Voles in the news
"Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole ..." So begins Evelyn Waugh's hilarious satirical novel, Scoop.
William Boot, the shy, unworldly part-time Country Life correspondent of a Fleet Street newspaper is mistakenly sent in the 1930s to cover a war in the Horn of Africa, where he finds himself writing, with great naivety, about rather more than questing voles.
Through professional incompetence and being in absolutely the wrong place for a foreign correspondent, he ends up with the newspaper "scoop" of the title and returns to great fanfare before going back to the countryside and the drama of the life of voles and other creatures.
Scoop has always been a favourite among newspaper people and I'm sure our Splashy Fen music festival at Underberg is based on Waugh's "plashy fen". Splashy Fen was started by Peter Ferrar, once a senior man on the Star, in Johannesburg. Somehow an "S" seems to have attached itself to the name – though the meaning is exactly the same.
Back to voles. It seems these small rodents have been in serious decline in parts of Britain. But now 100 000 have been reintroduced by the National Trust to the Yorkshire Dales, in the vicinity of Malham Tarn, England's highest freshwater lake.
They will no doubt prosper. And featherfooted through the plashy fen …
Mussolini
THE war that Boot was sent to cover was in the fictional country of Ishmaelia. The book was actually based on a real war in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia), which Waugh covered for the London Daily Mail as it was invaded by Mussolini.
He was later to write a factual account of the campaign, titled Waugh in Abbysinia. In this he records sending a despatch by telegraph which, to avoid interception and possible censorship by the authorities, he wrote in Latin. It's the kind of thing that could happen in those days.
All very well, except nobody on the Daily Mail understood Latin. The message was still waiting there, unused, on his return. The popular end of Fleet Street doesn't have too many public schoolboys with Latin.
This kind of thing can be most frustrating for foreign correspondents. I once sent a press telegram from a place called Vila Luso, in the far south-east of Angola, telling the world that Jonas Savimbi, leader of the country's most effective guerilla group by far, had called a cease-fire with the Portuguese to enable general peace talks. I suppose you could call it a scoop.
I watched, after handing in my carefully composed piece, as a Portuguese telegraphist who spoke not a word of English tapped it out on a morse key, for relaying via Lisbon.
Alas, this too was waiting unused on my return a month or so later. It had a Portuguese address, a few mangled English words and the rest was gibberish.
Confusion
OVERHEARD in the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties: "I'm confused. I went out to dinner in a Chinese restaurant last night and my fortune cookie contradicts my horoscope."
Naked Trump
AMERICANS in New York and four other cities awoke the other morning to naked statues of Donald Trump standing in public places, causing great mirth – and a rush for selfies - before they were carted away by city officials.
The other cities were San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cleveland and Seattle.
Apparently made from material similar to tailors' models, the statues were the work of an activist organisation called Indecline, the sculptor being a Cleveland man known as "Ginger".
They have Donald Trump with hands clasped across a plump tummy. Sky News decorously does not take its camera lens any lower.
The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation issued a statement: "NYC Parks stands firmly against any unpermitted erection in city parks."
Eternity
READER Dave Peters, of Kloof, takes up the question of five-day Test cricket. He quotes Lord Mancroft.
"Cricket is a game invented by the English, not being a spiritual people, to give them some sort of conception of eternity."
Tailpiece
A SCOTSMAN is visiting relatives in Canada. They take him fishing. He sees a large creature in the middle distance.
"Wha's that?"
"A moose."
"A moose? I'd hate tae see yer rats!"
Last word
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.
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