Infected by the Daily Mail Virus?

It's not been a great day, on the whole.

It all started around lunchtime, when I accidentally came into contact with the Daily Mail. Now I'm not saying that anyone could catch a virus from the Daily Mail. But my immune system's been a bit low. I've been taking the Vitamin Cs and fish oil. but all this working too hard has worn me down. You can't be too careful, that's all I'm saying. You've got to be very careful when handling the Daily Mail. 12% of all UK inhabitants "could be suffering from Daily Mail Virus."

That's the first symptom, of course. Putting implausible claims in quotes to distance yourself just enough to avoid embarrassment if the claims are as complete a pile of foetid dingo's kidneys as they always appeared to be. Anyway, I wandered out for a walk round the village. Saw two men getting out of their car outside the White Horse. Clearly, in my opinion, going in to ask if they could arrange the reception for their gay marriage in there - after such things are legalised by David Cameron. They were driving a large old thing - Landrover Freelander or some such. Big enough to have - oh, three or four asylum seekers in the boot, I reckon. Especially if one is smuggling gay party drugs in from Holland, and stopping off near Calais at the special 5-star hotel in which the French put up Afghan drug-lords and terrorists, as long as they promise to cause no trouble until they get to England. And one of the men looked a bit foreign.

Naturally, I rushed into the pub, shouting out "Stop! You are betraying our country by allowing foreigners to arrange same-sex marriages so as to obtain residency. Are you sure he doesn't have distemper? "45% of foreigners have canine distemper," claims health expert."

There was a nasty silence. I thought, on the whole, it was best to leave them to their turbo-shandies, "shots" and other such deadly drinks, purchased out of their dole money, but paid for by the tax I work so hard to avoid*.

Walked back up School Lane and past the school. Obviously, it's half term, and the weekend. But I bet even though they're not there, and definitely not working (having enormous holidays as they do), the teachers were busy planning the additional dumbing-down of lessons. In a proper school, each day's curriculum would be three hours' Shakespeare, three hours' adding-up and a two-hour cross-country run - through the snow - to make men of the little blighters. Instead of which they're probably getting a few hours of Tolerance Cross-Training and some Bowdlerised nursery rhymes. IT MAKES ME MAD.

Obviously, on a Saturday afternoon in an English village, there should be a fete in the grounds of the Church. (I drop the accent on the first "e" as it is clearly an effeminate foreign innovation). But no, there was nobody at all in the churchyard. Another example of Health 'n' Safety GONE MAD. The vicar - in all probability a female liberal who is converting to Hinduism and living with a same-sex partner who has brought ash  tree fungus disease into the country -, has obviously stopped all fetes occurring in the graveyard until the gravestones have all been put back to perfectly straight lines, and each one surrounded by safety tape and a "Beware of Falling Gravestones" sign. She's probably locked up in the church now, pulling the pages containing "I vow to thee my country", "Jerusalem" and "Land of Hope and Glory" out of all the hymn books before having A BONFIRE OF PATRIOTISM.

Perfectly safe churchyard from which fetes are clearly banned

I noticed that I was getting over-excited. Several veins were throbbing in my forehead. Was I, perhaps, entering the third and terminal stage of Daily Mail Virus? I wasn't sure. The irony is, of course, that Daily Mail Virus makes you convinced you've got various illnesses - maybe including Daily Mail Virus itself. I knew I needed to settle down in my best reclining chair in the conservatory, and dab the old temples with Cologne.

"According to experts", 45% of the population could have Daily Mail Virus within the next ten years. Will the Government take action? Or is this country to be over-run by reactionary hypochondriacs, convinced that Islamic fundamentalists are sneaking into this country to spread homosexual equality and exotic diseases? Let some Christian couple ban me from their bed and breakfast on the grounds that I'm not married. I'll sue their bottoms off.

* Thanks, Erika