Our teenspeak of old, in reference to some calamity that had befallen a friend or foe, was that he had been

"s**t upon from astronomical heights."

The story brought this to mind.

"If there's anyone who knows what s**t is then surely it's me," said plumber Murray Norris.

"I came home on Friday evening," he told reporters, "to find this evil-smelling brown muck splattered all over my roof and wall. I immediately guessed that it came from an aircraft toilet so I complained to the Civil Aviation Authority. They blamed the mess on a bird, yet some of the patches are three metres across.

If that's a bird it must be the largest one on the planet with a serious diarrhoea problem. My neighbours’ homes were covered too."

Bill Sommer of Wellington, New Zealand's Civil Aviation Authority charitably conceded,

"It might have been several birds acting in unison!"

Guy Dansie of the Public Health Department commented,

"It's almost impossible to tell where it's coming from but it's falling from the sky.

There's only one major source of human faeces up there, isn't there?

"Unless Jack's Beanstalk giant is still up there with a serious bowel problem," he added.

Facetiously, I thought.

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