The Barnum Effect

Rail delays after body discovered Nightmare journeys for tens of thousands of travellers. Far worse of course for the person killed and their family. My sympathies to them.

As I left my house one morning I noticed a football lodged high in the branches of my shrubbery. Nothing particularly unique about that - the boys next door are all footy mad. Then I noticed my lovely lilac tree lying on the lawn, broken at the base of the trunk. It was the juxtaposition of the two that caused my eyebrows to rise. My mind's eye played a ghostly video reconstruction of events in CSI style. Ball gets lodged in shrubbery, boy tries to gain extra height to reach said ball by climbing the lilac, only it promptly breaks under his weight, and the boy jumps clear as the tree crashes earthward.. This is pure speculation of course. It could well be that the tree came down in high winds. We had some strong winds a few days before this happened, although not between the time I last saw it standing and when I saw it felled. Did it fall or was it pushed? Needless to say, no young lads rang my bell to sheepishly admit they'd accidentally killed one of my trees. This