17 April 2004

Dear Mary… Q. I recently went business-class, for the first time in my life, to New Zealand and back. On the second lap of the long return journey, from LA to London, I returned to my correct seat, one of two near a window, to find a couple in their sixties standing there. They said

Here’s a modish metaphor that is dead but hasn’t stopped breeding: ‘If I had taken cannabis, I would be transparent about it,’ said Mr David Blunkett, the Home Secretary. ‘I want a transparent, non-variable law on drugs.’ And here’s another specimen caught in the verbal butterfly net of Mr Francis Radcliffe of York, who sent