PUT A LID ON IT......!!!

.
Every now and then I come up with a really brilliant idea that enraptures my girlfriend. My most recent idea involved two screws. And by screws, I don’t mean prison wardens. I mean the sort of screws that most blokes keep in their toolkit.

It all began when I was happily blogging. Suddenly I heard a clashing cacophony of sound, reminiscent of the cymbals in Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, but followed by screams of rage. At first I didn’t take too much notice, because I was blogging on My Telegraph at the time, where similar eruptions are all too common.

But then I realised that the unholy din was coming from the kitchen. So I ran to investigate. She was kneeling on the floor, surrounded by a scattering of saucepan lids that had tumbled out of a lower kitchen cabinet. “HELLS BELLS!” she was yelling, as she gathered up the saucepan lids and stuffed them back into the cabinet. “I HATE THESE THINGS!”

Of course, she didn’t actually hate the saucepan lids. What she hated was the way in which they were stored; all muddled up and precariously leaning or stacked, one on top of the other. And what she really, really, hated was the chaos that usually erupted when she tried to extract the lid that she wanted from the assorted pile. Saucepan lid handles, situated as they are on the top of each lid, make storage problematic.

She looked at me. I looked at her. And I solved the problem, as you can see from the photo below. So if you are a bloke reading this, feel free to copy the idea and become a hero to the woman in your life.

And remember, there are exactly two screws required for each saucepan lid...

;-)

PS. For technical guidance, see PPS after the photo.



PPS. Insert two screws in a horizontal line on the inside of the door, set slightly less apart than the diameter of each saucepan lid. Each lid is slid down to be supported by the two protruding screw heads. I applied the same idea for two more saucepan lids on the inside of the other door on the right. Simple!!! :-)

PPPS. It's a good idea to use short screws that won't poke out through the front of the door. :-(

Dawn Chorus

There’s a big mistake that I always make

As I awake in the dawning.

I open one eye and then with a sigh

I wonder why I’m still yawning.

I know I’m awake by the noise I make

And so I fake some more sleeping.

But I don’t know why however I try

My other eye begins peeping.

I see I’m in bed asleep with my wed

But in my head I hear wheezing.

And then for my sins my darling begins

Her own loud dins and starts sneezing.

She sneezes and snores and bellows and roars

As if some wars she is winning.

So I blow my nose and tickle her toes

Inside her hose and she’s grinning.

We sigh and we moan we grunt and we groan

And then her phone begins pinging.

There is no mistake the noises we make

Bring birds awake with their singing!

:-)

Eyes and Nose

Do your eyes go a bit "iffy" after a lot of reading and writing? Mine do, and when that happens I take a short break away from my laptop screen.

But yesterday I had a bright idea. My girlfriend has an impressive collection of spectacles, including reading glasses, driving glasses, everyday glasses, diamante party glasses, and little collapsible glasses that fit into her tiny evening bags. Some of these glasses are very high-tech, with variable-focus and light-sensitive lenses. She also has some old bifocals that she keeps in reserve, but wouldn’t be seen dead in anymore. Except in a dire emergency.

So I asked her if I could try some. She was a bit reluctant at first, because my head is rather bigger than hers, and she was worried that the hinges on her favourite spectacles might not stand the strain. But she did let me try on an old set of diamante bifocal “party specs” with wonky hinges. They looked a bit effeminate, but the spectacle case had a Motif bearing the name of a bloke called Barry Humphries, which seemed reassuring.

Well, these spectacles didn’t fit particularly well around my ears, and everything looked fuzzy when I first put them on. Even worse, they immediately started to slide down to the end of my nose. But they stopped sliding when the bottom of the inverted U-shape nose frame hit the flare of my nostrils. Luckily, it was at that point that everything I could see stopped being fuzzy and came into clear focus.

Fan-dabby-dozey! I’d solved my reading problem!

And I looked cute. My girlfriend said I looked just like a proper “Edna-come-Mr Pickwick” with the spectacles balanced on the point of my nose. But I was more interested in why everything had suddenly come into focus. You see, I’d studied Physics at school, and had been taught stuff about focal length, diffraction theory and the like. I surmised it was the length of my nose that brought everything into focus.

Well, my girlfriend isn’t usually terribly interested in scientific stuff, but she seemed quite interested in the length of my nose. She whizzed off to fetch a tape measure and carefully measured the distance from the point between my eyes down to the tip of my nose. The result was exactly two inches.

“Crikey!” we yelled in unison, and dashed off in opposite directions. I spent a happy hour doing complex optical mathematics on my scientific calculator, while she went off to do some internet email and telephone research.

Even though we were in different rooms, I could vaguely hear bits of her telephone conversations. She was calling a lot of her girlfriends, and seemed to be comparing notes in a jolly sort of way. Actually, I think that the word "jolly" is a bit of an understatement, because I’m sure I heard a whole load of giggles, guffaws and the occasional shriek.

When I asked what she had discovered, she said there was a distinct correlation, and I was a factor 4. When I asked what that meant, she said it was about average, with a mischievous grin.

