Your correspondent, interviewing Mr Eshkol for Granada television (and what other country in the world would let a foreign television team loose in its parliamentary lobbies, with shells falling, to speak to anyone they wanted?), is certainly convinced of Israeli moderation.
Who had ever imagined that companies like General Motors, A.I.G., Citi Bank and Lehman Brothers would fall, not to speak of scores of other medium-size companies?
Scott Stossel, in his review of "Size Matters," by Stephen S. Hall (Nov. 5), reports that two Princeton economists have found that small people not only fall short, so to speak, in other respects but are also less smart than their taller counterparts.
"God, I wish it was live," he guffawed, as Kevin fell about, unable to speak.
My mother, who lived through the era of the USSR, loves to describe how when communism fell, Lithuanians refused to speak Russian in shops and businesses.
Estate agents are falling over themselves to speak to potential buyers, and one sent me this pitch yesterday, explaining why I should buy now: "I understand your concerns.
No, the other one, he was told, prompting the following, genuinely bemused, reply: "What's so funny about Wayne Kerr?" The Australian press was a bit quicker on the uptake and, in the first few days following Ireland's arrival in Sydney, journalists were, er, falling over themselves to speak to the 24-year-old prop.
"It fell to Ed Miliband to speak for our nation," he said.
"But to see it in real time and to see so many people on your side, so to speak, fall for it, or rationalize it . .
I think that's why so many of us, on the first day of the year, seem to intend to evolve and to change, but as the sense of renewal and the inspiration that goes with it falls away, we fall back to sleep, so to speak, and lose ourselves in mundane realities once again.
