No one is interested in barefoot snail crushing in Vermont and they aren’t bothered by Dave and Nick either.


I did it again the other day.

I trod on a snail when I was out in my garden in bare feet. Actually I don’t care any more. I seldom wear shoes when I am at home and snails are the enemy and once you’ve squashed one, the worst is over. I guess I should be careful that I don’t get immune to murder too.

It was an odd coincidence that I committed another act of snail squashing in the week when I was looking at the analytical reports on the readership of this blog which has now been running every day since December 2008. Yes, you have probably guessed it already, the most popular article, with over a thousand readers, was published on the 31st May last year and was entitled: “Bare Foot Snail Crushing In A Rose Garden.” Maybe I should re-work it as a novel.

Another strange fact gleaned from those statistics is that I have been read in every state in the United States of America bar one. What is it about the people of Vermont that they can resist the draw of the Wolf? One thing is for sure, they are not interested in bare foot snail crushing. Maybe there are no snails in Vermont or, maybe, snails and humans live happily side side side, sharing out their lettuce leaves and hosta plants.

I have visited a lot of places in America but never Vermont so I can’t have upset the good people of that State….maybe we are just destined to live separate lives.

A third observation came from my readership figures this week. Whilst Britain has been going through the excitement of a period of unprecedented electoral changes with the election of the new LibDem-Conservative government, I have been writing about my reactions to events. Unsurprizingly the blogs have attracted a large British audience with, more surprzingly, readers too in Taiwan, Japan, Canada, India, Germany, France, Australia and New Zealand but there have been, for the first time since the site was created, no American readers at all. Today, our new Foreign Secretary, William Hague has flown to America and President Obama has talked about the “special relationship” between our two countries. It is interesting then that whilst we tend to over-rate our importance, our “special friends” have obviously absolutely no interest in our politics.

I am hoping to welcome back the citizens of the USA by not mentioning our Prime Minister or his Deputy more than is strictly necessary. I promise to try and behave better in future, my American friends.

In case you were unfortunate enough to miss that best-selling blog, here is the passage which covered my first unfortunate barefoot encounter with a snail:

31/05/2009
Lewes,
England.

“Today I experienced just one of those less than romantic gardening moments when in my usual bare feet I trod on something crunchy. Well one less snail I guess.

Actually treading on snails in bare feet isn’t as bad as you might think – from practical experience I can tell you that there is less gunge in snails than in slugs. I looked in vain for that horror movie gore when I realized what I had done.

Sorry to put you off with this maybe disgusting revelation but then gardening is, you have to admit, about nasty things too.

At least I haven’t told you about that late night bare foot walk outside a previous house when I wondered why the paving stones seemed soft. Slugs are a whole different ball game”.

If there is a Vermont resident out there, I would love to hear from you.

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