Monday, 26 December 2011


Now then, now then, yuletiders and yuletidees, how's abouts this T-shirt (see design below) as a natty Christmas gift? 
See this and other designs at www.cafepress.co.uk/tinybangtheories



Thursday, 22 December 2011

Track of the Week


Check this out jazz detractors and try detracting to this. Not possible. Genius and I love it. Note also that we see for the very first time a trumpeter (scroll to 11.00 minutes in) substituting his instrument for a salad cream dispenser. I think he would have learnt from this experiment that you should wash out the dispenser before playing it - you'll see him lick his lips and pull back from the dispenser, having consumed a quantity of salad cream you might baulk at had you applied it to a bunch of lettuce.

Thursday, 15 December 2011

Best in Peston





Robert Peston, economist, sage, ponderer of the demise of the West. Here he is at his most profound.

Monday, 12 December 2011

Shopping Chopin


Chopin is merely Lieutenant Pigeon without the lyrics. Watch the clip (above) of Lieutenant Pigeon performing ‘Mouldy Old Dough’. Then listen to Chopin Nocturne Op.9  No.2 with the Mouldy Old Dough Lyric incorporated (below). Then listen back again to Lieutenant Pigeon. Etc.

 (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Saturday, 10 December 2011

Not Seeing the MDF for the Trees

We’re all looking for the next Age. We had the Stone Age, a period of assailing animals/fauna with flint. We had the Iron Age. The Bronze Age also; followed up much later on by a Brass Age in the 1970s when horse brasses were used substantially to decorate pubs serving Watneys ale. All revolutionary ages of man profoundly marked by the adoption of a new material. A lot of us, however, little realise that we are in fact sitting in an Age at this very moment. The MDF Age.
It’s been very difficult to pinpoint exactly when the Iron Age or the Bronze Age started. But we do know that the MDF Age began precisely around 7pm on the 4th September 1996 with the first episode of ‘Changing Rooms’.  The DIY show, marked the first time we had seen a clone of Frances de la Tour from ‘Rising Damp’ (right). (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Tuesday, 6 December 2011

Track of the Week


App e-Christmas

The most popular expressions at Christmas have to be ‘Season’s Greetings’, ‘Merry Christmas’ and ‘I’m just going to get all my presents on Amazon this year.’
The latter is a bloke solution to Christmas shopping whether it’s applied to not being arsed or getting everything cheaper. That blokey attitude goes all the way back to the Three Wise Men. Namely, just buy anything remotely in the area of what might be acceptable, around the theme of a package with something in it. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)


Sunday, 27 November 2011

Gorilla Filmmaking

Gorillas in the Mist was a big Hollywood hit which centred on the true story of an American biologist campaigning against the poaching of Rwandan gorillas. And she was right to do so. Surely there is a better way of cooking them?

A pivotal scene in 'Gorillas in the Fog'.

Films can be massively expensive and risky enterprises. Sequels are less risky, perhaps, because they follow a success. So, to make the cheapest surefire blockbuster, perhaps it’s time to look at what could be done to cut the budgets on these. Enter ‘Gorillas in the Fog’. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Friday, 25 November 2011

The Tapestry Never Lies

Before photography, visual records of historical events could be covered by a tapestry. Perhaps the most celebrated, is the Bayeux Tapestry, knocked up to chronicle the shenanigans leading up to the Battle of Hastings.
Fig. 1a
Similar to photography, where it’s been possible to airbrush people from history, tapestry makers have been able to unpick people from history. But the similarities don’t stop there. The Bayeux Tapestry is a kind of haberdasher’s documentary. In one scene, we see someone doing that thing you do when you want to be hilarious and original at the same time by posing for a shot with two fingers behind somebody else’s head (fig. 1a).  (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Sunday, 20 November 2011

Nelson Mandela and Menu Apartheid

Apartheid is neither dead or buried. Those cafes that price their wares at higher Eat In prices than the Take Away are offering a platform to the patron who can laugh in the face of the Taker Away-er who doesn’t feel like he can justify forking out the extra to sit down and consume. Have those cafes not learnt anything from what happened in South Africa? About Nelson Mandela? The Spice Girls who met him and urged Mandela to never lose sight, after 27 years’ incarceration, of the struggle for girl power (see clip, below)?

