We're Done For

The best indicator of a tanking economy, I'm told, is when the price of cage birds takes a tumble. It's Budgie Blow-out time again, so we're doomed. Official. The poorhouse beckons.

Reminds me of the time we lived in Johannesburg, when our best pal Dunc decided to flee home to England. He left his pet budgie with us, tasking Jools to send it to him at his new nest in Yorkshire a couple of weeks later.

All went well until she tried to transfer the avian ingrate from its cage to a shipping crate. The vulture-in-training grabbed hold of her finger and refused to let go. Bleeding and cursing, she whacked it on the back of the head, shoved the stunned bird into its container and sent it off to darkest Yorkshire.

There it spent its final years attacking defenseless coalminers, confused grannies and perplexed pitbulls.