Slang

My new Cantonese teacher taught me a hilarious expression today. One of those fantastic old ones that makes you sad to think that it will soon be extinct.

In Hong Kong in the olden days, people were encouraged to catch rats. After catching one you would deposit it in a 'rat box', a squarish receptacle stuck on the side of a 10ft lamp post. I suppose that the rats were then taken somewhere for incineration.

What prompted this little description?

We were looking at the newspaper and spotted a picture of Vanessa Feltz...


...with her tall new boyfriend.


Lamppost and rat box. I love it.