The Eater In-er is in effect paying the higher tariff to rent, to linger at a property i.e. the café premises. It is perhaps the cheapest shot they can muster if they want to lord it over another claiming that technically speaking they have a very temporary and infrequent second-home every time they fork out for Eat In. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Thursday, 17 November 2011

‘A Brie Encounter’ and Other Cheesy Films

You can’t respect or trust the film recommendations of video store employees (VSEs) unless there is within the store a distinct whiff of socks. It has long been argued that there are two sides of the brain, one side used for creative thought, the other for logic… or is that the other way round? Is the other side for creativity and something else...? Anyway, we’re either good at one or the other way of thinking. Similarly, VSEs have a capacity for film dissertation over foot hygiene. One side of their brain makes poignant remarks about the use of mise en scene in the Manchurian Candidate, the other says I don’t have to wash these socks tonight; I’ve only worn them three days in a row. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Monday, 14 November 2011

Football Pimps

Football is a simple game. The club with the wealthiest backer buys the best players to buy the league title. The top football clubs have owners made wealthy on oil (Manchester City and Chelsea), steel (QPR), and interestingly, the 1970’s detective show Starsky and Hutch (Manchester United). It was the latter team’s American owner, Mr Glazer who starred in the show fighting crime in a very big cardigan (see clip).

The oligarch owners are becoming increasingly unpopular with their teams’ fans, accused of putting business interests above passion for the club. But Mr Glazer, for one, flies to Manchester at least more than never each season to watch his investment play. This is him talking to another executive in the hospitality suite: (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Thursday, 10 November 2011

Nickers of Knickers

Not so far back in history, saying you were working online meant you were a knicker thief. Now working online can still mean you’re taking off knickers but not necessarily from a clothes line and you’re a lady charging for the service at a premium telephone rate on the internet.
As far as we know the knickers removal sees the lady reunited with the garment so in this instance theft is uncorroborated. And we assume the knickers belonged to her in the first instance. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Monday, 7 November 2011

Space Mission in Car Park



The very first mission to Mars was completed in 2011, simulated in a space module parked up for 18 months in a Moscow research centre’s car park. Sceptics question the validity of the virtual voyage. But virtual is the new reality (isn’t it?).

Neil Armstrong comments: 'This mission is one small step for man, a slight shuffle for mankind.'

This was a well thought-out project, besides. Remember, the first space missions sent dogs up first to see how they liked it. Whereas, the Mars team knew that they could dispense with the preliminary canine trials because they already had good data on how dogs fare in car parks and how important it is to leave a crack in the passenger seat window. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Thursday, 3 November 2011

Steve Jobs iRP

Potential going unheeded happens a lot in human society. But there have been some notable trailblazers. Peter Stringfellow could see that ladies with big knockers would struggle to make it in areas of work such as deep sea diving.
‘By ‘eck, you’ll never sink with those buoyancy floats, loove’, he would say compassionately, and ‘What are you like swinging round a pole?’
‘You mean like being a fireman?’ the top-heavy interviewee would reply.
 ‘Like being a fireman. Aye. They need to ‘ave big chests an’ all.’ (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Sunday, 30 October 2011

Sex Pests at the Zoo

Zoos have opened themselves up to opportunistic perverts. Unwittingly, we assume. Take a look at the photo (below) and we see how voyeurs can claim that they mistook the women’s toilet for another exhibit.

 (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Thursday, 27 October 2011

Radio Telescopes A Gimmick


Yes, this is Jodrell Bank.

Probably the biggest criticism of the radio telescope is that it’s a bit gimmicky. And the telescope bit of it is way too big. Look at an example, Jodrell Bank. Look at the size of it – about 200 foot high with a satellite dish that wouldn’t even be allowed to be attached to the wall of a council flat. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)


Sunday, 23 October 2011

Civet Cat Shit Coffee and the ‘Crappuchino’

Nescafe has gone so far gifting us with instant coffee that tastes like cat’s piss. It has missed a trick in failing as yet to embrace civet cat shit. Time to shape up. It’s now quite well known that coffee beans fed to civet cats are stripped of their bitter flavours in digestion, emerging from its arse chocolatey and prized.
A consumable fresh from a cat’s arse – what could be more marketable? Nescafe need look only as far as its commercial romance from the 1980’s. Lumped together in the video clip, below, is that series (please click and play).