Hey, Ho. Women are such a puzzle, aren’t they?
:-)

There's a hole in my Knickers

Yesterday I had a major scare while putting my underpants on. I balanced on my right leg and happily threaded my left leg through the appropriate holes in the garment. Then I balanced on my left leg and started to thread my right leg through.

I had no problem getting my right foot in, but my big right toe missed the intended exit hole and snagged on the gusset. Wriggling my toe didn’t free it. Then I tried shaking my foot from side to side, but this simply aggravated the problem, and the gusset became firmly wedged between my toes.

For what seemed like an eternity, I continued to balance on one leg whilst frantically raising and lowering and shaking my right foot. It was all to no avail. I found it progressively more difficult to sustain this activity without wobbling. The wobbling turned into tottering, and the only way I could retain some semblance of balance was by hopping. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to hop backwards in the general direction of my bed, where I landed safely.

This gave me pause for reflection. I’d never experienced this particular problem before, and it occurred to me that the same thing could happen to other people, possibly with fatal consequences. And if it could happen with underpants, then it almost certainly could happen with knickers. Both males and females were equally at risk.

Knickers and underpants have similar design characteristics, in that they are mostly manufactured with three holes. The only exceptions are four-hole knickers (with split gussets) and four-hole underpants (which are called Y-fronts). It seems to me that the likelihood of snagging a toe increases in direct proportion to the number of holes.

For reasons that are beyond me, knickers and underpants are always referred to in the plural, even when we are referring to a single garment. The words “knicker” and “underpant” simply do not exist in the English language. To complicate matters further, we are obliged to refer to a single garment as a pair.

But I digress. It’s the three main holes that I want to talk about. These are the waist hole, the left leg hole, and the right leg hole. The question is – why are these holes not labelled accordingly? I know that the waist hole usually bears a label, but this typically identifies the manufacturer, the size of the garment, and some hieroglyphics that purport to be washing recommendations. The label never contains any reference to the two leg holes, no instructions for putting the garment on, and no health and safety guidance notes. Is this user-friendly? I think not.

I have done some calculations, and it appears to me that there are 12 different ways in which long-suffering users can don a standard pair of three-hole underpants or knickers. Only one of these ways is the right way, which is label inside, at the back of the waist. Yes, I know there are more than 12 options if you include permutations where both legs emerge from the same exit hole, but frankly, we can't be too silly about this.

Goodness knows how many different ways you can don a pair of split-gussets or Y-fronts. That’s four holes. I think the answer is 24. But you’d have to have a small waist and thin legs.

:-)

Health & Safety Addendum:

The safest way to don underwear is to begin whilst seated. Insert both legs. Draw garment up to knees. If garment is back-to-front, maintain grip on the waistband, lower the garment back to the floor and cross your legs so that your right foot exits the garment through the left-hand leg hole and your left foot exits through the right-hand leg hole, then draw the garment back up to the knees and untwist. If garment is seen to be inside-out, or both inside-out and back-to-front, go fetch your spectacles, taking care not to trip.

:-))

Cunning beats Brains

People with very high IQ’s are silly. I came to this controversial conclusion in my last year at college, when I spotted an advertisement in the Daily Telegraph that launched my brilliant career.

Yippee, I thought, when I read what was on offer. Oodles of dosh (I was skint), plus three months of residential training (I was homeless) together with 11 other young people who would be hand-picked from the crème de la crème of UK science graduates (I adore cream).

However, there were issues that seemed to put the prospect beyond my reach. The opportunity was in something called third-generation computing, which at the time was considered hugely wizzy and revolutionary and only for the exceptionally gifted (this was back in the early Sixties). And successful candidates would have to pass some exceptionally wizzy and revolutionary computer aptitude tests. Alas, I had no idea what a computer aptitude test involved.

Of course it was the elitist tone of the advertisement that got my gander up. I’d spent three miserable years studying Physics, being the dunce of the faculty, surrounded by very brainy tweed sports jackets and blue stockings who looked down at the prospect of any career other than teaching. How I wished I'd enrolled in the nearby Arts College; no "smart informal" attire, and the lady students were scrumptious...

But I digress. I sent in my application, and got busy finding out about computer aptitude tests. But there was no information, anywhere. My college didn’t have a computer. There was no information in the college library, nor in the public library. And I didn’t know anyone who worked with computers. I was stumped.

Then I had a cunning idea. It came to me shortly after I learnt the date and venue for my interview. The advertisement had mentioned a series of interviews stretching over several weeks. Mine was was scheduled to be in the final week. So I borrowed a tweed jacket, tie, and grey flannels from a fellow student, and started to hang out just outside the central London venue.

I struck lucky almost immediately, as I mingled with a batch of tweed-jacketed mirror images of myself emerging from their aptitude tests. “Wow – that was fun - let’s have a coffee and discuss” I suggested, pointing to a café just across the road....

