This is the kind of news we need here in the States, because I'm sure across the pond the story has displaced everything. The New York Times reporter Sarah Lyall might think people are stalking her, but she does have some refreshing Tweets that lead to informative and funny things.
Okay, the homeless Irish lawyer we are told was once a pretty high-flying guy, but who is now whacked on crack and crystal meth. So he wasn't really in his right mind--whatever that is--when he broke into the woman's apartment and was accused of wanting to put his ying-yang into something.
But it was all a mistake, as in court he told all there were no sexual intentions, he thought the woman was a giant panda. A panda defense has now entered into legal precedent. It is almost understandable. And it turns out it was to the people who found him innocent of the charges. The guy walked.
A Google search with just a few key words like Southwark and lawyer and G-string brings you no less than nine stories, right on top of your search. A sample of headlines went:
Ex-lawyer Sneaked Into Woman's Bedroom in Purple G-string While High on Meth and Thought She was a Panda
I thought woman in bed was a giant panda,' says homeless ex-lawyer dressed in fishnets and G-string who crept into bedroom
Lawyer in Fishnets and G-String Escapes Sex Conviction
The Southwark Crown Court is in London. Ms. Lyall is a New Yorker, as anyone by now knows, who spent 17 years in London covering Great Britain for the New York Times. Great Britain follows her even though she has now been back in the States for a few years. She recently wrote about Prince William and his engagement to Meghan Markle.
Obviously she knows the people in England who would be Tweeting about Desmond Moran and his outfit. It is only natural she'd want to share this with us.
Recently Ms. Lyall shared a piece she wrote for a literary magazine describing her experience with prosopagnosia, face blindness. Prosopagnosia was the subject of a recent blog posting wherein I posed the question that in 1982 when the boxer Tony Ayala crawled through a bedroom window in Houston and scared the occupants to no end, perhaps he had prosopagnosia and couldn't recognize where he was or who the occupants might be.
Turned out Tony did not have face blindness, but he did beat the trespassing rap when the charges were not pressed by the bedroom occupant. Now we have Desmond Moran whose bedroom violation offense went to court with a jury. Result was the same: he walked. He didn't try a prosopagnosia defense, but did plead for understanding when he explained he was seeing a panda in the bed, not a frightened woman.
The Mobius strip is at it again. No sooner do I riff on Ms. Lyall's prosopagnosia piece than she posts a story about a guy who dresses like a woman, shows up in a bedroom, but escapes incarceration. It's getting spooky out there.
I've been reading Ms. Lyall book, 'A Field Guide to the British, The Anglo Files,' where Ms. Lyall outlines their peculiar (to us) characteristics and further affirms we are separated by waaaay more than an ocean. Even a Venus/Mars dichotomy doesn't get close to describing the difference between us.
I just finished the first chapter titled 'Naughty Boys and Rumpy Pumpy.' Basically, Ms. Lyall asserts the English male is not very comfortable in their male body. They do not really find the company of woman to be to their liking.
She recounts a date she had that was then at the nightcap stage back in his apartment. She describes the man she met at a party as so awkward at what he thought was foreplay that she headed for the door, but not before he apparently did a Harvey Weinstein and took his thing out for her to see.
That sealed the deal and a taxi was sought as soon as she hit the street. Somehow Ms. Lyall found out that the next day the man took another American out that he met at the party, a male. The guess was he tried a woman, but it was a no-go.
Her first chapter is full of descriptions of British male sexual awkwardness. She theorizes that perhaps it starts with their private, all male boarding school education. Of course, all the Brits don't go to boarding school, but the men do seem happier when they're amongst themselves.
Obviously Ms. Lyall developed a keen sense of the Brits, because the acquittal of a guy wearing a stripper's outfit explaining he thought he was going to lie down with a panda was completely in keeping with what a jury of his peers deemed understandable behavior.
No wonder it's been 'God Save the Queen' for all these decades.
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
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