Flash (Ah!)

The hedgehog looked down at his feet. He was upset that he had ripped his judo uniform, but more upset that the flamingo and the otter were laughing. His whole family had clubbed together to buy him the kit, and Uncle Albert had been eaten by a hawk on the way back from the shop.

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The shoe fitted like a glove (that fitted like a shoe). Unfortunately for Emily, there was only one of them. She wasn’t sure that she could justify buying it, since she had two feet, but it fitted so perfectly she just couldn’t walk away. She resolved to wear it only at home, and on weekends.

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Michael Jones remortgaged his house to fund a production of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. His wife was furious, and threw the rights to the play out of the window. Over the next few days, the paper mixed with the heavy October rain to form a sort of grey mulch next to the roses. Nothing grew.

Library

Dear library users,

You may have noticed that the shelves are looking slightly sparser than usual. This is due to our ongoing improvement works, and the installation of a new, online cataloguing system.

This is an online system of unparalleled sophistication. By feeding it all of the borrowing records of the last twenty one years (when we installed our first digital cataloguing system), we have taught the catalogue to recognise user preferences. The new system is capable of predicting, with depressing accuracy, the books that you will want to borrow in the future.

To our surprise, the system told us that the only book that will be borrowed in the next two years will be Gregg Wallace’s autobiography, ‘Life on a Plate’. When we saw the readout, we were incredulous. But we have checked the calculations. We have re-checked the calculations. We have checked and re-checked our checking. And the computer is right. So we are taking the other books away,

You have only yourselves to blame.