CABINET OF CURIOSITIES (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

I am in favour of President Trump's controversial proposal to reopen Alcatraz. The 'Rock' gets a million and half tourists every year so it would be reminiscent of lunatic asylums in eighteenth century England. People paid good money to come and laugh at the loonies which (modern theory suggests) was actually beneficial to the inmates who would otherwise be sunk into eighteenth century despair.

Of course 'beneficial' is not the watchword for penal institutions but being banged up for life and having people jeering at one on a daily basis is surely the kind of deterrent even the most hardened criminal would think twice about.

[Mick Harper]

As I may have mentioned many times I often get longwinded letters from Barclay's telling me I've just earned twenty-seven pence from Amazon because somebody downloaded a Kindle version of some book of mine (and not much more if they bought a printed copy of it). Barclays spends one pound something or other on postage telling me this. And I never pay anything to Barclays so more fool them.

Today I got one envelope containing three such letters (perhaps they are learning). One was for £5.33, one was for £10.05, one was for £18.60. That, ladies and gentlemen, is real money and will pay for a trip up west, a slap-up dinner at the Cafe Royal, a tart for afters and enough left over for a night bus home.

[Mick Harper]

This new hoover reaches parts other hoovers haven't reached these many years. A pill was uncovered. It was long, white and unfamiliar. It said RDY on one side and 293 on the other. You know my motto: see a pill, take a pill. You know my motto: look before you leap. I googled RDY293 and was told it was sumatriptan from Dr Reddy's Laboratory. So down it went. What a team the three of us make. Four if you include the hoover.

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

Our kitchen boffins have been experimenting with sausage sandwiches using Bratwurst. I thought that would bring you bolt upright in your chairs.

God knows I'm not one of The Elect so I can't give you the full SP, but a well-placed source told me, "Long story short: lacks bite." Make of that what you will.

[Mick Harper]

The queue to have your photo taken outside the Rhys Ifans blue door is starting to stretch down the street. It is now a recognisable tourist attraction so... you remember those silver ticket machines London bus conductors used to have dangling from their necks via two black straps? Well, you can get them at Portobello Market. A sign attached saying £2.00 with 'voluntary charge' in small letters underneath and a grey jacket should do the job. You must say nothing to keep within the law, just walk up and down suggestively.

I reckon it will take me less than an hour to reach what our gracious government deems the limit for non-declarable earnings of a casual nature. If only they would let me earn to my full potential.

[Mick Harper]

Why couldn't my brother have been pope? That way I would have had the world's press beating a path to my door, I drop in a few discreet references to my books and skysville's the limit. But oh no, he's much too grand for that sort of thing.

[Mick Harper]

I have just solved the 'Warburton nine-pack problem'.

[Mick Harper]

Here's a ticklish matter of protocol for you. I just received a phone call from a foreign-sounding woman claiming to be from Thames Water. She wanted to know whether I was the account holder. I asked her why she was ringing but she said she couldn't tell me until I had confirmed I was the account-holder.

This led to a stand-off as we repeated our positions, until I told her she could ring back when she had got permission to tell me why she was ringing and put the phone down.

I'm not sure I did the right thing though. I can't believe scammers would use Thames Water as cover for anything. Strewth, they're a bunch of scammers to start with. Best guess: genuine, sampling opinion, reading from a script.

[Mick Harper]

You and I have been cooking rice all our lives without a care in the world, right? You boil some water, you sling in some rice, after ten minutes you sample some grains in your spoon and you sieve it out onto your plate. It's OK but it's not a patch on takeaway rice.

According to the World Service's History Hour, that's not how the rest of the world does it They use an electric rice cooker, invented in the nineteen-fifties by a Japanese engineer, a long-suffering wife and constantly shanghaied kids. I'm going to get one to see if it's as good as takeaway.

Not because I've just heard about it, and I'm always prancing off after some gewgaw or other I've just heard about, I was going to do it anyway.

[Wile E. Coyote]

If you want to improve your rice, a qtr to half teaspoon of lemon with your normal recipe will do it. The acid leaves the rice white bright and fluffy. Add a single bay leaf at the start, and you will equal or beat your takeaway.

[Mick Harper]

I will do what it says in the instructions, Wiley. Or should I say Wai-Lee?

[Wile E. Coyote]

Wise. You need to know which button to push. Let us know if you manage it.

[Mick Harper]

Talking of orientals, I found a letter in my pigeonhole from Thames Water saying I hadn't paid April's bill. (When the new 'only Thames Water ten-monthly payments except the first month is threepence different from the other months system' kicked in.) So the phone call is beginning to make sense.

In one way I'm glad my famously cash-strapped water utility is employing stern but incomprehensible women from far eastern call centres to chase up backsliders. But in another way I am faintly outraged. Swings and roundabouts. They both make me sick.

[Mick Harper]

Stop your whining, it's the daily moan

Every month I get my nicotine vape pods. They are the latest version of the standard strength of the most favoured flavour from the largest nicotine company in the world.