11. Red Riding Hood ♫

Red Riding Hood entered the cottage and said, “Grandma, I have brought you some fat-free, sodium-free snacks to salute you in your role of a wise and nurturing matriarch.”

From the bed, the wolf said softly, “Come closer, child, so that I might see you.”

Red Riding Hood said, “Oh, I forgot you are as optically challenged as a bat. Grandma, what big eyes you have!”

“They have seen much, and forgiven much, my dear.”

“Grandma, what a big nose you – only relatively, of course, and certainly attractive in its own way.”

“It has smelled much, and forgiven much, my dear.”

“Grandma, what big teeth you have!”

The wolf said, “I am happy with who I am and what I am, OK,” and leaped out of bed. He grabbed Red Riding Hood in his claws, intent on devouring her. Red Riding Hood screamed, not out of alarm at the wolf’s apparent tendency towards cross-dressing, but because of his witful invasion of her personal space.

12. Local News ♫

Near thing at Ladram

A pleasant Sunday outing in the spring sunshine almost turned to tragedy for two Harpole families at Ladram beach last weekend.

The children in the party had pleaded to be allowed to explore an adjacent bay together, and their parents, who were looking forward to a cup of coffee at a nearby I, had agreed that they could go, provided they promised to be back within an hour.

The four children then scampered off along the beach by the foot of the cliffs, clambered over the rocks at the end of the bay, and disappeared from sight around the headland. They failed to notice the time passing, until they realized in dismay that the tide was coming in rapidly, and hurriedly they retraced their steps along the now narrow strip of sand.

If they had been a few minutes earlier, they could still have paddled back round the headland, but already the water was too deep for them to pass. Although they tried, they could not climb the steep cliffs either, so the eldest of the four, the only one who could swim, left the others sitting on a rock, holding one another by the hand, while he attempted to swim back and raise the alarm.

The boy, 12-year-old Thomas Tailor of Manor Road, Harpole, struggled manfully in the cold water against the strong current, and twenty minutes later he succeeded in rounding the headland.

Soon after, he was able to scramble ashore in the next bay. After pausing to regain his breath, he raced to his worried parents and told his story. Luckily they managed to find the owner of a nearby motor boat, and sped off to the rescue.

They found the frightened youngsters, still holding one another’s hands, with the waves now lapping around their feet.

Thomas’s mother, Mrs. Beryl Tailor, 37, told the “Observer”.

13. Linguistic Tolerance ♫

The English language is a very much more widespread language than the world has yet seen in its history and the first thing the English-speaking people have to learn is that there are many good ways of speaking it. Everybody believes his own to be the best, an attitude that, in other spheres of life, civilization has taught us to despise. Many national misunderstandings are due to simple language differences, as even a short comparative investigation into English and American intonation will convince anybody. Many Americans are offended by the normal intonations of British English, just as Britishers are often hurt by American intonations. Much of out hasty generalization concerning the French temperament is due to the fact that French speakers use, in normal circumstances, types of intonation that are in English associated with situations that are not normal… . We are all so susceptible to the minutest details of speech behaviour, that whenever we observe the speech behaviour of others, we imagine them to be suffering from the same emotions as we should have to suffer from before we behaved as they do. And as a rule, it is the intonation that hurts; English spoken on Swedish intonation may sound petulant, on Russian intonation lugubrious, on German intonation offensive, on French intonation argumentative, on many American intonations casual or cocksure, on Danish intonation flat and somber…

This, perhaps, is the greatest danger of the spoken word; the technical details of its utterance, of little significance to the speaker, may arouse in the minds of listeners emotions far different from those that prompt it in the mind of the speaker.