100 YEARS OLD AND STILL PUTTING ON STONES...

AFEW minutes after her diatribe against naming a vicious storm Doris (see last Friday’s column for details), my esteemed correspondent Lady Claymdia Featherlight-Plume rang back.

“Beachie,” she said, with her usual uncalled for familiarity, “I have a complete solution, so thought I’d ring you back to kill two birds with one stone, as it were.” The phone then went almost silent for some time and all I could hear was her heavy though thoughtful breathing. “Please go on,” I encouraged her. “Sorry,” she said, “I was thinking about that expression. How on earth does one kill two birds with one stone? Unless, of course, it’s a very big stone and the birds are huddled together.” “Good question,” I said. “I suppose,” she went on, “one could kill the first bird with a stone thrown with great energy which then bounced off and killed another. Though such a procedure sounds to me somewhat hazardous as it would be difficult to take account of the direction of the ricochet when aiming the stone.

“One would thus run the danger of the second bird being a member of a protected species which would be a terrible thing to happen, even if it was an accident.”

“Quite right,” I said. “I believe the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds takes a pretty dim view of people who kill protected species with such ricochets, even if the first bird was in season and perfectly legally stoned. On the plus side however one should remember that birds of a feather tend to flock together, so there is probably a high chance of the second bird being of the same species as the first.”

“There’s still a chance of the second kill being illegal,” she said. “On the whole, I think I would advise against even trying to kill two birds with one stone. Unless, of course, one retrieves the stone after it has done its job and throws it again. Though then one could argue that it is not the same stone as it was before, already having a record of bird killing. As the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus pointed out, one cannot step into the same river twice, for the second time one tries to do so, it is not the same river by virtue of its having been stepped it, and the stepper has also been changed by the experience. It’s the same with killing birds with stones, I imagine.”

“One certainly cannot kill the same bird twice with one stone,” I said.

“It seems to me that using two stones to kill two birds would be far more sensible,” Lady C advised. “After all, stones are not exactly in short supply. It seems to me to be inordinately miserly to try to conserve them in one’s bird-killing endeavours.”

“I’m sure the Union of Stone Suppliers, Throwers and Merchants would agree with you on that one,” I said. “We have many wonderful stones on our beaches on which a lucrative post-Brexit export industry could be based. But what does all this have to do with storms named Doris?” “I was coming to that,” Lady C said. “Could you come to it tomorrow?” I asked. “I’m short of space today.” And I am delighted to say that she agreed.