Yeast

Our youngest little monkey has gone on "nursing strike".

She has given up feeding.

I would have thought that being ten weeks old would preclude you from any sort of industrial action - but she is a Liverpool girl after all.

The original cause of the strike was a nasty little yeast infection in her mouth. After a little jaunt to our local (and absolutely fantastic) children's hospital, the infection has been quashed.

However, being a Scouser, the original event is remembered by her with feelings of anger, injustice and resentment. The pain is held dearly as a prize of embittered existence at the hands of a repressive state. Our neighbours have banded together to launch a campaign against such future infections and have demanded a full inquest as to who was to blame. A whole swathe of floral memorials have been laid outside our house. Local florists have bought new cars. Micky Starke and Jerry Marsden have staged a two-day Mersey Ferry vigil and my friend Pete Wylie has released the charity single "Mouth As Big As The Mersey".

I myself have embarked upon staging a community play called "Yeast" loosely based on the "typically scouse" characters from Carla Lane's "Bread". I hope to cast Louis Emmeric in the lead role as the down-trodden father "Tommy Boswellox" who can't get the alcoholic, middle-class, Tory doctor to stop flogging his servants and write a prescription with a steady hand.

Ani has been disseminating pamphlets to other babies and the strike action is likely to spread nationwide. Already 'dribbling pickets' have been sighted as far north as Southport and a number of direct action events involving chucked nappies and bum-stuff have occurred in the picturesque North-Wales town of Rhyl.

Our very own royal, Ricky Tomlinson, joined the hunger strike this afternoon. However, by late evening he was seen going out for chips.

This is how we actually live in Liverpool.