A Spectator's Notebook
a doze to find that the car was moving and that the driver's seat was empty. The engine was not running and the ignition key was not in the car. He grabbed the steering wheel and— after pursuing what the police described as an erratic course for 300 yards—brought the car to a stop on a grass verge. For this exploit he had his licence suspended for three years and was sent to prison for four months. Not unnaturally he appealed, and last week the Court of Appeal decided that he was in law `driving the car,' and dismissed his appeal with, so far as I can gather from The Times Law Report, no reluctance what- ever. The man—admittedly drunk, but drunkenness in itself is not yet an offence—had in the most alarming circumstances performed very adequately. He took control of the wheel and stopped the car without accident. For this he was sent to prison for four months. The only way, it seems, he could have escaped liability and incurred the approval of the law was to have avoided at all costs touching the steering wheel or the brake, and then lighted a cigarette. reached for his flask and hoped for the best. Then, after he had killed some children and destroyed a dog or two, he could have stepped from the car and said : 'It was not my fault, I was not driving.'
A WAITRESS in the public house at lunch-time asked me if I should like soup to begin with. 'What kind of soup?' I'asked. 'What kind!' she exclaimed; 'not any kind; just soup; ordinary
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