I came across a baby rat today at lunchtime.
I was heading across the concourse towards the students union, when I caught sight of it out the corner of my eye. It was moving slowly along the ground at the bottom of the wall, and kept stopping, curling up, and then carrying on again. Poor thing didn’t look at all well. It wasn’t much bigger than my gerbils. I watched it for a minute or so, then a woman came up behind me, looking similarly sympathetic. She popped into one of the sciences buildings to get a box, and I scooped up the rat. I wasn’t sure what to do with it, but in the end I took it to Animal and Plant Sciences. One of the academic staff was passing by as I gave the rat-in-a-box to the porter, and came to have a look.

“Yes,” he confirmed, “that’s a baby rat. Kill it.”

I made protesting noises and clutched the box to my chest, and the professor told the porter to take it upstairs, where it’d be taken care of, and then walked out the door.

“They’ll kill it, won’t they?” I said, even though I already knew the answer.

The porter nodded. “Sorry.”

There’s not much you can do with a sick rat, especially a young one that’s probably dying anyway and has got separated from its mother. Even so, if I didn’t have my gerbils, I would have taken it home.

Outside the office, in the park, there’s a permanent puddle. Sometimes it’s just mud, and sometimes it’s like a miniature pond, and the ducks swim on it, or drink from it. If the weather is bad, checking the puddle confirms if it’s actually raining or not - it’s often hard to tell with all the trees and everything.

This morning, I had to move offices. I very reluctantly swapped with another guy who needed more light. I can’t see the puddle any more. I had to squint hard out a different window to see if it was actually raining a few minutes ago. I miss my puddle.

You would think that nowadays, the idea of a female knowing more than basic stuff about computers would be acceptable. And I guess for the most part, you’d be right. Call centres in India, however, are a completely different matter. I just spent half an hour on the phone to a guy on BT Broadband’s technical support line who was adamant that my modem couldn’t possibly work as I insisted it had been before I upgraded to DSLMAX. He was instead convinced that I must have, or have had a router that I’d forgotten about. Another ‘black box’ attached to my computer with blinking lights, perhaps? No, I assured him, I most definitely did not have any other equipment other than the modem, and I’d been able to access certain configuration sites before I got the upgrade. I even described the screenshots which, he conceded, I wouldn’t have known about without accessing them - but that’s impossible, he said. Basically, he was saying in not so many words that I was either stupid, or a liar. The best bit - or worst, depending on your point of view - was when he said that perhaps I’d been ‘partying hard’. That pretty much put the icing on the offended cake. Finding out the speed stated on my connection was about 5 times the actual speed only added insult to injury. I finally told him to send me a router to replace the modem. And just to confirm, I asked, that has an ethernet connection, not a USB connection, is that right? Oh, he said, and how would you know this if you do not have a router? I restrained myself from retorting ‘perhaps it’s because I apparently know more about computers than you do?‘
I think I’ll be a little less polite when I phone up to complain about it in the morning.

So political correctness is going mad in the run up to the World Cup. Radio 1 said they were banning songs mentioning England in any way in case they offended the Welsh, Scottish or Irish. Taxi drivers, Tesco van drivers, and kids at a Stoke-on-Trent school were banned for having the England flag on display in case they offended minorities. What a load of balls.

I freely admit that I’m not a loud and proud patriot. I don’t have, or plan to have, the cross of St George hanging in my window. I’m not going to paint one on my face or dye my hair red and white. Nevertheless, it’s time we stopped cowering in fear of offending someone or sending the wrong message, or hiding behind the excuse that the cross of St George is a symbol of the BNP and white supremacy. Political correctness is all well and good if it defends against truly offensive things, but the vast majority of people won’t realise that something seemingly innocuous could be offensive unless it’s pointed out to them. True, there will always be someone who takes offense as you certainly can’t please all of the people all of the time, but to censor things to such a broad extent ‘just in case’ is ridiculous.