Grey, deeply forbidding, an inch thick, and two years in the making...it lay like a tombstone before the bemused Press corps.

Grandiosely entitled, the Commission on Competitiveness, the thingummy marked the collective wisdom of Bermuda's top brains, we were told.

It was also a mind-boggling monument to bureaucracy.

"It is probably the most un-user-friendly document ever produced by a Government,'' a functionary drily observed at the Press conference.

One wag also suggested a competition to guess the weight of this most weighty tome.

But these weren't the only things that bothered some of the assembled scribes.

More puzzling by a long way was the announcement that about 41 percent of the report's ideas on boosting Bermuda's competitiveness had already been -- or were being -- put in place.

And that was not all.

It was then announced all the proposals in a companion document -- by the Task Force on Employment -- had already been implemented or were, at least, under consideration.

Dare one whisper it, but could the whole two-year exercise have been a complete waste of time? Or, to put it another way, could it have been an example of the old political trick -- appearing to do a lot, without doing anything? Or, is this just a case of the Press being too cynical by half? *** Viewers channel-hopping to the cable television Travel Channel who were watching at 2 a.m. late last week might have enjoyed a programme entitled "The Perfect Trip''.

Its subject was Bermuda, with an emphasis on the many services of the Southampton Princess.

One reporter and night-owl caught half the programme, and was stunned to see a man who looked and sounded exactly like former National Trust director Mr.

William S. Zuill introduced as "George Zuill.'' Great heavens, thought the hack, perhaps William has a twin who is equally interested in cultural heritage.

Matters worsened when the West End golf course was referred to as "Port Royale,'' and viewers were informed that Bermuda has more golf courses than any country in the world.

Newspaper reporters are often unfairly accused of never letting the facts get in the way of a good story. Perhaps "The Perfect Trip'', so obviously imperfect, was produced by a former newsman.

*** Art imitates life is one of the enduring expressions of the theatre world. And in the run-up to last night's opening of the musical Joan of Arc at the Daylesford Theatre, it appeared to cast members that that was the case with Ms Louise Foister of the Mid-Ocean News.

Ms Foister, wife of musical's writer/lyricist Warren Cabral, worked late in recent nights knitting the "chain mail'' helmets to be worn by cast members.

To some, sitting below the "flaming'' stack of wood where the French heroine is burned at the stake, she seemed the incarnation of Madame DeFarge.

Madame DeFarge was a Charles Dickens' character representing women of revolutionary France who busily knitted as they daily watched the executions of nobles.