Thursday, July 12, 2007

Will you have tea with me one day, Lynne?

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

So punctuation really does matter, even if it is only occasionally a matter of life and death.


This has to be the wittiest thing I have read for a long time ever. If the excerpt alone is such a delight to read, you can't go wrong with the rest of it. I am halfway into the book. And every page till now is filled with classic examples and wry humour.

+ Eats, Shoots & Leaves . Lynne Truss
+
And I thought of Miss Tortured Soul, her army of soldiers and Mr Harrison the thief.

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