Ungulates are animals with hooves and I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but they are everywhere. Unless your metaphor has hooves it’s just not worth making.
We are not just talking about the run of the mill horse metaphors. It’s not that we are all being encouraged to get back on the horse, some of us chomping at the bit to get back to normal life, to stop eating like a horse to relieve the boredom of isolation/lockdown. We are not just waiting to hear more about the government’s position from the horse’s mouth and watching his horseplay with an umbrella.
No. We are in the realms of much more exciting ungulates.
I would have been happy for it to be the time of the cow, as I’m quite fond of a bovine. I find that if life ever gets a bit on top of you then a quick chat with the ladies on the sea wall can put things into perspective. When the Rev Richard Coles posted the news on Twitter that a cow had wandered into the garden at Ely cathedral the resulting pun off was much greater than the holy cow I was expecting.
However, it’s not just stopping at cows. We’ve been through the lambs to the slaughter phase and slipped into talking about how these politicians get our goat. It’s not easy to separate the sheep from the goats.
While I was catching up on the gymnastics the other day, during the part where Simone Biles came back to cheer on her teammates the American commentator got very excited and said, “And this is why she’s the goat!”
Goat? That sounds a bit rude. I tried to imagine a goat on a balance beam or doing a vault but none of those images worked for me. The only encounter I’ve had with a goat came on the 7th June 1977. It was the Queen’s silver jubilee, a Tuesday and a day off for everyone. We had been given a silver coin in a velvet box. My friend, who lived in a side street over the road was going to a street party, the road was set out with trestle tables, draped with Union jack flags. Women bustled in and out of houses in pinnies and slippers, carrying trays of sandwiches, jugs of celery, bowls of Twiglets and rabbits of jelly. I experienced FOMO for the first time, before it was even a thing. We lived on the main road and so a street party wasn’t going to happen for us. My mum had a plan, however. She had been invited by one of her rich arty friends to a garden party. There were to be games for children (limbo, if I remember correctly) and alcohol for the adults. Looking back, I can see it would have been preferable. Dad was called out to an emergency at the last minute and mum took us on her own, sniffing and complaining about timing. I remember wearing a lilac flared-leg jumpsuit that had a silver coloured metal zip all the way down the front with a metal d-ring that I sucked on anxiously for most of the day. The garden was huge. It had a wild wood area at the bottom and a petting zoo. Alright, it wasn’t a petting zoo but they had goats. At some point during the day someone let the goats out of their pen and they ate the washing off the line, which was strung between two enormous cherry trees. The pomagne and party seven had been flowing for a while and so the adults all just laughed. I therefore concluded that goats were stupid and funny. So, you can see my confusion about Simone Biles being a goat. I’ve since checked and it’s an acronym Greatest Of All Time, which makes more sense.
Not one to miss out on a metaphor the Prime Minister has tried to get in on the act and has chosen camels as his preferred ungulate. He is apparently wandering round Downing Street, telling anyone that will listen that we have to wait to see what kind of camel Covid is going to be.
“Wah, wah, bluster, hoy! Who knows? Is it going to be a dromedary or a Bactrian? Ha ha. I’m so funny. Will it have one hump or two?”
Oh deer! We all know it’s much more likely to be a cancerous hippopotamus. Did I ever tell you about the guide a Disney that told us about the evils of the hippo?
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