"You eat a ton of muck....."

(Subtitle: Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud...)

Good morning friends, I hope you are having a simply splendid Holiday!

Now a dose festive jollity is all very well, but I suspect that some of my friends will be tiring by now of the Yo Ho Ho business and be yearning to read a blog post with a tad more intellectual and scientific rigour.

Fear not. You have come to the right place.

So I was all for tackling the mysterious matter of the Virgin Birth, but Gail insists that this topic is above even my pay grade, and has steered me instead in the direction of the 'Hygiene Hypothesis'.

Whether this relates in any way to the fact that we have now been six days staying with Human Granny in Nottingham and Gail claims still to be waiting for her first meal made from food within its use by date, I leave you to decide...

For those of you unfamiliar with the theory, the 'Hygiene Hypothesis' states that allergies and ailments like asthma have become much more prevalent in recent years because human babies are not exposed to enough dirt and bacteria and this weakens the development of their immune responses.

So one would predict that, being born in a manger, asleep on the hay, surrounded by all those lowing cattle etc., the baby Jesus would have started life with a tip top immune system. Likewise, Gail having been brought up in a household where a complaint about some dirt on a windfall apple served for dessert was met with the gnomic quote from her Yorkshire grandfather "You eat a ton of muck before you die", can boast a cast iron digestion.

Now you may have heard that we in the UK are enjoying a 'brown Christmas'. I can't think why Gail and HGY disapprove all this mud and don't seem to want me "trailing it all over the carpet..."  Did you know that in a teaspoon of soil there are approximately a billion bacteria? So healthy! But the humans would insist I was all cleaned before I was allowed to visit Human Grandad in his nursing home yesterday. (He was finally discharged from hospital a week ago). HGD was only briefly awake, but he did give me a lovely smile and a pat on the head before he fell back to sleep again.

You know, he spend his childhood outdoors playing on Ashdown Forest with his big brother Jack, building dens, fishing in muddy streams, bringing home grass snakes as pets etc. etc. Perhaps that's why he has lived so long.

So in honour of HGD, I decided to go right back out there and find some more dirt...