This column is always learning new literary tricks. We hadn't heard before of a 'mondegreen', which is something like a 'malapropism'. A phrase such as 'laid him on the green' (referring to a murdered clansmen in ancient legend, we believe) ends up as Lady Mondegreen.

A reader who went to this year's BYM is keeping track of the best ones she hears at Friends House. 'I am filled with admiration for the person who transcribes, in real time, speech to print at Yearly Meeting', she says, 'though I often find that if I fail to hear, so does the operator of the wonder machine, sometimes amusingly'. In recent years these have informed the Meeting of Young Friends being shipped together (though we were not told their destination); a referral to 'Gee sus' (Jesus?) and a 'bee ne dick tin monk' (Benedictine monk?) Thank goodness for mondegreens at BYM.