Hodge

At the weekend, a couple or so days ago, i didn't in the end get to see the Surreal Teens; they had been third on the schedule and the event kicked off at 5 pm but they finally went on stage at 2.30 the next morning.

The Churros stall however, a converted 2CV, was worth the non-admission price.

So, sorry i can't report on how amazing they were but i did get to see their male competitors of Hendrix fame; yes they were very good; tight, loud and fiendish.

The Teens were rightly troubled by the competition ....but....they couldn't sing!

They might be able to sing they just didn't: so the Teens are way ahead.

Several days later, today in fact i saw something else, even more amazing - a baby hedgehogs tongue!

You don't get to write that very often but it is a worthy subject,the sudden pinkness contrasted surprisingly with the dark snout as it licked water carefully palmed towards it by my neighbour Vero as five of us lay in the grass watching.

Then it unsteadily trundled off to the bush ready to curl into a ball at the slightest sudden movement from any of us.

I've always had a soft spot, or perhaps a spikey spot for Hegehogs, but you don't see them often. The first one i met was in my childhood garden and i painfully mistook it for a pile of leaves.

There was another chance meeting in a park in London when a passer buy informed me that they like dog food - the hedhehogs not the passer by.

There was a baby (hedgehog) that someone brought into the garden here once, but it didn't survive whatever trauma had lead it to be alone in the road and that, apart from the unluckily squashed viewed from a car is my hedgehog count.

In 50 so years. Not many.

Apart from that I remember a cartoon someone published of a giant Hegehog rushing across a motorway leaving a trail of crushed cars in its wake, a joyful glee on its face and i think there was a Hedgehog called Spikey Norman somewhere in the Monty Python's early work, but i'm not sure, though i did use the name on stage for one of my early characters.