Don't count your omelettes until you've got them cracked

DO YOU know to which linguistic institute they deliver up to 100 eggs every day? Of which all are thrown away?

Give up? I'll tell you. It's to the Proverb Research Centre.

'Oh, hold on a minute, not thrown away]' says Adrian Wardour-Street, director of the institute. 'They're all used in research. Vital research. Thrown away, perhaps, but thrown away fruitfully.'

How can you throw 100 eggs away fruitfully?

'Well, at the moment we are testing the proverb that says you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. It's the sort of thing people say every day. But have they ever tried? People say these kinds of things all the time without thinking whether they are true, or even what is meant by them - and that's what we're here for.'

'But do most proverbs stand up?' we asked.

'Some,' said Adrian. 'A lot of sense in some of them. See the kennel yard over there?'

We did. It was full of rather decrepit dogs lying lazily about.

'We've spent months trying to teach these old dogs new tricks, but our failure rate has been 100 per cent, I'm glad to say.'

'Not quite 100 per cent,' said a girl in gumboots, who was trying to get a dog to stand up to eat a biscuit. It lay and looked, without interest. 'We did get one spaniel to learn to roll over on its back on the command 'Fetch'. Still, it's not a lot to show for a year.'

'We'll be winding that programme up next week unless anything else turns up,' said Adrian, leading us indoors. 'Now, smells like omelette time.'

It certainly did. From a kitchen area where people in chefs' hats hurried to and fro, there came the delicious smell of cooking eggs. The sight was not quite so appetising. Everywhere lay piles of broken eggshells, scattered white of eggs, broken yolks . . .

'You can make an omelette without breaking an egg if you blow it out through a hole in the shell,' said Adrian, 'and you can also make one by chucking the whole egg in and using the shell.'

'Ugh. Doesn't that taste a bit . . . gritty?'

'Well, one man's meat is another man's poison,' shrugged Adrian, 'as I'll show you when we get to the meat and poison room, where, incidentally, we have some of our bravest volunteers. Or used to, anyway. Oh, before we go, that's our advanced egg research section through there.'

He pointed to six old ladies sitting in a room, doing undignified things to a pile of eggs.

'We're trying to combine two proverbs to see if you can make an omelette by teaching your granny to suck eggs,' he whispered. 'So far, all we've got is an unholy mess. Still, mustn't cry over spilt eggs.'

'Don't you mean . . . ?' we said, but he was striding on.

'Have you specifically proved or disproved any proverbs yet?' we said, catching him up.

'Oh, yes,' he said. 'We took an easy one to start with. It's a long road that has no turning.'

'And?'

'Absolutely wrong. ALL long roads have turnings. It's only short roads that have no bends in them. So, it's a SHORT road that has no turning.'

'Is a bird in the hand worth two in the bush?'

'As a meaningless proverb, it's hardly worth testing,' said Adrian. 'I think the last word on that was said by the man who wrote, 'A bird in the hand makes it very difficult to blow the nose'.'

'Gosh. Who wrote that?'

'Someone in Mad magazine,' said Adrian vaguely. 'But it's out of copyright now. Along with what is possibly the greatest rewritten proverb of modern times.'

'Being . . . ?'

' 'Fools rush in and get the best seats.' '