Today, I’m playing dead, adopting an unfashionable name and carving it into marble. It’s a fashion I’ve thus far endeavoured to avoid, but we all have our point at which we cave to social pressures, and everything from the rolling news to the shopping channel is full of shrouds and wailing. Even the nature docs don’t stop with the big fish eating the little fish, and now they don’t end until the water disappears from parched soil. For a long time, I just played possum – population decreasing but “least concern” – but it’s not a native species and my family called me weird; so now I’m going the whole hog or, rather, the whole daeodon, the so-called Terminator Pig, which disappeared in the middle Miocene. I like to think I’ll be back, but I’m building a pyre and a pyramid, taking tips from orangutans and tigers, and watching whole countries dress themselves in ashes.
Oz Hardwick
Picture Nick Victor
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