"There are two reasons for being on the outside lane, as any seasoned athlete knows. The first is because someone else is blocking your way, and you can’t move into the inside lane, which is where you want to be. The second is because it is the best place from which to launch the final sprint. You bide your time, you wait for an opening, and then you strike."Sorry, old son, but the only time you run in the outside lane in an athletics stadium is when you have been allocated that lane to run in.
"By opting for Scotstoun Leisure Centre in Glasgow as the venue for his eagerly awaited statement, Mr Brown was not only surrounding himself with symbols of competition and achievement, he was drowning us in metaphors."No, he wasn't. Magnus, you're the only one drowning in metaphors and you're doing it to yourself.
"He talked to fencers, who lunge at their opponents, ping-pong players, who send small projectiles back and forwards at each other, and he conversed deeply with Sir Steve Redgrave, who trained for years before he became an Olympic champion – five times over. He stood in front of, but modestly did not mount, the victory rostrum, and he walked across the exact spot where the baton is passed, and sometimes dropped, in the 400m relay."Do you mean the finishing line, Magnus? For that is where the 400m relay baton is passed. If so, why not say that? Or would that destroy a rather clumsy metaphor?
Stick to opera, Magnus. There you're on safer ground...
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