Racqueteering Inquisitive interviewer Shorten Humourless chats to innovative inventor Simon Sideways about his latest research projects. SH: So, Simon, you’re known as the clever clogs of lateral thinking and...
Auntie Scarlett is quite fussy about some things she buys and couldn’t care less about others. This sometimes creates a kind of anarchy in the typical retail shop. Her obsessiveness may cause her to make a huge effort to...
FOOD & DRINK We all love adding extra ingredients to what we eat, drink, use or make until it is “just right” like Goldilocks’ porridge. Adding milk and sugar to coffee? Fine, whatever tickles your taste buds. How about...
“On the one hand we remark the bold carriage and mental vigour of a man attired in a new suit of clothes; on the other hand we note the melancholy features of him who is conscious of a posterior patch, or the haunted face of...
We were enjoying our treat of scones with jam and cream at the nursery cafe. Just to paint the picture accurately, this was a plant nursery, not a child nursery or an artificial intelligence startup nursery. So there we were...
Everyone has some sort of general perspective on the world, be it gloom, doom and kaboom or sugar and spice and all things nice. It all depends on who you ask. So I trolled around for an interesting bunch of people and I...
At some stage in the Covid restriction era, people in face to face meetings were all encouraged to sit as far away as possible from one another, like cockroaches scattering when someone turns on the light. This was helpful for...
“Shorten” said my GP Dr Vigor, “there’s no way around it. You’ll just have to do more exercise”. “But I loathe exercise, I detest it” I said, trying to drive the point home so forcefully that he...
A Shorten Humorless lunchtime interview with Mr Cryptic, a well known business tycoon famous for his economical use of food, money and words. SH: Welcome Mr Cryptic. I’d like to ask you a few questions about how you...
Our gas heater has an important role in winter in keeping us from freezing to death as the temperature plunges toward zero. But it has an undocumented function that’s not in the user manual: the death rattle. Turn it off and it...
