I Am What I Eat

Given that:

a) the average sandwich weighs approximately 200g, and
b) I favour particularly unadventurous lunches,

a worrying calculation today has revealed that, in the past few years, I’ve eaten my own bodyweight in cheese and ham sarnies.

Anyone seen him lately?

“It’s Chico time!”
No it isn’t, not any more. You’ve had your fifteen minutes of richly undeserved fame. Now on your “Chico-bike”, there’s a good lad…

The Worst Getaway Car in the World

Strange article in the news yesterday about a chap who tried to jump in Benedict XVI’s popemobile during his weekly trundle around St Peter’s Square.

With a top speed of around 5mph, a gaggle of security guards in close proximity and 35,000 Catholic devotees as witnesses, I can’t help but think his choice of vehicle to car-jack was poor (still, at least he would have had an actual holy figurehead on the dashboard instead of some plastic figurine).

As if his attempt wasn’t conspicuous enough, his choice of clothing didn’t help matters, dressed, as he was, in black shorts and a lurid pink T-shirt. His Holiness probably thought he was being kidnapped by one of the kids from Fame.

Somebody Stop Him

Somebody called Mark Ronson has recently released an astonishingly bad version of “Stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before” by The Smiths. Personally, I’d like to take Mr Ronson up on his invitation, to the extent that I’d cheerfully snip his particularly untalented vocal chords with a sharp pair of scissors if the opportunity arose. Failing this, a less-favourable (though equally effective) solution would be to ram rusty cutlery in my ears in an effort to not hear him sing it again.

The cool lackadaisical voiceover on the advert for his album on telly claims it features “the vocal talents of Lily Allen”. This is a bit like claiming that Big Break features the “comedy” of Jim Davidson. It’s like trying to polish a turd with an oily rag.

Hairy Situations

There was a cure for baldness on telly the other night. Clever men in white coats with glasses as thick as glacier mints have developed a cream that stimulates the follicles into action. A couple of smears on the head and hey presto – instant hair (well, perhaps not instant, but that doesn’t make it any the less remarkable). Next week they’re tackling alchemy.

Despite sporting a hairline that, from the front resembles the swooping curves and lines of a tennis ball, I don’t think I’d be inclined to try it. I’ve gotten quite used to my hairless head and the face on the front of it that peers back at me from the mirror every morning. A more hirsute version would be unfamiliar and a bit unnerving. Also, in an effort to retain a bit of integrity, I think if I'm naturally sparsely-haired then I shouldn’t fight it, and if this means not having the cascading locks of yesteryear, then that’s just the way it’s meant to be.

Similarly, using laser surgery to correct my vision resulting in the need to no longer wear glasses doesn’t really appeal either, but for different reasons. Glasses are as much a part of my face as the mole on my cheek or the slightly protruding upper lip and an unbespectacled me would feel quite facially-naked and featureless without them. I was meant to peer at the world through a pair of strategically-milled lenses, and to be honest, I quite like wearing them as it gives a touch of personality to an otherwise fairly featureless face (apart from the mole and the slightly protruding upper lip).

Boldly Going Where No Man Has Gone Before

It’s comforting to know that when it comes to pondering the logistics of having a shit in zero gravity, Prince Phillip is just as curious as the average schoolchild.

Apparently, it's one of the most common questions asked by kids during trips to NASA, and also now, it seems, visiting dignitaries. On a recent trip to a space facility, he too wanted to know – just how do astronauts poo?

The hazards of having a dump in space are easily imaginable, as it’s not only unpleasant smells that might escape from the bathroom following a visit, (giving new meaning to the term “floater"). There’s the initial difficulty of actually staying put when you sat down - you could park yourself on the toilet, only to find, when you looked up from your newspaper, that you were in fact hovering over the bath. Upside down. Or something… Also, a traditional flush system would be unsuitable as the water would merely spray up into the air, filling the room with fragments of floating excrement. It’s a tricky problem.

Astronauts are busy people and it’s important that they’re able to concentrate on their daily business of waving to family members via satellite links and performing mid-air somersaults, without having to dodge an array of glistening logs recently crimped off by their fellow spaceman’s nipsy.

Luckily, the BBC was on-hand to provide the answer: apparently, the ‘visitor’ is strapped to a unit which provides a tight seal around the buns; a rapid flow of air is then used to whip the offending item away.

Aall liquid waste is jettisoned outside, though for some reason all solids are “compressed” and are kept on board for later disposal back on Earth. This has been the same for all missions (except, probably for those poor bastards on Apollo 13 who undoubtedly filled their spangly suits with theirs when they realised the tin-pot rocket they were in was drifting into the inky blackness of space).

An English Country Garden

Now that spring has sprung its last and summer is abundantly here, our garden is revealing all sorts of delights that just looked brown and dead when we moved into the house six months ago. One of these is a sizeable crop of poppies, leading me to assume that the previous occupants of our 1930s semi- were the head of some Wiltshire-based opium cartel.

Or maybe they just really liked red flowers.