Chips! Chips!
SCHOOL dormitory violence broke out all over the world a couple of days ago as hundreds of people in various cities celebrated International Pillow Fight Day.
Feathers flew in Washington, South Beach (Florida), Paris, Madrid, Lausanne, Brussels, Buenos Aires and Edinburgh. The combatants were mainly unknown to one another. But anyone carrying a pillow was fair game and would be set upon. Tourists looked on astonished as the battles raged in a blizzard of white feathers until the pillows were broken and empty. Nobody won, nobody lost. It just happened.
Most of us will have been unaware of any such event as International Pillow Fight Day. In fact it was organised by what is known as a "flash mob" - a group of people who use the internet, via Facebook and a main website, to organise events such as this. They tell people where and when to meet in different cities about the world.
Stand by for wet towel flipping in Red Square and Trafalgar Square; orange peel catapult fights in Peking, Pretoria and Istanbul; spinning tops and marbles in every world capital of note; hopscotch, rounders and bok-bok.
This is the age of the internet and the prep school dorms are on the march.
Downside
THE ABOVE is all innocent fun, of course. Just as long as no flash mob starts using the internet to organise gatherings with a different agenda, such as where they put ballbearings in the pillowcases and go on the rampage. Oh, brave new world!
Monkey cop
THAI police have put a monkey into uniform to improve relations with the public. The police found Santisuk – meaning "peace" – in the southern province of Yaha with a broken arm, which they treated.
A bond developed with the five-year-old macaque, so they gave him a uniform and now he helps at a police checkpoint, mainly by amusing motorists who have been stopped and diverting their irritation.
Now other Thai police units are thinking of enlisting monkeys to improve their image.
Just the other day a vervet monkey came into my kitchen and snatched a breadroll. I thought he was a member of the criminal classes, but perhaps he was just a plain-clothes detective feeling peckish.
Alec Bedser
AN ERA has ended with the death, aged 91, of Alec Bedser, England and Surrey fast-medium bowler and the last person to have captured the wicket of Donald Bradman for a duck.
Sir Alec – he was knighted in 1996 – was a prolific wicket-taker in Test and county cricket in the immediate post-war years and continued playing until 1955. As a tailender, he scored the winning runs for England to win by two wickets at Kingsmead in 1948.
Black crayon
THE BRITISH election campaign is becoming increasingly bizarre. Labour has produced a poster depicting Tory leader David Cameron perched on the bonnet of a car in the highly recognisable pose of a tough cop TV character from the 1980s. The idea, Labour explains, is to get across that Cameron wants to get back to the bad old days of Thatcherism.
Yet a vox pop in the streets reveals that ordinary people identify with that tough TV cop of the 1980s (quite apart from the fact that many voters might be yearning for a dose of Thatcherism).
And now the Tories have produced their own poster – a caricature of Gordon Brown perched on the bonnet of a jalopy, heaps of rubbish piled about the place. This is supposed to be Labour taking the country back to the 1970s.
Is this really what the discourse has come to in the cradle of modern democracy? The digital equivalent of somebody rushing around with a black crayon, putting moustaches, goatee beards and monocles on election posters?
Tailpiece
AN ACCOUNTANT is buying a parrot. The pet shop owner shows him three identical parrots on a perch.
"This one on the left is R1 000."
"Why so much?''
"It knows how to do complex audits."
"And the middle one?"
"That's R2 000. It does everything the first one can, plus it prepares financial forecasts."
"And the one on the right?"
"That's R4 000."
"So what does it do?"
"To be honest, I've never seen it do anything. But the other two call it the Senior Partner."
Last word
Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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