A tale of two Gibsons

I was up early this morning to take delivery of some fencing panels, which meant that I was standing outside the house when Gibson was taking his grandma for their morning walk.

Gibson is the black Labrador who lives round the corner.  Though he enjoys a friendly fuss, he always wants to get about on business of his own, so he gives an impatient bark if Gran spends too long chatting with neighbours.

When first introduced some months ago I had assumed he was named after Wing Commander Guy Gibson VC DSO DFC of the Dambusters, who himself had a chocolate brown Labrador, which [spoiler alert] doesn’t make it to the end-credits of the film. Guys of my generation were raised on black-and-white British war movies, with heroes that don’t say too much but go out and give Jerry a good pasting. You can watch the film's original trailer by clicking here.

It says much about us Brits that we cry buckets for the dog but not so for the thousands affected by the successful raid on the Ruhr dams. But then if the Germans had sensibly elected a Labrador instead of Hitler, things would have taken a very different course. I mean, we sometimes think of Churchill as a bulldog. And listen to him speak. The clues are all there...

As it happens Gibson is named after the Gibson Les Paul guitar. Hmm.

Anyways G, with his sense of smell up to 100,000 times more acute than mine, immediately detected that I had just eaten a bacon sandwich.  This was reason enough to put the walk on hold while he quickly identified the fact that it was smoked bacon, Danish from western Jutland, from the right-hand loin of the pig. A few moments more and he would have identified the donor pig by name (Labradors are pretty clever). But for once Gran wanted to make some progress and so they set off once again.

This week Dr Michael Mosley set out the startling fact in the excellent BBC TV science series Horizon that eating bacon may well curtail your life by up to 2 years. I like and respect Dr Mosley.  We are roughly the same age and he seems to know a thing or two. I admire the fact that he experiments on his own body, for example by infecting himself with tapeworms or by trying the 5:2 diet. I see no reason to doubt his claim about the foreshortening of life.

Guy Gibson in the centre. He was only 26 when killed in action

Moderation is key to diet, I feel. "Steady on, old chap," as the Wing Commander might have said. "Not bacon every morning." And, of course, I don’t.  Mostly it’s toast or muesli or grapefruit when I can get it.

But the Dambusters of 617 Squadron (like all RAF crews on ‘Ops’) tucked in to bacon before taking off on their fateful flight.

So I thought I’d share that neither Gibson nor I have any intention of eschewing the occasional rasher of back or streaky, whatever the medics may say. If that means clocking-off a tad early, then 'cheerio'.