Originally Posted by
harrymoon
(taken from todays Northerner e.mail courtesy of the Guardian)
The ideal first paragraph, we were always told on journalism training
courses, should make the reader want to read on. Here's a textbook
example from the Manchester Evening News: "A fell walker has got his
teeth back nearly a year after losing them in the Lake District."
This prompts two immediate and obvious questions: how did David Packer
lose his teeth? And how did he get them back?
You should first know that this is no ordinary set of choppers and
should be regarded quite differently from the common herd of molars
and incisors that bathe in Steradent by bedsides every night. This
was a masterpiece of dental engineering, valued at GBP450.
Packer was out for a walk in the Buttermere area of the Lake District
last March. Now read on:
"It was an awful day with the rain absolutely sheeting down. When I go
walking I normally stick some chocolate, some coffee and some brandy
in my rucksack, and we were quite close to the top when we decided to
shelter behind a boulder and have the brandy and the Mars bar. Cold
Mars bars are very hard to chew so I took my teeth out and put in my
pocket."
[Hang on a minute: how can you munch a cold, hard Mars bar without
teeth?]
Twenty minutes later, the teeth had gone and a long search proved
fruitless and toothless. But last month walkers Alan and Janice
Davidson found the teeth and advertised their find. "We were told
that Trail magazine helps reunite lost gloves with their owners, so I
thought 'Why not teeth?' I took a photo of the teeth, sent them in,
and within a day of them appearing in the magazine David Packer rang
me up. I popped them in an envelope and sent them back - it was the
only decent thing to do."
Packer commented: "It was funny to open a magazine and see a picture
of my teeth."
Fell walker loses teeth
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