Surprise! And squirrels too

I know I should be ready for this, but I looked outside just now and it was still daylight. It's half past nine in the evening and it's still light. So it happens every year in June? No shit. It still took me by surprise.

Ideally I'd be making the most of this by sitting out in some nice warm beer garden drinking some nice cool lager (Or more realistically, some not-so-nice warm lager, but hey, beer's beer, right?) but I'm not. I'm inside working on some work and having a hurting lower lip because I burnt it with some very hot pizza cheese earlier tonight.

Pizza cheese. What a pathetic thing to burn oneself with. I expect it'll scar. If I get arrested they'll write in my report under Distinguishing Marks: "Big ears and a pizza cheese shaped scar on lower lip". I'll be the laughing stock of the Lower Poppleton police department - in my head, it's Lower Poppleton that I've been arrested in, possibly for Cheating At Games or even Treason**. I'll never be able to show my face there again.

I think I've lost my thread.

So to move on to other utterly unrelated things, it was very pleasing to hear that the Nut Room scene in the new Willy Wonka film will feature many many actual, real squirrels. Trained squirrels! I had been uncertain about the necessity of this film - I like the first version and didn't feel it needed a remake. But if they have gone to the trouble to train 96 squirrels from birth to act in a relatively short scene in a movie, then I for one will go and see it.

Just in case you missed that last paragraph, they have trained real squirrels to work a nut-cracking production line! How cool??

And it's then a small step to think: If they can train squirrels to crack nuts on a production line in a film, then why not train squirrels to crack nuts on a production line in a real chocolate factory in real life? Squirrels have to be cheaper to employ than people, cheaper even than immigrants. As long as you have a ready supply of acorns to feed them with and are happy to let them take all their holiday in the coldest darkest months of winter, you're away.

Perhaps this could be the answer to York's chocolate problems. York used to have several big chocolate factories but over the last few years costs have become too great and production has slowed leading to several of them shutting down. But if they reopened them with a staff entirely comprised of squirrels, all their problems would be solved!

The squirrels would be a ready source of cheap labour, easily able to compete with the cheap panda-staffed factories of China. And in addition, you could gain valuable extra revenue by letting visitors in to see the squirrels at work. After all, people pay a load of pounds to go round Cadbury World in Birmingham and they don't have a single squirrel! Not one!

There are totally no problems with this plan at all. Chocolate lords - I hope you're reading and taking this in. I don't ask for royalties, just a free ticket to come and see the squirrels once a year. Thank you.

This has felt like two posts in one. You lucky people, you.

** Note to the police (especially the fine members of the Lower Poppleton Constabulary) - these crimes are only in my head. I have not Cheated At Games and Treason is like a foreign country to me. Really. Let me go. Ow, that hurts. Oh hang on, that's just my lower lip.