Monday 20 December 2010

Guardian reader mystified by football report simile


The Guardian in its Open Door column today runs emails from readers taking some of their journalists to tasks.

I liked this one best: "Monday's writeup of the Reading v Burnley FA Cup tie on Saturday said that the first half had 'all the fervour of deck quoits on the Marie Celeste'. I suppose this makes no difference to the account, but the ship was the Mary Celeste. (I'm not sure about the point of the simile, either. After the crew disappeared there was no one to play quoits; before then a game would have been like any other game of deck quoits, except she wasn't the sort of ship you play quoits on.)"

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