Reporter’s diary

Press, 26 April 1989, Page 2

Reporter’s diary

Whistling while... LANCE Connelly whistles whether he is out on the farm, or just pottering around home. Nothing unusual about that, except that Lance, at 10 months, is a trifle young to be a siffleur. His mother, LeeAnne Nisbet, blames it all on Lance’s grandfather, John Connelly, who often takes Lance with him to the farm. At first, seeing the sheepdogs made Lance so excited he would suck his breath in and out, which created the whistle between his front two (and only) teeth. He quickly realised what made the noise and now whistles mostly when playing with his toys alone. “It actually gets on my nerves sometimes,” says his mother, “but people think it’s cute so I don’t say anything.” ... he plays OF course, 10-month-old Lance could be whistling because he knows something we don’t. His greatgrandfather is the wellknown Labour politician, Mick Connelly, and his grandfather, John Connelly, is a potential National Party candidate for Yaldhurst. His great-great-grandfather served in the Upper House. Could Lance be thinking about a third party? War on words ALTHOUGH drug-dealing and gun-toting is still a major worry in New York schools, the city’s education system is now waging war on an even more basic problem: the New York patois. A list of 20 grammatical rights and wrongs common in local speech has been drawn up. These include: “May I axe a question?” for “May I ask a question?” and “I was, like, tired, you know,” for “I was tired.” Two words, “chimley” (chimney) and “nucular” (nuclear), are so frequently used, however, that they have been ignored in the battle against a greater menace: the expression “ain’t.” Sheep sense HAVING defended ferrets last week we move to sheep. Brian Gardiner claims he knows one little bleater which seems to have organised its woolly world to suit itself. Shadow, as it is called, has lived in a neighbour’s paddock in splendid isolation this season. Brian has kept Shadow supplied with peaches, apples and pears. “He is an expert at spitting out stones,” says,

Brian, “and if he knows anyone is near he calls out and rattles the fence for attention.” Trouble came when the neighbour installed more sheep in the same paddock and then went to remove all of them, including El Pampered One. Shadow was wise to this ploy and eluded capture by running off and hiding in the trees, refusing to be driven off. “He is the fattest sheep around,” says Brian.

Sausage ploy FROM the pages of the British “Police” magazine comes the account of a recent dawn drugs raid on a Kidderminster household, when a C.I.D. officer took along a string of sausages to protect himself against a notoriously vicious Rottweiler. When P.C. “Luther” Blisset burst into the bedroom, the suspect was asleep with his

naked wife, who woke up, grabbed her dog by its collar and ordered “Kill!” Blisset chucked a sausage at the dog, missed and hit the woman, who hurled it back, yelling, “Stop throwing sausages at me, you pervert!” The suspect was so shocked when he woke from a drugged stupor that it was easy to arrest him. The wife calmed down, the dog ate the sausages and the police station went without breakfast.

Strings attached GREAT Conservationists of Our Time, No. 2: An anonymous caller said she has saved the strings which wrap "The Press” for years. Unlike Mrs Pat McKie, who knits the string, the caller simply knots hers together and when there is sufficient length, ties the tops of her rubbish bags with them. Hands up, who feels wasteful? —Jenny Setchell