Late Edition

These days I read only the sports section in the newspaper.

Some articles in the ‘main section’ are so irrelevant that one has to ask “Who cares about that?” .What gets my goat is Page 3 with its random assortment of people celebrating a house–warming or a birthday of some relative unknown. (Yes, I bought a goat last year – I don’t like kids much). Almost every one of these ‘celebrities’ appears uniformly sloshed with a vacant dreamy expression in their eyes. Why on earth would a newspaper want to dedicate precious space to the escapades of a privileged few?

My stand on this issue was vindicated when I spotted our former tenant on Page 3, with a name-change and all. Believe me, he is a most ordinary man leading a dreary existence. How he wormed his way in there, I do not know. This was a source of mirth to everyone at home for a couple of days.

However, I did find two relevant articles recently.

One of them involved the marriage ceremony of an eight year old girl. “Ah, you’re choosing a socially relevant theme at last”, you (my dear regular reader) might exclaim, but you are going to be disappointed. For one, the bridegroom had to be propped up on a stick to be visible. The facts that he was rather ugly, slimy, green, had webbed feet and had just been captured from a nearby pond must have added to the excitement among the wedding guests. (Again, you can believe me here, because a man in a dinosaur suit was doing the rounds during my sacred thread ceremony .The kids just went berserk and I even received a Jurassic hand-shake). The poor frog was later released into the same pond from whence he came. Last heard of, he was muttering to himself on the expediency of the whole thing and how short-lived marriage vows can be these days.

The ‘whole thing’ was an exercise to propitiate the rain gods. If I were a meteorologist, I‘d confidently predict rain in that area, and for once, get it right.


The second article I was talking about also involves something green. This time, it’s a parrot. A certain parrot has been banned from entering football grounds in England for repeatedly interrupting a league match by imitating the referee’s whistle. This meant that the players were bemused and unsure for the entire length of the game. I think the parrot just about scored the equaliser for the animal kingdom (in the context of frog above).

The moot point is, how on earth are the officials going to distinguish between this parrot and any other, considering only this one’s been shown the red card. Are other parrots allowed then? And how will they prevent the banned feathered menace simply flying in?

And what does this mean for the future of the whistle? I distinctly foresee referees running the length of the field with a parrot perched on their shoulders.
“Pieces of eight” will then be a cry that will have players quaking in their boots.