98 YEARS OLD AND STILL BEGUILING YOUNG LADIES...

AYOUNG lady just rang to inform me that eBay is this month celebrating its 20th birthday. “Happy birthday,” I said, without, I must admit, a great deal of enthusiasm, and was about to put the phone down when she told me that eBay has sold enough wrist watches to line the way from Athens to Brussels when laid end to end.

“Would you be laying them,” I asked, “in a straight line from Athens to Brussels, or along roads?”

“Oh,” she said hesitantly. “I’m not sure. But I can definitely find out for you.”

“It’s just that I have looked at a map,” I said, “and it seems to me that if you take the direct route, part of it would go through the Adriatic Sea close to the coast of Montenegro. You’d have to make sure the watches you used for that section were waterproof, and there would also be the danger of damage called by the salt in the water.”

“I’m sure enough of the watches will have been waterproof,” she said.

“On the other hand,” I pointed out, “if your watches are laid along roads, there would be a strong chance of them being run over by vehicles.”

“Since 2007,” she pointed out, in what I took to be an attempt to change the subject, “eBay has sold more than 241 million pairs of shoes across the world, which is four pairs for every person in Italy.”

“Why are you selling all these shoes to the Italians?” I asked, somewhat indignantly. “The British wear shoes as well you know, and with that many we could get almost four pairs each too.”

“EBay sells a pair of ladies’ shoes every six seconds in the UK,” she said.

“That’s insane,” I said. “Why are you selling all those shoes in the UK if you then give them to the Italians?” Then, after pondering all she had said, I added: “Unless, of course, it’s the Italians doing the work laying those wrist watches from Athens to Brussels. It’s a very long way and it may be sensible to supply them all with good walking shoes. Though it still makes little sense, as the direct route from Athens to Brussels scarcely passes through Italy at all, merely brushing the edge of it somewhere north- east of Venice. In any case, it might be better if you gave some of the Italians swimming costumes instead of shoes, for laying the waterproof watches in the Adriatic.”

I sensed she was about to reply, when another thought occurred to me. “I must say,” I said, “that I still don’t understand the reason for the long line of watches from Athens to Brussels. I can see how it might have encouraged the Greeks to get to their meetings with the EU in Belgium on time but it’s a bit late for that now, and since the size of the Greek debt still leaves a definite possibility that they will be forced out of the Euro, if not the EU itself, the whole line of watches could become abandoned and pointless.”

“So will you be telling your readers all about eBay’s birthday?” she asked.

“I very much doubt it,” I said. “They’ll be far too busy buying women’s shoes and sending them to Rome to be interested anyway.”