Duckbilled Platitudes

Do you get annoyed at sports commentators and their leading questions? You know: ‘Double century – pretty good score, Ian?’ or ‘’45,000, Gary – good crowd?’ What the hell else can Ian and Gary do but agree? But there’s a way to stop it: for the commentator to say, ‘Pretty good round, Clive – three holes in one?’ – and Clive to say, ‘Not really, he was crap. Went in the duck pond on the twelfth’.
Brilliant idea?

The competition as to which of the competing Phoenix serial killers – the Baseline Killer or the Serial Shooter - is ahead in the body count gets more complicated as the cops start to pin earlier, unsolved, cases on them, and to advertise in Spanish to find out if anyone in that community is missing someone they haven’t mentioned yet. And the reward has been doubled. $200,000 should fix it.

Talking about serial killers, as the number of Lebanese deaths approaches three figures, our leader seems finally to have got things in hand. Is he shuttling around the Middle East brokering cease-fires and peace deals? Well, not exactly: he is fulfilling his promise to change the copyright laws so that wealthy pop singers like Cliff Richard will not start to lose their copyrights 50 years after publication.
But not right now. First he’s off on holiday to Barbados. For security reasons, we don't know exactly where he's staying, but he usually roughs it at the sumptuous seaside home of *

A glance at the DG’s blog will explain why the posts are fewer and briefer these days. When on Rob watch 40 miles from here, we listen, and catch some sleep in a bed intended for a single bloke with a pronounced dip in the middle (the bed, not the bloke) forcing us to be rather more friendly than we would prefer to be in this hot weather. On our days off we sleep, and when not sleeping the DG is either on the phone or waiting for it to ring. We’re not complaining – it’s just so you’ll excuse us if we owe you a phone call, text, letter or other social contact.

* - Sir Cliff Richard