2002-12-17 - 6:28 p.m.

We were talking about horror films today at work, and my co-worker was complaining because he�s running out of horror film plots to tell his girlfriend�s son as bedtime stories. I mean, short of doing The Exorcist, but the kid�s seven. Not sure he�s ready for satanic possession yet, even though by all accounts he already naturally exhibits most of the symptoms. He�d told him the basic plot of Cujo and now he makes his mum check the wardrobe for killer St Bernards every night. Sucker.

Anyway, I suggested one. The plot is ALWAYS happening in horror films. A family will innocently flush a malingering family pet down the toilet, only for it to react with some sewer-based radioactive effluence and return at many times its normal size to terrorise the city. I thought for an original twist you could use a couple of pigeons. Granted, it�s usually something more violent like a crocodile or a rabid puppy with mandibles of bloody death, but giant mutant pigeons could cause a sizeable amount of havoc. Their cooing would be several times the normal volume for starters, and surely no statue would escape unscathed.

Plus, the giant killer pigeon message would serve as an important catalyst to some firm anti-pigeon feeling, which is sorely needed in this city. Do you know that grown adults, some of them who look as though they might even have finished high school, take their own children (at least I assume they are their own children, and not just some random infant that they hate, though that would make more sense) to places like Traf*lgar Square and let them stand there whilst these scabby-feathered, disease-riddled rodents of the air squat all over them, blindly beaking their filth into clothing and, who knows, skin. The sooner someone takes a flame-thrower down there the better. Hell, don�t even bother to clear out the people � it�ll save nature the trouble of weeding them out. They can go up, as well as their fucking bags of popcorn THAT THEY BUY in order to attract the flapping ornithological parasites, which are all over you anyway if you so much as briefly lose control of a bagel crumb.

What�s more, people say that being crapped on by a pigeon is �lucky�. Yeah, having the steaming excrement of one of the worlds filthiest animals dropped onto a dry clean only coat from a great height is a real karma jackpot. I�d really feel like I�d cashed in those fortune chips.

A pigeon crapped on my parents� wedding cake. I guess in those circumstances you couldn�t blame someone for taking the �blind self delusion that this is in some way symbolically fortuitous� route.