made me all the more determined to flaunt it. If you don’t like my pig, go stand next to someone else.

Anyway, the Early Learning Centre toy store recently pulled the pigs from their Goosefeather Farm toy for fear of offending Muslims. There wasn’t much they could do about the little plastic sty or the oink button without going all the way back to the drawing board so I imagine there were some confused children. But I’m very happy to tell you that British parents rose up in protest and ELC had a  bit of a rethink. You can now apply on-line for your missing pig.

I once bought a farmyard for one of our grandchildren and while test-driving it (I am a very attentive granny) found the horse had a defective whinny. A replacement whinnying horse was mailed to me the next day. And then a useful thing happened. I looked at the dud horse and thought let’s get this baby up on the ramps and see what the problem is. I performed a whinnyectomy  –  NB: no live animals have suffered in the creation of this blog  –  and goshdarn it if it didn’t function perfectly. I guess it was just a case of bad whinny positioning. It can happen.

Well waste not, want not. The spare whinny was used in our 2010 production of Cinderella. So a good result all round.