The media needs to put up its hand when it gets things wrong

MY father learned all about mistakes at a wedding. Not his own wedding. He and my mother were guests, and to keep her end up, my mother borrowed a fur stole, described by its owner as “coney”.

Coney is the term for a dead rabbit trying to let on to be more important than it was in life. Not that my mother cared what it was called. It was fur and looked posh. She didn’t know, because she’d never previously worn fur of any kind, that rabbit sheds.

Rabbit sheds so much, you’d wonder why pet bunnies don’t have comb-overs. Rabbit sheds long hairs you can see, and shorter down hairs you can’t see. Within minutes of donning anything rabbit — sorry, coney — you find yourself in your very own snow-globe, surrounded by flying fibres.