Telegraphing The Age

A genuinely sad story, this.

NATALIE Wood's body lay for up to eight years in the corner of an upstairs bedroom of her inner-city terrace.

Weeds and cobwebs crept over the rooms and, by the time police forced their way into the house in Surry Hills, Sydney, this week, only Ms Wood's bones remained among the dusty furniture.

When I read these stories of some poor old soul whose passing was not only unlamented but actually unnoticed it always saddens me. What a cold and lonely world they lived in that there was nobody to miss them, nobody to worry that they hadn't been about for a day or two and maybe someone should check in on them. And to lie alone and dead for years, as Natalie Wood did, overlooked by the handful who check at the property and without being discovered even when the pension payments had gone uncollected for so long that they simply stopped paying them, until finally there's some need to communicate and someone comes looking far, far too late... desperately sad. There's just no other way of putting it.

So I wouldn't want anyone to think that I'm mocking Natalie Wood or making light of this story in any way when I draw your attention to another piece of lousy subbing in a mainstream paper (my bold).

Described as a recluse, the elderly woman had no children and had not spoken to her estranged late husband for around half a century.

Yes, well, I haven't spoken to my late grandfather since I was six. There's a reason for that if you think about it.

Sheesh.