THERE was a time when spring never began officially in Britain until the first letter to a newspaper claiming to have heard the first cuckoo.
Two things about that annual ritual fascinated me. One, where was the proof that the letter-writer – lined paper, green ink? – had heard that most unappealing of birds? Two, I began to suspect that the earlier reporting of the first cuckoo each year
had less to do with global warming and more to do with competition to be first on a letters page with the alleged news.
All in the past now, not because of texting, twittering, tweeting and 24-hour news and blogging – it would be a fortunate speugie that escaped the attention of that lot, never mind a cuckoo – but because the green-ink brigade have turned their attention to oilseed rape as the first sign of spring.
In passing, "green-ink brigade" is journalistic shorthand for obsessives, usually with a conspiracy theory on a single subject about which they know absolutely everything and insist on telling you, plus whatever needs to be imagined to tack their theory together.
In hot-metal newspaper days this type of persistent correspondent was immediately recognisable by their use of coloured ink, lined paper and lots and lots of scrawled pages. Now they take part in radio phone-ins, send e-mails, write blogs and spread confusion on the internet, but they still think in green ink.
Hence the annual competition to spot the first yellow flowers of oilseed rape in the countryside, develop symptoms of an allergy and condemn the crop. This year's prize for being first began: "So once again doctors' surgeries and hospital A&E departments have queues of asthmatics, sufferers of lung disease and others with various breathing difficulties caused by a surfeit of oilseed rape pollen. Is it not time for this dreadful crop to be banned?"
Yes, there are people with the breathing difficulties described. The primary cause is smoking or a job that involved asbestos or coal. More than 30,000 people a year die from smoking-related diseases in the UK. How many deaths have been caused by oilseed rape? None as far as I know. And to be fair – that's me, Mr Even Handed – belief that oilseed rape is evil is a mild obsession compared with, for example, believing that the 1969 moon landing was in a studio, that the government started the horrible 2001 foot and mouth epidemic, that Elvis is alive and well and working in a burger bar or that UFOs exist.
But many believe these things – the last UFO report I saw said it was spotted at 10.30 on a Saturday night, well, fancy that - and there are still believers in Erich von Daniken's theory of ancient astronauts with landing strips in Amazonian jungles.
On a more modest scale we have what has now become official confirmation that summer is here – reports of the first crop circles, which are not, of course, computer-generated designs put into practice in half-grown cereal crops by lame-brains using boards and ropes. Oh no. Flattened patches in fields are symbols of unearthly intelligence trying to tell us something.
Could that be: "Get a life?"
