busker

Pulitzer Blotter

I swear there lurks within the Bainbridge Island cop shop *the* most literate fuzz amanuensis in the land.

That November 18th 'Fountains of Fisticuffs' report was a gem and I'm thinking of adding the Blotter page of our already excellent Review to Number 2 daughter's required tutorial reading. She professes to cringe at my fluting Oxbridge tones and sonorous Miltonian phrases but I'm as a ferry foghorn compared to the anonymous PB scribe.

I mean, honestly, where outside the shortlist for the Crime Writers Association Dagger Awards are we going to find

• Reports of "fisticuffs"
• Of persons "verbally accosted", a "target of lemons"
• Nay of "flying citrus"
• Of a "mêlée" (bet you didn't know there was a circumflex accent over that first 'e')
• Of fences being "scaled" following which a "fistfight ensued".

Accosted, eh? What hath the Merriam tag-team to say of that?

ac·cost·ed, ac·cost·ing, ac·costs

1. To approach and speak to boldly or aggressively, as with a demand or request. 2. To solicit for sex. ETYMOLOGY: French accoster, from Old French, from Medieval Latin accost

(I can just picture the same scène down the Clapham nick):

B: "Evenin', George - orl rite then, mate?"

G: Can't complain ... bit of a punch-up dahn the fountains"

B: 'ang about, me old son - let's get the ledger down and do a proper report - you know how the old man likes a full blotter in the Clarion. Makes us look busy, know what I mean?

G: Well, seems like a couple of the lads from the diner got inna slanging match wiv this other geezer -"

B: ... verbally accosted ...

G: You what?

B: Relax, George, I gotta *phrase* it right ...

G: Oh, orl rite then ... anyway, there they was belting 'im wiv lemons.

B: ... airborne citrus ...

G: So *he* took a swing at them and *they* hopped over the fence and started belting *him* and by the time I turned up it was a right old barney

B: ... melée ... fistfight

G: Yeh, and but mind you spell it wiv the é acute on that second 'e' and don't forget the old circy flex ê on the *first* one

B: There's never a circumflex in bleedin' melée - hand me my Larousse ... Well, soddez cela pour une alouette, so there is. Pardonnez moi, mon sewer, I'm sure.

G: No worries, me old china - fancy a jar when you're done there?

B: Long as it isn't the Gude Arms - I got a bit brahms the other nite and the guv'nor didn't half verbally accost me."