WONNACOT’S MONOCOTS

Hi readers, TIM WONNACOT here. You may know me best as a twat, but you might not realise that I’m also crackers about monocotyledons - that’s grasses and palms to you! I just can’t get enough of these flowering plants with embryos that contain a single se

⬜ EVERYONE knows that Pampas grass planted in the front garden of a house is a sure sign that the homeowners are swingers. So when me and my wife saw a clump of it growing in the garden of the couple who’d just moved in over the road, we decided to pop round for a bit of how’s-your father. After we had introduced ourselves on the doorstep, I made a clumsy grab for the woman’s breasts while my wife attempted to rub the husband’s penis through his trousers. To our surprise, the couple failed to respond in kind, telling us to “eff off” in no uncertain terms. As we walked back down the path with fleas in our ears, we realised our mistake. It wasn’t Pampas grass (Cortaderia selloana) after all, but the very similarlooking Mexican feather grass (Stipea tenuissima).

Albert & Dolly Uddersthwaite, Glossop

⬜ THE BLOKE next door recently treated himself to a brand new state-of-theart Atco petrol lawnmower. It was a real beauty, much better than my rusty old Flymo, so when he was on holiday I borrowed it from his shed to cut my grass. Unfortunately, my lawn’s not as well kept as his, and the blades kept hitting stones and half-bricks hidden in the grass. I also scraped it along the side of an old car engine that’s half-buried in the front garden. I have to admit the damage to the mower was quite extensive, but it looked much worse than it really was; I’m sure it was all readily repairable. But when he got home from his holidays and found it in his shed, he went mad with me, calling me all sorts. Whatever happened to old-fashioned good neighbourliness?

Reg Feet, Tunbridge Wells

⬜ AS Emeritus Professor of Botany at Oxford University, I can state with scientific certainty that monocotyledons are the best sorts of plants, end of. And if there’s any professors who think dicots are better than monocots, you can come outside with me in the quad at Wolfson College and we’ll have a right old sort-out. And you can bring someone to help you, if you like, and you can bring your fucking dinner. Because you’ll need it when I’m finished with you.

Professor John Sitton, Wolfson College, Oxford

⬜ YOU DON’T get so many cartoons with two hairy men in raggedy trousers sitting with their backs to a palm tree on a small desert island any more, do you? I dare say it’s something to do with political correctness, socalled ’diversity’ or health and safety. Not that I ever found them funny, but I did like the palm trees in them. They also used to do cartoons with two hairy men in raggedy trousers hanging from chains on a dungeon wall, but I didn’t like them because they didn’t have palm trees in.

Terry Towelling, Hull

⬜ THE IDIOT next door has planted bamboo in the back garden after he saw that other idiot Monty Don doing it on Gardeners’ World. It’s only a small clump at the moment, but I am worried that it will quickly get out of hand and attract pandas. I know pandas look quite cute, but they apparently can be quite vicious. The last thing me and my wife want is hordes of these ravenous black and white bears roaming round next door and climbing over our fence. They might even come into the house looking for more bamboo, and the place is already overrun with rats and cockroaches. I don’t want to have to start leaving bear-traps all over the place, as I’ve got eight children.

Ian Ossifrage, BurtonCoggles

⬜ HAS Mr Ossifrage (previous letter) thought of controlling his pandas using natural methods? I successfully treated the greenfly on my roses by encouraging ladybirds to visit my flowerbeds. If he introduced whatever it is that eats pandas to his garden, I am sure the problem would solve itself.

Bob Honeydew, Yeovil

⬜ I’VE always prided myself on my ability to ‘think outside the box’, so when all my neighbours planted their lawns with grass seeds, I planted mine with onions instead. My onion lawn grew quickly and became quite a talking point in the village. Although I have to cut it twice a week in the summer, I never get it finished. That’s because the smell of chopped onions once I start mowing is so overpowering that my eyes start stinging and I have to go back inside and wash them out with Optrex. I am now thinking of taking up the whole lawn and relaying it with artificial “AstroOnions’, if such a thing exists.

Brian Lampstoft, Norfolk

⬜ INSTEAD of ripping up his lawn and replacing it with the plastic monstrosity that is AstroOnions, has Mr Lampstoft (above) considered merely re-turfing it with a milder variety of onion, such as salad onions or Spring onions?

Bob Honeydew, Yeovil

⬜ WITH reference to Mr Lampstoft’s letter (above), why don’t farmers plant their cow fields with onions? That way, all the beefburgers would come out onion-flavoured, thus killing two birds with one stone.

Turpentine Dyall, Durham

⬜ IT’S ALL very well the onion-fed beef coming out ready onion-flavoured (previous letter), but I wouldn’t want to put onion-flavoured milk in my tea or on my cornflakes. Actually, it just occurred to me that normal grass-fed cow’s milk isn’t grass-flavoured, so kindly disregard this letter.

Renee Traintimes, Giggleswick

⬜ AS A keen Brexiteer, I was appalled when my next door neighbour planted Calla Lilies in his

flowerbeds. How dare he put foreign plants in his garden, against the clearly expressed will of 65 million British people? I thought we had voted to take back control of our borders.

Tommy Proud, Epping

PS. In reality, I don’t believe this at all, I simply wrote this letter after thinking up a particularly weak pun on the word border. I actually voted Remain.

⬜ I LIKE monocots, but speaking as a nun, it’s a good job that the Lord decided to create dicots too. That’s because monocotyledonous leaves, such as lilies, bamboos and grasses, are all long and thin. Had these been the only leaves available for Adam to hide his shame in the Garden of Eden, he would have only been able to cover his cock, leaving his balls poking out the sides for all the world to see. So

I say hooray for the cockand-balls shaped dicotyledonous fig leaf!

Sister Mary Assumpta, Norwich

WITH reference to the previous letter, I fear that Sister Mary may be somewhat underestimating the Lord’s capacity for problem solving. If He had created only monocots in the Garden of Eden, I am sure that He would have had Adam’s bollocks hanging in a straight line behind his charlie, so that a single thin leaf would have covered the lot from Eve’s lustful gaze.

Rev. J Pendletuum, Harwich

I CAN’T imagine why florists are allowed to sell lilies, with their male parts poking out of the flower all proud and turgid. What’s more, if you brush against them, they go off, leaving pollen stains all over your clothes, which is just the same as flower spunk. It’s high time this sort of filth was banned, or at least kept in a plain brown wrapper behind the florist’s counter where children can’t see it. I’m not a prude, but if anyone wants lilies, they should have to ask for them discreetly, like farmyard pornography or scat.

Audrey Harbinger, Tiverton

MY HUSBAND uses the grass clippings off our lawn to brew up ‘grass tea’, which he glugs down by the mugful all day. He says he likes the flavour, but I think it tastes horrible, not least because he never cleans up after our eight dogs before he gets the mower out.

Mrs Poppins, Henge