In the ensuing conversation, I gleaned a lot. It seemed to me that the computer aptitude tests were startlingly similar to standard IQ tests. Next day, and for the following week, I esconsed myself in the Marylebone Public Library poring over as many IQ tests with model answers as I could lay my hands on. I came across three IQ tests with questions that were the same as the ones I had heard discussed in the café. Fan-dabby-dozey! I swotted, and learnt all the answers in the tests by rote.

To cut a long story short, I attended my interview in my borrowed gear, and my self-confidence was impressive. And just by chance, I sat two so-called “computer aptitude tests” that were identical to two of the IQ tests that I had learnt by rote. My scores were as close to 100% as I thought would be reasonable without arousing suspicion.

99.99% did the trick.

"Chance" is something one should never leave things up to, don’t you think?
:-)

December 21, 2012

The ancient Mayans built lots of pyramid-shaped temples in the Yucatan peninsula. Millions of yucky-tan tourists with sweaty temples travel to this hot-spot from far and wide to gawp in astonishment. And some, if not all, of these temples are perfectly aligned to Cosmic Phenomena.

Not to be outdone, the Canary Islands have the Pyramids of Guimar. The long sides of these pyramids follow the direction of both Solstices. I’ve been there on the Summer Solstice, and seen a double sunset – with the sun dropping behind a mountain top, after which it miraculously emerges from behind the mountain and sets a second time behind another peak. You get a bit boss-eyed watching a double sunset, and most ancient Mayan astronomers were boss-eyed.

The Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl, who sailed his Kon Tiki raft for 4300 miles from South America to the Tuamoto Islands, became convinced that the Pyramids of Guimar were a notorious watering-hole on voyages made between ancient Egypt and the Maya civilisation in the Yucatan. Thor even set up home in Tenerife to pursue his research.

This got me thinking about my apartment in Tenerife, which I bought shortly after Thor died. It is on two floors in a pyramid-shaped block, but the apartment itself is hugely bigger up than down. Sometimes I think of it as an inverse pyramid within a pyramid – reminiscent of the glass images in the Paris Louvre as seen in the film The Da Vinci Code. These images symbolise the male and the female.

Now I’m no pagan historian or astrophysicist, but this sort of stuff sends my inquisitive mind into frenzy. Could my home also be perfectly aligned to Cosmic Phenomena? What about the male-female symbolism? I immediately blew up my inflatable raft and set off to investigate.

My first port of call was Olaf, owner of the local Norwegian bar, who sent me home by taxi after two double rounds of his home-made Vodka “Thor”. Later, whilst sitting on my balcony, I observed not one, but two inverse crescent moons. Perhaps I was onto something.

But it was months later, on the night of the Winter Solstice, when my researches hit the jackpot. I’d bumped into Olaf by the beach earlier in the day and he sort of relented; he said he’d lift the ban, and would be happy to see me again in his bar to celebrate his new Buy-Two-Get-One-Free offer. Amazing how a recession changes commercial attitudes.

Later, having consumed three double rounds, I found myself back on my balcony. I can’t remember how I was transported there, but I witnessed the slow traverse of not two, but three inverse crescent moons across a night’s starred face. And I saw my girlfriend moving towards me holding huge cloudy cymbals, and I feared I had ceased to be before my pen had gleaned my teeming brain.

And now for the really horrifying bit – did you know that the ancient Mayan calendar stops on December 21, 2012, when the Mayans believed the world would end?

But I’ll be all right, because I’ve got the T-shirt. It is emblazoned with Mayan phonetic hieroglyphics which loosely translate into Armageddon Outa Here! - or something that sounds like that. Olaf gave me the T-shirt when he said goodbye.
:-)

PS. If you suspect that your home may be aligned to Cosmic Phenomena, please get in touch now. This research must continue unabated, and we have so little time.

Allegory: A Different Whisperer.

The film The Horse Whisperer got him thinking. And so did the TV series The Dog Whisperer.

It occurred to him that the respective skills displayed by Robert Redford and Cesar Milan with horses and dogs were actually a clever diversionary tactic. You see, both blokes are incredibly attractive to women.

Now he'd always wanted to be incredibly attractive to women, and his first thought was he'd join a Hunt, where he would come into contact with plenty of horses and dogs. But then he thought – why beat about the bush? Why bother with horses and dogs, when he could adopt a more direct approach, and become the world’s first Woman Whisperer?

Of course the first thing to do was to start practicing his whispering. Alone as he was at the time, in his cell, he had no distractions. He could whisper to his heart’s content. There was nothing in his immediate surroundings that remotely resembled a woman, but he made do, with his shaving brush.

Yes, he whispered into it. Slowly but surely, his whisper into the whiskers of his shaving brush became a masterpiece; the purest form of perfection, and he was ready to face womankind.

There was a period of confusion immediately after his release, after all those years of incarceration, when he was surrounded by the gutter press, all baying for an interview. But he was an innocent. He'd been proven an innocent. He was home, and free.

And sadly, he'd lost his voice. All he could do was whisper.

;-)