Thursday, January the 6th, 2005

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The Mincing Corsair

Many moons have passed since we last received a letter of complaint from Dr Ruth Pastry, but she has at last been stirred into action. The following email arrived the other day:

Dear Mr Key : I was disturbed to note, in your item headed Petrochemical Shiver-Me-Timbers Conclave (20th December 2004), that you unthinkingly preceded the word corsair with bloodthirsty. This is not only a cliché, but also panders to the stereotype of corsairs as violent maniacs who careen around the decks of sailing ships off the Barbary Coast with gleaming cutlasses clenched between their equally gleaming teeth. I have met many corsairs in my time, and not one of them bears any resemblance to this nonsensical image. Indeed, the corsair with whom I was best acquainted, in that he was my fiancé for a few months in the early 1970s, was a gentle soul named Federico Dellapiccola de Grunwald, who spoke with a pronounced lisp and whose usual form of locomotion, when he wasn't prancing, was to mince. I do not think he had ever been near a cutlass in his life. Much of his time, whenever he was absent from his buccaneering privateer ship, was spent raising rhododendrons and dahlias, holding raffles in aid of the local orphanage, and gambolling o'er green fields with puppies and flopsy-tailed bunny rabbits. Next time you write about corsairs, please be more accurate. Yours fuming, Ruth Pastry.