CABINET OF CURIOSITIES (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

This Week's Baked Bean Shockers

1. The UK consumes more baked beans than the rest of the world combined.

2. Taste testers could not distinguish Heinz baked beans from Aldi own-brand baked beans. One costs forty pence, the other costs one pound forty. What are you playing at, Aldi? Sod off back to Germany, you don't understand our ways.

[Mick Harper]

They're running a phone-in poll in America at the moment:

[Mick Harper]

I just got a message from Medium.com telling me one of my stories had attracted ten clappers. It turned out to be a response I hade made, two years ago, to a story entitled 'Mom, you can't say that'.

[Mick Harper]

Do you wear glasses? No? Well fuck off then.

Did you know your glasses were made by a company called EssilorLuxottica. You probably didn't but 4.4 billion people worldwide are reading these words through its products and that would include you.

EssilorLuxottica, being such a fatcat monopoly, is why you paid several hundred pounds for your glasses. Well, I did. For mine, I mean, not yours. Despite their manufacturing cost being between $3 (yours) and $7 (mine). I like rhinestones, what's wrong with that?

But it's all about to end because, as usual, China has developed a new process that brings the cost down to between three and seven cents. I demand tariffs to keep them out! We round-eyes must protect our own.

[Mick Harper]

I accept I am monumentally hopeless with all electronic gadgetry but I really thought, after all these years, that I had mastered recharging my vape thingy (there is no word for it yet in the English language -- the bit that holds the bit you put in your mouth.

They give you a recharging dubry and you plug one end into the vape thingy and the other end into whatever hole in your computer that it fits into. You can't really go wrong and I've done it a zillion times, probably more.

But as you know I lose my vape thingies regularly so I sent off for two more. Two more of the same except one version had a nicotine boost button so I ordered that kind. Big mistake. Whatever I do, neither of them will charge. Apparently, according to their AI help bloke, some computers won't override the safety feature that's just been installed on this model.

So I'm completely stymied. I'm going to have to buy a new computer and I haven't lost this one yet.

[Mick Harper]

After doing everything they said I finally, in despair, used my Kindle recharging connector since it looked the same size. It went in like a dream. In fact it went in much further than my vape one. I realised my error. I had not used brute force sufficiently.

I hurriedly replaced my Kindle connector with my Vape connector using brute force and it clicked in highly satisfactorily. I then plugged it into my computer only to get a red flashing light. All the adjustments I had done thanks to my AI mentor (child lock locked and unlocked, return to factory settings etc) now told against me. If only he'd told me to give it some welly at the outset.

'Don't worry,' AI said, when I reported the red light situation to him, 'it will take a considerable amount of time to overcome and re-programme the device. But keep your eye on it for 70-90 minutes. It should turn white which means it is recharging.'

You won't believe this. As I was writing that last sentence it turned white. Slow but steady, that's me.

[Mick Harper]

I have no problems producing complex theories the like of which the world has never seen and, indeed, may prove to be the saviour of the world, but I do have problems with watch straps. I thought I had put my troubles behind me when I had a big rubbery/ plasticky strap fitted by my man on the Portobello Road. I positively strutted.

But, after six months, my skin has decided it is allergic to rubbery/ plasticky things so it's back to square zero. The brain is willing but the flesh is weak.