If the film recent were to be shot today, the song might well need modification, an additional line or two perhaps? But that can wait

At a recent programme to market a new brand of a known product, the organizers had free samples, for which there was an initial stampede that subsided only on realization that there was enough to go round. An elderly man who was also present found the goings-on amusing. When he spoke, it was to say he was surprised at the fuss. To think that people of his age were also in the stampede!

Why not?

He said he was sure not all who had come by the sample could make use of it.

Would he explain?

He did, to the effect that use of the item in question required a demonstration of reflexes which, in the case of people his age, frequently fails.

Would he elaborate?

He obliged, in the course of which he pointed out that, of whatever texture, make, brand name or color, the item required the user to rise to the occasion, but with advancing age, the effort often engenders only frustrating.

The old man's audience was amused though not all understood the full import of his intervention, laconic, as it was.

To the return to Maurice Chevalier, if he were back in Paris today in a new shoot of Gigi, he would probably be in the same costume, but the producer would almost certainly have him in a modified song:

Thank heaven for condoms What can little boys and girls do without?

Postscript The bard who is everybody's favourite could see the funny side of the things that add up to nothing. We might learn to laugh too, if we did not have to invest so much energy in obviously counter-productive engagements, hyper adversarial politicking, for instance! Ebow Daniel Community 10, Tema.