Ready, Steady, Charity - 17

Siva's words - Innocent (as in smoothie), ceiling, googly

Ammani's take


You cannot make up such stories. This happened for real. At a party a while ago, my friend Jem was trying to explain to his friend Francois what a googly is. It's the opposite of a leg break, said Jem to his uncomprehending listener, it spins from offside to leg. Francois, the cricket novice, failed to grasp any of it and ended up sighing a lot, shrugging his shoulders and rolling his eyes towards the ceiling.

A googly, persisted Jem, can also be achieved by bowling the ball as a conventional leg break, but spinning the ball further with the fingers just before it is released. And to illustrate his point, Jem grabbed a bottle of Innocent smoothie which had been left on the table and spun it around deftly. The slippery bottle escaped Jem's grasp and landed smack on someone's face. The poor girl had to be rushed to the hospital where she had to endure five stitches on her forehead. We still tease Jem about it. He proclaims he was innocent. We know it was wicked googly. Especially since he ended up marrying the girl some months later.

Ammani's take 2

Why isn't it called fruit juice anymore, wondered Andy as he sipped from a carton of Innocent smoothie. Andy had just been made redundant from his company the previous week and had broken up with his girlfriend only a few weeks earlier. Feeling freshly wounded, he demanded an explanation for all that was unacceptable with the world. What was wrong with fruit juice that they changed it to smoothie? he asked out aloud. First it was ballpark figure, then came 24x7 and now smoothie! Andy felt a large yankee conspiracy was being played out to unsettle him. He got up from his sofa and stretched towards the ceiling. Then having nothing much to do, he slumped back into the sofa and turned on the telly. Warne was bowling the ball of the century. A googly that neatly displaced Flintoff's bails. They maim our language and beat us at our own game!, Andy screamed. These bloody foreigners, he swore aiming the remote at the screen.