 (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)


Friday, 21 October 2011

Arse Gratia Artis

Those hospital patient gowns are a good halfway house garment for those with tepid convictions about becoming a fully paid up member of naturism. For the gown shows off the so-called ‘arse’ while covering up the other wobbly bits. (As a general rule of thumb, we can assume that the bits we should cover up are those that we wouldn’t want dangled in our face at mealtimes… and sometimes when we’re having a snack.)

Out of the sexualised bits, the least controversial reveal in polite society has to be the arse. Builder’s cracks are not only tolerated but a symbol of integrity. The arse crack bursts out hairily, flabbily, saying ‘you’ve called in the right man for the job’, though, on the other hand you may be imagining a talking arse. Unless you have a special kind of rapport with your builder, certainly don’t talk back to his arse, otherwise under exceptional circumstances (though it is unclear what they might be). (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Sunday, 16 October 2011

Wrestling With Your Conch Shells


Animal bullying is supposed not to be allowed. The decision was meant to put a stop to things like bear baiting, kangaroo boxing, cow tipping, teasing slugs, sticking a Chinese burn on a vole and tapping a shrew on the shoulder then turning round when it looks round like you too hadn’t a clue who had done it. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Thursday, 13 October 2011

Brazil’s Success is Pubic Knowledge

For best results, click below, listen to The Girl From Ipanema, then read on...

What do we think of when we think of Brazil? Rainforest… nuts that don’t open at Christmas… pubic topography. But it’s the latter that says most about the second home of football, what Brazil is becoming. A world leader. A world beater in genital gardening. The Brazilians looked at what was happening with pubic hair in 1970s Europe. Bikini lines were given the same attention as neglected weeds growing between paving slabs. And so the Brazilians took their inspiration from nature. Or rather what ate into it – the countless airstrips hacked out of the rainforest. Airstrips to bring in the exploiters of the Amazon’s resources. If it hadn’t been for the ravaging of the virgin rainforest and the extinction of irreplaceable fauna and flora, we may not have ever benefitted from coiffeured pubic hair. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Sunday, 9 October 2011

lawrenceofarabia@hotmail.co.ar



For best results: Activate the mesmerising strains of the Lawrence of Arabia theme by clicking on the play button (above), and reading on...

Lawrence of Arabia will go down in history as the shortest, most succinct postal address.
Back in the early 20th century, from Damascus to Medina, the conversation between workers in sorting offices across the Arabian peninsula went something like…
‘I hate this job – the Bedouin always moving around. Don’t they ever leave a forwarding address? There’s no tent number on this envelope mate.’
‘Stick it in that bag, Abdul.’
‘Which one?’
The one marked ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Monday, 3 October 2011

John Doe a No No

If you’re American and your surname is Doe, it’s kind of a jinx to name your son John. How often have we seen in the cop shows, the procedurals, a detective ask down the mortuary, ‘what you got for us, doc?’
‘Got us a John Doe’, replies the mortician pulling out a drawer from an oversized filing cabinet containing a cadaver played by an actor hoping he won’t get typecast.
‘We only want what’s best for our son’, say Mr and Mrs Doe, but surely he can aspire to something better than getting done in and a label on his big toe? There must be some John Doe’s who have died of natural causes, they say. But, Mr and Mrs Doe, when did you last see a John Doe inscription down the local cemetery? (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Saturday, 1 October 2011

A Fat-finding Mission


When it comes to talent identification in sport, fat kids are slipping through the net. Albeit a net with a gappy mesh.
We’re all familiar with the way young footballers are brought on, but are we seeing enough from the Sumo Wrestling Academies, the Darts Academies? – sporting institutions that demand porky excellence. All too often they are failing to pick up raw talent. Darts scouts, where are you? There’s overweight youth out there planting the javelin perilously close to a foot-impaling in the athletics season. The sort of thing that generally gets overlooked. But look closer, scouts, at the consistency of the javelin placements. Notice a missile accuracy over a much shorter range and notice that the thrower is a ‘brandable’ tubby.
‘You’re very good,’ the scout may say, encouragingly. ‘Come out for a pint, son’. Or he could at least offer a half, because, from an early age, it’s also about conditioning. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Sunday, 25 September 2011

‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter’ Purchasers in Denial

There still remain what can only be referred to as ‘heretics’, who believe ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter’ is butter. But it’s quite possible that their numbers are on the wane. Because we know that there is likely a tipping point about to be reached where the general populace will be more inclined to believe it’s not butter.

