Chas Newkey-Burden

Norwich has known some beef in its time: from the Kett’s Rebellion against land enclosures in 1549, to the Great Blow during the English Civil War. Now there’s something new dividing the East Anglian city: pigeons. The ‘pooping menaces’ are pushing the council to ‘adopt extreme measures’, says the Guardian, The Times compared local scenes to those in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, while the Daily Telegraph’s intrepid David Wilkes has donned his tin hat to report from the ‘front line of Norwich’s pigeon feeding war’. A society that reserves its compassion for the exotic or photogenic reveals its shallowness.

When a pet dies, grief doesn’t arrive alone. It brings with it an awkward entourage: embarrassment, self-consciousness, the creeping suspicion that our sorrow might look disproportionate or self indulgent. So we lower our voices when we speak of our loss. We apologise for being 'silly'. We add the expected caveat: I know it’s not the same as losing a person. But the truth resists such polite disclaimers: when a pet dies, the pain can be at least as sharp as that of any human bereavement. In a new study of 975 British adults, among those who had lost both a pet and a person close to them, more than one in five said the death of their pet was the most distressing loss they had ever experienced.

Donald Trump is plotting to turn Britain into a ‘nuclear launchpad’, according to a startling report in the Daily Mail. Leaked Pentagon documents suggest a $264 million upgrade of RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk will end with US nuclear weapons on British soil for the first time since they were removed under Barack Obama in 2008. The bombs would be aimed at ‘facing down Putin’, the paper claims. The revelation comes just weeks after Trump ordered the US military to resume nuclear testing for the first time in more than 30 years, fuelling fears of a dangerous new global arms race. From the moment he first rolled into the White House in 2017, the discourse surrounding Trump and the nuclear arsenal has oscillated between dark comedy and barely suppressed dread.

It’s one of the last bastions of national orthodoxy, one that people look forward to for months, but many vegans dread Christmas dinner. It’s not the food that’s the problem – it’s the conversation. Veganism is now as mainstream as oat milk lattes, so for 364 days of the year it barely raises an eyebrow, but come 25 December it’s often seen as a personal affront to centuries of tradition. Politely declining the turkey is treated as a personal assault upon centuries of gravy-soaked heritage.  As the seasonal sitting wears on, even mild-mannered relatives can metamorphose into belligerent barristers for Big Meat. 'But would you eat a pig if you were stranded on a desert island?' wonders an auntie, as though the Yuletide table were the Old Bailey.

It may be a pagan festival but thank God for Halloween and all its joys: the child’s delight at being dressed up and out after dark, our thrill at pretending to be frightened, the faint sense that for one night, the ordinary world has slipped its moorings. On Halloween, the country briefly remembers how to laugh at fear, instead of scrolling through it. This crown jewel of autumn strikes me as one of those events that manages to be both utterly absurd and, in its way, rather necessary. Like the Eurovision song contest, or marriage. Everyone from kids in Poundland skeleton suits to adults with too much eyeliner join this grand communal theatre of the macabre. It’s democracy with fake blood and carnivalesque chaos powered by Haribo.

Transport for London is refusing to take down a social media video which encourages owners to take their cats on the tube network. The unhinged Instagram video shows two owners taking their cats on an escalator, in a lift and on a train, with the slogan: ‘This is your sign to start travelling with your pet around London.’ It’s true that most dogs emerge from flights unscathed but what sort of owner wants to even risk it? The charity Cats Protection asked TfL to take down the video, complaining that it’s ‘apparently normalising’ taking cats on the underground. ‘Busy stations and crowded Underground platforms with loud and sudden noises’ should be ‘off limits for cats’, a spokesperson said.

When you’re travelling abroad, a good way of getting the measure of any city is the culture of its public transport. I visited Australia several times as a child and I was surprised by how chatty strangers were on trains and buses. People sat down and struck up a conversation with whoever was sitting next to them. I’ve noticed that natural connection between passengers in many other countries. It’s different in London, where passengers generally sit in tense silence, avoiding any interaction with each other and not even acknowledging that anyone had the temerity to travel at the same time as them.

News headlines about a Labour council banning fireworks to avoid upsetting baby pandas are certainly eye-catching. It’s true that Edinburgh city council has banned fireworks in nine neighbourhoods between Halloween and November 9, after the death of a baby red panda and its mother in Edinburgh Zoo last year were linked to the din of fireworks. The Edinburgh bans are an overdue acknowledgement of the long-term consequences of short-term thrills But it’s also true that Edinburgh originally banned fireworks in four areas in August last year, months before the pandas met their maker. The council has now voted to extend the bans in those areas and introduce a set of bans in five new areas, including where the zoo is based.

The news that Taylor Swift is releasing her 12th album in October will thrill her fans but perhaps we should all be grateful because this might mean we can move on from the endless chatter about the Oasis reunion tour. From the moment the Gallaghers announced their lucrative concerts it was clear that a lot of people were going to absolutely lose their minds. News of the shows and ticket sales hit the front pages and stayed there for months. Would the brothers fall out before a note was sung? The suspense could have killed us.

Social media can still be a force for good, as I found out last weekend when we woke up with an unexpected visitor in our garden: a beautiful white, crested chicken. In the old days, reuniting lost animals with their owners could be a tricky task, involving phone calls to the RSPCA and local authorities, checking lampposts for 'lost pet' posters and keeping an eye on the animal. This time, I logged onto our village's Facebook group and found a 'missing' post from the chicken's worried owners. I messaged them and they came round to collect her, bouncing off home full of relief and joy. The whole thing was sorted out in less than five minutes. Thank goodness for Facebook.