Jessie Gugig, 15, said she could not believe the charges, especially against Mrs. Murphy, who was an accomplished gardener.

“They couldn’t have been spies,” she said. “Look what she did with the hydrangeas.”

If you can’t be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.

Hat tip to Dr Phillips.

Dr Phillips (whom God preserve, of New Jersey) liked this one.

Dr Boli’s other interests are eyebrow-raising, but for those you need to go to his site & follow the links.

Look at how relaxed a tomato is in its natural environment. A human does exactly what a tomato does but the tomato is in bliss because it does not need to make things up.

This wins the Hook Prize for subject line:

Open it or get constipation.

And here’s a pseudonym Thurber could have used:

Elvera Fulp.

Perhaps we could strike back.

Now that I’m off life-support, I’m writing to thank you for the green pills.

OK it works, but now my cock gets caught in my shoelaces.

Writing verse using words of two letters
Is a thing that?s not done by my betters.
But I must here have something to show -
So it is up to me to do so.

Nine two letter words! The Wordability judges deliberated long past their bedtimes: was this an actual English poem? Some said no, others didn’t hear the question. But the oldest judge pointed out that it was (a) unquestionably a poem (b) in English, even if (c) line 3 resembled something he once saw on a Serbo-Croatian desk calendar.

We do not expect to see a better entry or a wittier last line. If Dr Gillard would forward us a stamped addressed envelope his prize will be on the way.

Therewith ye ben so mery and jocounde
That at revel when I see you daunce
It is an oyntement unto my wounde,
Though ye to me ne do no dalliaunce.

The refrain of this bit of Chaucer’s ‘Rosemounde’ contains six two-letter words in a row.

Find a line of English poetry with seven.

Spatial common reasoning is strongly related to sight sense. Many times we reference our position with what we see, although we don?t be exactly in that place. ? We call this the source-target problem and we have added a new spatial relationship, hasNiceViewsOf, to model this problem.

Geoconcepts Ontology v1.2 & v1.2_swrl

A Song

Would’st thou once view Celia’s charms
Freed from fear of Love’s alarms?
Then be thou source, and target she,
NiceViewsOf her will ravish thee.

Tho’ thou be near, and she be far yet
Cupid’s dart will find its target
Which, striking true, then hath such force,
It turneth target into source.

What’s reason then? what then is sight?
When source and target merge by night.
Let spatial reasoning others chuse -
This far excels the Nicest Views.

The Hasidic Jew nods to the woman in hijab and the exchange of swings takes place, with none of the coiled resentment seen in American playgrounds.

The secret, apparently, is ?the bedrock British custom of queuing’. Of course: queues are as British as toad-in-the-hole.

So it comes as a surprise to learn that, in 1762, orderly lines were unknown. You could get seriously injured just trying to get into Drury Lane Theatre. The entertainment began at six, but if you wanted a seat you (or your servant) had to be there, muscled up, when the doors opened at four sharp.

Somewhere, sometime, the Brits learned how to queue. P. J. O’Rourke, in a piece on Gulf War II, says that the Iraqis haven’t got there yet. He describes the chaos that resulted from an attempt to distribute food from the back of a truck and reflects that the ‘happier parts of the world have capacities for self-organisation so fundamental and obvious that they appear to be the pillars of civilisation. But here – on the road to Ur, in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, where civilisation has obtained for five thousand years ? nothing was supporting the roof.’ (Peace Kills)

End the occupation. What Iraq needs is a battalion of little old ladies from Stoke Newington with umbrellas and parcels to post.