Somewhere, some time, some place (in summer would be nice because the flow of some this, some that would be ruined if it had happened in Autumn e.g. somewhere, some time some place in Autumn, some body…) somebody created a material that tasted very much like butter. All the signs were there that it was butter; the molecules were strangely almost identical. It tasted so similar on toast (using the same type of toast as a control). (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Friday, 23 September 2011

McDonalds – I’m Lovin’ Shit

Up until recently it has been infernally frustrating getting your microwave oven to slow cook. Things like a slow-cooked stew. They’re simply programmed to cook too fast. But the wifi modem is set to change all that. The wifi modem always looked a better bet than the conventional modem (the one noted for going ‘ooh-ee-ding-dong-ding-dong’ when it was firing up) because it can provide a cable-less internet connection to your computer. Instead, it does it by pumping out a very weak microwave signal. So what you can do is leave your wifi modem switched on all day and your stew next to it. Come back from work that evening and you’ve a slow micro-waved delicacy. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Monday, 19 September 2011

IKEA, I Saw, I Conquered

Big game hunters were the carpet fitters of yore. Before the kind of retailers we have now that suggest to the astronomically-interested that there exists a parallel universe dedicated to carpets like ‘World of Carpets’; and before Allied Carpets, even.

Big game hunters could rustle you up a tiger rug. A bit like a fishmonger, he could gut it for the customer and ask, ‘Do you want me to take the head off?’ But in most cases people would want the head on, and in the vast majority of other cases the big gamer would go out looking for his own carpet rather than selling it on. And not surprisingly – because people weren’t very satisfied with the service. The tiger would hardly ever fit the dimensions of the room and it was difficult to fit the head flush with the skirting board. And to say nothing of the hoovering. These were the days before Dyson, before he thought ‘I’ve got a tiger head to negotiate, sticking up from my carpet, but what if…?’

 (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Thursday, 15 September 2011

Time of the Month Awards

It’s about time women chose a better time of the month. At the moment they’re a choosing time when they’re feeling at their most rotten. And their most unreasonable. ‘Don’t eat so loudly’, they bark suddenly while you’re only eating something mushy like broccoli; or ‘Take your shoes off while you’re swimming’. Totally irrational.

 (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Sunday, 11 September 2011

Fitness First or Fatness First?

Fitness First, the chain of gymnasiums should get its business concept right and call itself ‘Fatness First’. After all, you’re fat before you start attending.
Fitness First has so far failed to attract a joint venture with Greggs.

(CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Friday, 9 September 2011

Platonic Dogging

A Dogging Licence would be like a cross between a dog licence and a driving licence. Issued to people who plan to drive very seldom except to attend dogging events. Learning a basic level of driving appropriate to their needs, such as reverse parking, the three-point turn… but mostly parking skills. Plus there’d be a requirement to recognise certain signs appropriate to their driving experience like ‘Have you paid and displayed?’

(CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Monday, 5 September 2011

Silence of the Organic Lambs

People who say they like people-watching either love observing the social condition or they’re cannibals. People who like to watch what they eat. People who spend a lot time following others around are either stalkers or cannibals regarded as ‘fussy eaters’.
Some cannibals are fine (and young).
We have a pretty narrow understanding of cannibals. Things haven’t been so easy for them. Cannibalism has suffered a bit from a lack of role models. And there’s really not much information out there how to get started. You could, for instance, see how you got on biting your own fingernails. But nobody really tells you this stuff. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Thursday, 1 September 2011

From Refried Beans to Used Bog Roll

Witness this, a common scene in the Mexican cantina – a man suddenly convulses and spews his food all over the terracotta tiling.
‘Jesus! Jesus! What’s wrong?’ asks his concerned wife.
‘Que?’ asks the man.
‘What’s wrong? – ‘que pasa?’ in our language… well the Spanish language. What happened with our indigenous Aztec language?’
‘That’s another issue, Conchita. Let’s deal with this one first. Waiter? Waiter, take these beans away! They’re undercooked. Tastes like they’ve only been fried once.’
The Mexicans kicked off re-using things with their refried beans. They won’t go anywhere near them if they’ve been fried only once.

(CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Sunday, 28 August 2011

Every Little Helps World Domination

For the purposes of not naming names, the following theory discusses a hypothetical supermarket chain. Let us call it, ‘Tesbury’s’.
It’s often said that stores like Tesbury’s want to control the provision of everything from Custard Creams, to Car Insurance to DNA and the human soul... and keep quite a nice display of fresh fish with ice underneath it on a table.
But why would Tesbury’s want to strive for world domination? Why, when we can do it for them? We’ve already made a start. We all do our bit taking the strain off the checkout operators by learning how to struggle with the self-service tills (see ‘Love Eggs and Self-Service’, August 2011). (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)


Thursday, 25 August 2011

Love Eggs and Self-Service

This was how the discussion went when self-service checkouts were first mooted in a supermarket executive board meeting:
‘People won’t want to serve themselves at supermarkets.’
‘They will if they heard how the girl says “Cash”.’
Which girl?’
‘The one who does all the voice-overs for the checkouts. Listen to this (light clunking sound of tape recorder button being pressed): ‘Insert cash or touch 'Pay with Card.’
 ‘Whoa! That made me feel like…’
Yeah, go on. Feel like what?’
‘Well it made me feel like I don’t know – grabbing a retail item, swiping it, making a beeping noise.’
‘See? That’s what I’m talking about.’
‘Who is that girl? She says ‘cash’, but she doesn’t just ‘say’ it…’
‘She gushes. She injects jubilation, triumph, an uplifting sense of just saying something, a word, whatever the word, doesn’t matter. Like she imagined that the word she said immediately before it was the last word she ever expected to say. Then saying ‘cash’ is this one enormous bonus.’
‘Her delivery – it’s like a, like a verbal cuddle’.
‘I like that. And there’s more. Check out how she delivers this piece on an unexpected item in the bagging area…’ (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Monday, 22 August 2011

Funerals on Public Transport

The Oyster Card is an electronic smartcard you can use to pay for journeys on London Transport. While its designers have made travelling easier for those living in the capital, they have rather overlooked the concerns of the dead. Suddenly, the deceased are left high and dry with unusable credit.
However, there are now ideas on how to address the situation. Money you may well have put aside for a hearse (what is really a specialist, ultimate taxi service) you can spend on other things like nicer casket handles, rest assured that your Oyster Card can still get you to a cemetery near a bus or London Underground route. All you need do is chat up some pallbearers about slightly altering their plans come the day. Instead of asking them to slowly hump you around lying in a box, you could ask them to escort your corpse onto a number 73, for instance, making sure you’ve left them enough for a one-way ticket’s worth on your Oyster Card. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Thursday, 18 August 2011

Playing the Track and Field


We may not be aware of it but we all know a bit of Greek. ‘Marathon’, for instance, means ‘snickers’. And we know that any word ending in ‘thlon’ means something like ‘event’. Biathlon, decathlon, pentathlon, triathlon – all multiple sports events. So, if we are in Greece and we want to invite people to a social gathering we might baulk at trying to communicate, bridging the language barrier.
‘We’re holding a little event’, we would start off shouting slowly in English, perhaps trying out a bit of pidgin sign language.
‘Eh?’ they say.
‘A thlon’ you say hopefully. ‘We’re thinking of having a thlon’.
‘Thlon, thlon’ they say, turning to each other joyfully, the penny dropping (or at time of writing, the Euro cent dropping, as it is not yet known in the present financial meltdown whether Greece will revert to their previous currency, the drachma. If it does the couple mentioned will realise in terms of the lepton dropping (100 lepta = 1 drachma)). (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Sunday, 14 August 2011

