Breakfast lumps

YOUR long-suffering readers are subjected to daily indignities over their breakfast. We have to splutter into our coffee as we read of Trump’s latest idiocies. We choke over our toast as we read reports of the SABC Board’s shenanigans, at our taxpaying expense.

We wash it all down with dismal reports on the low levels of our dams, as water restrictions turn our carefully cultivated gardens into dust bowls.

Life in the leafy suburbs can be harsh! But, for some of us, dear Editor, the most awful moments during breakfast occur as we puzzle over the daily TARGET, or 9-letter word in the Cape Times. Just since New Year, recent 9-letter words have included: LUMPINESS, SPLINTERY, and now, CANALBOAT.

These are preposterous words. They may indeed be words and adorn your cruel TARGET compilers’ lexicons, but they do not meet the simple, sane criterion of a reasonable TARGET word, which is: Would I, or have I, used that word in my spoken or written speech in the past decade?

Now come on, have you ever said the word LUMPINESS? Were you describing the unpleasant consistency of your morning porridge? Or maybe you were eating some high-fibre muesli and found it overly SPLINTERY?

Give us, the TARGET addicts and aficionados, a 9-letter word which is not an INDIGNITY nor an overly DIFFICULT task which will impede the DIGESTION of our BREAKFAST. Gilad Stern Highlands Estate