> And now here's Douglas Adams slamming on privets, too. Perhaps Tubba or Beasty can fill
> me in on the joke.

I'm not Tubba or Beasty, and I don't know much about privets in general, but I do know what Douglas Adams was talking about.

There's a scene in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where one of the characters, in a fit of pique, throws a Scrabble tile into the undergrowth; this seemingly harmless act sets off a chain of events resulting in the death of the character's girlfriend.
The moral of the story? Never throw the letter Q into a privet bush.

Paul