Making the Prequel of the Sequel

There’s a lot of film remakes being made. For those who might have missed them the first time. Made by directors who are unaware that you are allowed to rent the same film twice at your video store (or are we any further down the road to calling it the Blu-Ray store?).
There is though a case for keeping media productions up to date. All those films in which a character says to a distanced nearest-and-dearest, ‘Where have you been? You don’t write, you don’t call anymore’, could drop the line. Change it to something like: ‘Where have you and your avatar been? You don’t email, you don’t tweet, you don’t skype anymore’. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Friday, 12 August 2011

The Coming of Age for Baby Sweetcorn

Baby sweetcorn only really burned itself into the national conscience in Britain in the late 1990s, perhaps as late as 2003, November 17th. Around the time that the British isles became acquainted with the café latte. Applications for the infantile vegetable sprung up almost immediately. Young girls could treat their Barbie Dolls to a Barbie-size KFC meal. Instead of corn on the cob, they could use the miniaturised version, with diddy French Fries (or Monaco Fries, Monaco being a small principality of France), and a much smaller bird species than the chicken, perhaps a hummingbird. Fingernail licking good. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Sunday, 7 August 2011

Gandhi and the All-Day Breakfast

Try telling it to the youth of today and they won’t believe you – you never used to be able to order breakfast from a café in the afternoon.
Now it is possible to order a fried breakfast at specially designated cafes that proudly advertise ‘All-Day Breakfast’. So how was the Draconian curfew broken? Anyone familiar with the film ‘Gandhi’ might have drawn inspiration. Gandhi wouldn’t have put up with it, albeit in a non-violent way. He encouraged self-sufficiency among the Indian people by spinning their clothes on a spinning wheel, the charkha. The message he sent out, effectively, was: if you won’t cook my breakfast, I’ll cook it myself. Gandhi would have similarly encouraged the disenfranchised British who got up a bit late to get down the caff to take up their own frying pans. In defiance. The charkha was such a powerful symbol that its depiction later made it onto the Indian flag. Imagine the Union Jack: the Cross of St George, the Saltire of Scotland, whatever it is of Wales but not their dragon because it would have mucked up the design of the flag, and a frying pan plonked in the middle? (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Thursday, 4 August 2011

Potato Woman, Maris Piper

The odds were stacked against Maris Piper. The best chipper has to be the King Edward and there you’re competing against someone very well connected. Little potatoes – nice idea as a summer salad tuber, but you’re taking on the Establishment again. Jersey Royals. The aristocracy has almost cornered the foodstuffs market. There’s the Earl of Sandwich with his refined butties; Earl Grey who successfully combined a tea with a deodorant. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Monday, 1 August 2011

Stoat Toasties

Zoos, museums, airports. What do these locations have in common? They are all places that make us crave wanting to pay a minimum of £5.20 for a cappuccino, or £12 for a soggy panini made from bread that is the latest pioneering foray into exotic bread types by Mother’s Pride. All foodstuffs that say shut up we don’t have to be organic (see ‘Know Your Organic Paraguayan Melons’, May 2011; and ‘That’s Organic Peanuts!’, July 2011, in the blog archive for more on organic stuff) to cost this much.
In the airports, caterers are able to pass on the costs of delivery hold-ups in their snacks if they make their deliveries through the check-out desks. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Thursday, 28 July 2011

That's Organic Peanuts!

‘That’s peanuts’, we say when we’re talking about piffling amounts, drops in the ocean. Or we say ‘that’s peanuts’ if we are confirming the presence of peanuts. Or we’re making a distinction between them and chickpeas, which look a bit like peanuts (though, really, we shouldn’t because chickpeas resemble more the hazelnut). (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)

Monday, 25 July 2011

Hosepipe and Horse-pipe Bans

In rain-lashed Britain we are only two minutes away from experiencing either a drought or a flood. If you look out of your window and it’s a downpour, you can assume the hosepipe ban on watering your garden is temporarily on hold – there’s enough to go round. Maybe even enough for a flood. If it’s drizzling, the drought threat level escalates from amber to red. We’re edging into the territory of a watering can ban. If it’s sunny, something like a sponge ban. (CLICK ON 'Read more' LINK, BELOW)