Divination book title

[GEOFF]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Catlady (Rita Prince" <catlady at ...> wrote:
>
> --- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, KEN ADAMS <kenadams705@> wrote:
> >
> > I, like Geoff, have never heard either of these expressions.
> > I, like Geoff, live in the English west country, where JKR spent
> > much of her childhood and student years. I suspect that she
> > hadn't heard these expressions either. So the evidence leads me
> > to agree with Geoff that JKR was referring to crystal balls
> > rather than unknown idioms on another continent.

Catlady:
> While I feel certain that the author of BROKEN BALLS: WHEN FORTUNE TURN FOUL meant Crystal Balls, I also very strongly suspect that Rowling wouldn't have invented that title if she didn't intend for older readers to be reminded that 'balls' is slang for 'testicles'. Like the first reference to Aberforth being prosecuted for practising inappropriate charms on a goat, where references to bestiality are all in the reader's mind.

Geoff:
Although I have been amused by many of JKR's plays on words
such as "Diagon Alley", "Disillusion" and "Grimmauld Place", there 
are few, if any, which play on sexual double entendres. 

Bearing in mind, that the early books were read by younger folk
and I suspect that as the adult readership increased when the books 
got darker - and the original readers got older - I would stand 
by my first thought that the reference was to crystal balls, as 
they are so closely associated with fortune telling and divination.