Mister Cheesefoot

German cops crashing through the door of a darkened apartment, drawn by complaints of the what was believed to be a decomposing body found instead "a tenant with very smelly feet, asleep in bed next to a pile of foul-smelling laundry", according to a report by Reuters.

Someone said once that you learned more about the real world by reading the tabloids than the broadsheets. The stories featured in the New York Times and the Washington Post are all about presidents and tycoons, celebrities and criminals. But if you want to look through the fourth wall into civilization's rooms, the tabloids may provide a better glimpse. In that ordinary universe people worry about their acne, lay-bys, the busted washing machine and smelly feet. And I wonder whether this German gent, who by inference is not the sort of person whose doings will be covered in the Times of London, will clip out the references to the police raid on his aparment and treasure it as his one close brush with celebrity.

"Let us not speak, for the love we bear one another—
Let us hold hands and look."
She such a very ordinary little woman;
He such a thumping crook;
But both, for a moment, little lower than the angels
In the teashop's ingle-nook.

Nothing follows.