ping

They were standing in broad daylight in a Brooklyn park playing the “ping pong shake,” a game in which they were to shake ping-pong balls out of an empty Kleenex box strapped to their waist.

That was the message I received out of the blue from someone called Syndicate who pinged me in July on the encrypted chat app Signal.

On Sunday night, the inboxes of the families with children at the kindergarten pinged with an email from management wanting to address a "tumultuous" few weeks.

She is also alert in the backfield and, in contrast to last week where Australia poked holes with kicks, Rowland ably fielded whatever Loughborough Lightning team-mate Helen Nelson pinged her way.

Then, just before 11am, as foreign office minister Stephen Doughty stood up in the Commons to answer an urgent question on Mandelson, my emails pinged - and Lord Mandelson was a goner.