'THE Preliminary Working Committee is blue-skying,' said Cheung Man-kwong's interpreter alarmingly.
You can't blame the hard-pressed interpreter entirely. It takes a little thought to get from the Chinese metaphor 'a horse walks in the sky' to 'living in cloud cuckoo land'. And blue-skying sounded much more dramatic.
Besides, the unsung hero in the glass box did magnificently a few moments later when Mr Cheung came up with his own version of a poem by the Ming emperor Li Yu.
'Is there no end to proposals by the PWC?' asked the schoolteachers' representative lyrically.
'What threats do we have to endure?/ Last night there was a North Wind./ How does democracy fare in the full moonlight?.../ How sad one can be, come '97./ Is it a river of no return?' Roger Luk, no political ally of Mr Cheung's, but a man much given to quoting obscure poetry in Legco (often with rather less successful interpretation), positively squirmed in his seat with pleasure.
Other legislators smiled too, but not all agreed with the sentiments.