These intellectual games
CAN time be reversed? At a colloquium at the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties the
other evening, the eggheads wrestled with this theoretical question.
And if time could be reversed, would the lot of humanity not be infinitely preferable
to what it is in the actual progression of time?
You'd start off in an old age home, getting stronger and more sprightly by the day.
Then you'd be sent to work, where you would kick off with the chairman giving you a
gold watch.
After many years of work and flirting with secretaries, you'd be sent to university
where you'd spend several more years relaxing, drinking beer and flirting with girl
students.
Then it would be high school – lots of sport and hero-worship by the local schoolgirls.
Then junior school – Hey, this is fun! Play, play, play! Who cares about anything?
Then the breastfeeding phase . Yum yum!
Then back in the womb. Everything laid on – food, temperature control, everything.
No problems.
Then an orgasm. Oh boy!
Sigh! But time runs inexorably in the opposite direction. These intellectual games
have their limitations.
Dogs?
A REPORT in our sister newspaper, the Daily News, quotes a relative saying
Malvern centenarian Jean Farnham loves "dogs as well as Kentucky Fried Chicken
and fish and chips."
I absolutely refuse to believe that our wonderful centenarian Jean Farnham eats dogs.
Churchill
OVERSEAS TV has been running retrospectives to mark the 50th
death and state funeral – the first ever afforded a commoner in Britain - of wartime
leader Winston Churchill.
That this should happen at such a distance in time, and in a world that is very different
from the one in which he loomed so large, is remarkable. Perhaps it's the anecdotes
that have partly kept Churchill's memory alive among a generation who don't
remember World War II.
Famous among those are the exchanges with Lady Astor (who was politically on
Churchill's side but not in much else). The first was supposedly in the lobbies of
parliament, the second at Blenheim Castle, where Churchill and Lady Astor were both
guests and became involved in a squabble; the third was by post.
Lady Astor: "Mr Churchill, you're drunk!"
Churchill: "And you, madam, are ugly. But I shall be sober in the morning."
Then:
Lady Astor: "If I were you wife, I would poison your coffee!"
Churchill: "And if I were your husband I would drink my coffee!"
Then Lady Astor's sizzler after Churchill replied accepting an invitation to her
"stupid" masquerade ball, asking advice on a costume in which he would not be
recognised.
"Why don't you arrive sober, Prime Minister?"
Touche!
Yes, Churchill was quite a fellow. His private secretaries would take from him
dictation on matters of state in the early mornings before breakfast as he lay back in
bed in striped pyjamas, a pet budgie perched on his head.
That was style. There's nobody quite like him today.
Idiomatic
BUMPER sticker: "Float like a butterfly ... sting like a snotklap!"
Tailpiece
IT"S the Battle of Midway in World War II. The US and Japanese fleets are closing on
each other.
An American aviator is about to take off from his aircraft carrier. The captain says to
him: "Good luck, McGinty! And this time be more careful with your navigation."
McGinty and his flight take off. He loses the other aircraft in thick cloud. Then the
cloud clears and there below him he sees the Japanese fleet – aircraft carriers,
battleships, the lot.
He dives and makes a pass over a battleship, machineguns strafing. He releases
a bomb and it goes right down the ship's funnel. As he wheels, he sees the whole
vessel explode.
Next he's skimming at wavetop level toward an aircraft carrier. He fires a torpedo
and, as he climbs to clear the ship's superstructure, the vessel explodes in a giant
fireball.
He despatches another battleship and two destroyers. But by now he's running
low on fuel. He heads back to his own carrier fleet. He lands, swaggers up to the
captain, salutes and says: "Wa-a-a-al, whaddaya think of that, Cap'n, sir?"
Captain: "Velly funny, Amellican pig!"
Last word
I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me
happy.
J D Salinger
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