Here's the Kicker . . .

'To punt' has a couple of different meanings, depending on which side of the ocean you're on. In America, it's something you do in (need I say it, American) football, where you toss the ball back to the kicker and he launches it across the field to the other end, buying you extra yards before you send out your defense.

As a result it's taken on a second meaning, when you decide not to address something right away and sort of waffle on it until you really can't help but get to work.

In the UK, it's a sport native of only Oxford or Cambridge, where you take a long flat boat out and steer it around using only a worthless little paddle and a long pole. The breed of punting can be distinguished by where you stand on the boat: Cambridge punters stand on the flat end, Oxford on the scooped end. Both of them tend to smack into the riverbank more often than float downstream.

Well, your correspondent has been doing a little bit of both.

It's been so long since I last posted because, as I've hinted at before, it's awfully difficult to take a break from intensive report writing to . . . do more writing. The good news is, one draft is (just about) done and I should be back to my regular schedule shortly.