Musing in my cage about the strange deeds of the human kind, my mind settled on the Manchester attack in the light of this famous speech by Shakespeare from ‘Hamlet’. Can you blame me for not wanting to be re-classified as “human”? The quirky thing to my mind is that the perpetrator of this act was born in the land of the Bard. Admittedly the perpetrator’s parents were from abroad, but the traditions and beliefs of his adopted country seem to have completely failed to mould his character.

I wonder what influences wrought the conviction in him to carry out this act of murder? How did a tried and tested culture that has withstood onslaughts from Picts, Scots and Hitler’s Nazis produce this apparently inhuman act?

To be human or not to be human – that is the question!