THE weather has turned. The Chinese cuckoo is laying its eggs in Britain's nests all over the territory; and Chris Patten is dressing cool and casual as his campaign to win back hearts and minds moves into overdrive. But hark, what's this? No, not the cry of culculus canorus fallax, the lesser Chinese cuckoo, but the urgent whispering of Mr Patten's closest aides as they plead with him to do up his shirt.
In a notoriously buttoned-up place like Hong Kong, the sight of the Governor looking casual with the top three buttons of his shirt undone makes even the gweipor blanche. It seems this is Mr Patten's preferred style of casual dress and there isn't a lot his make-over committee has been able to do to persuade him to change it.
But, as one lady of our acquaintance put it after glimpses of Her Britannic Majesty's representative's chest were flashed across our TV screens: ''Oh yuk, does he have to?'' THE gubernatorial image is something the Government Information Service should be up to handling. But time was when Sir David Ford so despaired of the GIS team, led then as now by the amiable Irene Yau, that he was moved to set up an independent Information Co-ordinator's Office to put the spin on the really important things. Really important things such as Sir David, for instance. But then Chris Patten appeared on the scene, the IC, Mike Hanson, went to Government House and became a star in his own right - and Sir David gradually faded from view.
All good things must come to an end, however, and the IC's job is about to pass back into the hands of GIS. Kerry McGlynn, who will be replacing Mr Hanson at Government House, happens to be the motherly Mrs Yau's number two and the good lady is said to be about to be information queen bee again. But here's the rub. Mrs Yau, being a GIS person to her marrow, very apologetically says she can't confirm or deny anything until it's decided.
Maybe it's just that she's not sure she wants it to work out that way. It's a tall order, she says, for one person to run the Governor's publicity machine, the Secretariat Press Office and the Information Services Department. Mr McGlynn could after all do as he does now, which is to be her deputy in departmental management terms, but work to the needs and rhythms of Government House.
If she does take over the reins, the real question is whether she has what it takes to breathe new life into the zombies who people her empire.
Meanwhile Mrs Yau can console herself with one gratifying thought. She is still here. Sir David is not. OVER on the other side of the political tracks, we were going to bring you the exclusive story of how everyone who attended the dinner in honour of Lu Ping at the Bank of China last Monday had gone down with food poisoning. Zhou Nan, we heard, was suffering from the same bug as Mr Lu. Rivals in politics, rivals in the race for the loo.