So, if it’s 23 July, is it the 386th anniversary of the ‘casting of the stool’, when someone chucked said item of furniture at the Dean of St. Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh, to protest at Archbish. of Cant. William Laud’s religious reforms?
Well, yes, but it would — let’s be honest, here — be more entertaining if it had been another variety of stool and didn’t involve quite so much detail about 17th century religious squabbles.
We could mark the 22nd anniversary of the founding of the New Hampshire Free State Project, which is very entertaining, because libertarians are, of course, very good at doing without laws and social rules… until they need state apparatus to protect them from bears — but that has already been very well written up, so I’m not sure how much I can add, especially given this succinct summary:
There was a riot at an ale house in Fleet Street 307 years ago between people celebrating the new Hanoverian monarchy and some Jacobites, but again: lots of involved history about Queen Anne and the like.
So instead, let’s celebrate one of those mistakes that newspapers make when they put dummy copy in and forget to take it out before they go to press, which was reported by the BBC on this day in 2004.
Tragically, that seems to be the highest resolution image available, but it is legible (just), and it did kick off an enormous row in which a lot of people got very cross — so angry, in fact, that the editor lost his job — which is only fair, because it is very wrong to mock people for their hobbies, especially if they take them extremely seriously
[sniggers behind hand]
It’s not funny, you see. Not funny at all. St. Ronan’s Games and Cleikum Ceremonies were instituted in 1827, and are “the Border Festival unique to Innerleithen”, and have taken place every year “(with the exception of periods of global conflict)”.
It’s the bit in brackets that does it for me. William McGonagall level of detail. Beautiful.
If, for example, one of the organisers said, very po-faced, that the entire ten days of sport and jigging about had been ruined by one picture caption in a local paper, that would not be a laughing matter. In. The. Slightest.
Top marks, by the way, to the journalist who chose to end that report with the following paragraph, which only underlines how serious and important the proceedings were:
The gaffe was part of a noble tradition, of course, which includes the councillor at a fête who didn’t realise his mic was on saying of a children’s motorcycle display team:
Oh no, they’re not doing this again — get them off. They’re boring. They’re crap
…and
In last week’s issue, a picture caption listed some unusual gourmet dishes enjoyed at a Westwood Library party… Mai Thai Finn was in the center of the photo. We incorrectly listed her name as one of the items on the menu
…and this joyous thing which pops up occasionally and never fails to amuse (and is basically my job description):
…and surely the pinnacle of the genre (recently, anyway — even though it is emblematic of the decline of local newspapers, which is bad for democracy) from the Cambridge News:
(The missing headline, for the benefit of the curious, should have read “£2m for ‘sex lair’ school”. Oh, I say.)
