A green protest that backfired

YES, I was "mungoed" – one of the victims of the April 1 stunt by green activists. Cunningly they crept round at dead of night stuffing mung beans in the air valves of 4x4s and sports cars so that we all woke up to deflated tyres – by which time they were miles away.

According to their internet spokesperson, this action against gas guzzlers was directed at "the rich and powerful". Oh, how we laughed at that.

Now I'm sure there are some rich, suburban housewives who drive shiny new Jeeps on the school and supermarket run. But anyone who doesn't actually need a 4x4 and buys one despite the fuel and tax costs is, in my humble opinion, off their axle.

One look at our rather aged Nissan would tell the story, even if the removed rear seats and dog blanket in the back weren't a giveaway.

Even a Volvo estate isn't big enough for our hound to turn round in, so there was no option. The trade-off was that instead of two cars we would only have one. Himself putters about Edinburgh on the smallest engined scooter.

The next laugh came with the online comments of readers, one of whom likened the picture of me to Big Mags Haney – a legend among antisocial neighbourhood harridans.

Here I have to confess, I've put on a bit of weight, and I was I not looking my best after having walked the aforementioned beast in the rain and wind.

But I thought I deserved some credit for agreeing to pose for the picture at all, considering no other victim was prepared to be identified for fear of reprisals. I had no such fear because I didn't think the "mungers" actually intended to hurt anyone. They just weren't bright enough to figure out the deadly potential of their actions.

Had I been forced to leap in the car and take off in the middle of the night (which I have done recently for reasons I won't bore you with) without realising my tyre pressure was dropping, I could easily have lost control and been well and truly mungoed round a lamppost, leaving the protesters facing charges of manslaughter, as could any of my gas-guzzling neighbours. Rich people die as easily as poor folk.

All that aside, what did the protesters actually achieve by their actions? Well, despite the online doubters, it really did take about an hour of my diesel engine running to power the little mobile compressor to inflate the tyres sufficiently to limp round to the tyre store. Add to that the recovery truck's engine. Then there were the police cars, not to mention the reporters' and photographers' cars. So as a strike against unnecessary pollution, I'd hardly describe it as an unmitigated success.

If anything, it turned people off the cause. We're used to thinking of greenies as folk who want to make a better world, protect the planet and so on.

They're not racist or homophobes and they don't believe in discrimination, which, for these purposes, let's define as the irrational, uninformed hatred of a group who share one feature – be it skin colour or driving a 4x4.

Some people drive such vehicles because they, or a member of their family (my mother for example), have physical problems which may make it difficult for them to get in and out of a saloon.

Perhaps they need space for a bulky wheelchair or a zimmer. Some people, even in the city, need to carry messy or heavy goods. We, for example – and the mungers will love this – have an allotment and grow our own fruit and veg, so we're often loaded up with wood, fencing, soil, manure and plants, as much as any farmer would be.

Without knowing the details of someone's life, you really can't be so arrogant or discriminatory as to decide what car they should drive or how much pollution they generate.

Still, every cloud has a silver lining. I got to keep the photo props – a bag of mung beans which, boiled in chicken stock, went very well with that night's curry.

Water carry on
I DON'T work in an office any more, but when I did I had the misfortune to be sited next to the water cooler. Fanatical water drinkers would queue up to fill plastic bottles from the dispenser, which was designed to fill cups.

The overflow would fill up the collecting basin underneath and the machine kicked in with a demented beeping, by which time the water babies had fled and yours truly had to empty it or go mad from the sound effects.

So I was disproportionately pleased to discover that researchers have once-and-for all disproved the theory that we need to drink eight glasses of water a day to be healthy. Au contraire – unless you live in the tropics, or are an athlete or someone with a specific medical condition, you get more than enough water from food and drinks.

In fact, the only proven benefit is more toilet breaks, which in turn requires excessive flushing, which is not environmentally helpful. That brings me neatly back to the beginning of this column.