The assault of the dead: a rant.

One of the disadvantages of reading on line is that sometimes headlines are cut-off in the  middle.

Not long ago, in the on line edition of the Telegraph newspaper, I saw a headline beginning:

Lord's sex assault: female fan assaulted during Test match by man using dead

Now, that such a thing has occurred is very sad indeed, and although the Lord of the Lord's Cricket Ground in London is not the Lord (as in the Almighty) but a benefactor to cricket called Mr Thomas Lord, for cricket fans Lord's is nonetheless sacred ground, and an assault of any kind is therefore doubly shocking. 

But at the same time I believed it would be unkind and ill-mannered to pry into someone else's misfortune, and so I left the report unread.

Except...a dead what?

I got on with my week, but the question kept coming back to haunt me. What might you find in Lord's that's dead?

A pigeon? 

A pot plant?

I read on line that the waiting for full membership of the MCC has a fifty to sixty year waiting list, so there are bound to be regular casualties...

No, it really wasn't something I wanted to think about.

At last, by chance, I came across the headline in full:

Lord's sex assault: female fan assaulted during Test Match by man using dead member's pass, court hears

Oh. 

And I still don't know whether discovering the full story was more of a disappointment or a relief.

Word To Use Today: lord. A lord is the man who gives you your bread. It comes from the Old English hlāford, that is, loaf-ward or loaf keeper.