Some headlines just stick in your mind. Like BUDGIE DIES IN FIRE, from the Bolton Chronicle. The Chronicle was the local freesheet that was pushed through our letterbox once a week back when I was living in Bolton and working in Manchester. It featured several pages of classified ads filled out with a minumum of illiterate editorial matter written by school leavers on minimum wage.
Then there was the time that I'd been speaking at a booksellers' event in Guernsey. There was a stack of local newspapers on the hotel's reception desk and I noticed, as I was checking out, that the front page story of the week was headed MORE PIGEONS FOUND KILLED.
Not found dead, but found killed. And not for the first time... clearly a pigeon serial killer was stalking the island.
For a while my favourite headline was one that I found in a microfilmed copy of a New Orleans newspaper from 1903, when I was researching the project that eventually became The Kingdom of Bones. It was a story about a tense political situation in South America and the headline was, ALARMING REPORT COMES FROM COLON.
But I think it's been replaced by this one.
Saturday, 20 February 2010
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3 comments:
After reading this, I wonder if folk in the Channel Islands know that their unconventional extracurricular activities can be sanctioned and come with a paycheque.
Hilarious stuff... to anyone following the link, be sure to read down into the comments.
Yeah, I should have mentioned something about the comments. What I can say is that it's best not to read them while trying to consume an M&S ham and cheese sandwich and a bottle of their ginger beer. Makes quite a mess...
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