Much to the delight of our stockholders and indeed our stockbrokers, we found out that Kidneystone Krunch added an extra decade onto the lives of the Japanese! It was the one cereal bar in the world that came close to offering the oriental consumer a brief fraction of immortality. You can trawl the history books all you want, but nowhere down the annals of time will you find a creation as remarkable as this cereal sensation. We had surpassed the realm of the commonplace scientist by about eig...

2:30PM: Muse on the plight of adopted ions. Consult a textbook for the exact definition of somersault. Invoke the wrath of a 19th century chimney sweep who becomes my plant supplier. 2:45PM: My husband divorces me, but falls down the stairs in attempt to leave. Dies. I store him away for future dissection and then go and read Beowulf. 3PM: Call a spade a shovel. Am sued by the Shovel Brethren. Purchase a pogo stick and enter the 2009 pogolympics on Neptune. Have an unbuttered television on to...

6AM: Get up. Think about cutting up corpses. Go back to bed with a digestive biscuit. 6:15AM: Get back out of bed to shut the door and get rid of the shadows playing on the wall. 6:30AM: Dream about nude corpses. Imagine being spanked by a 53-year-old female with salt frosting in her hair. 6:45AM: Wake up and read Frankenstein. 7AM: Thumb wrestle the corpse in my bed. Ask him if I should get up. He does not respond. 7:15AM: Check myself for vital signs. Routine disappointment when I discover ...

Dear citizens of 2008. You are doomed to this: The sun is one thousandth of a percent redder. McDonalds have terraformed Saturn. Potato harvesting is the most wanted profession in the universe, with an income of over 30 million credits per annum. Excretion is banned. The underclass are made to hold up the few remaining trees to stop them falling over. Jumpsuits are the only legal form of clothing, colour-coded according to rank and class. Yellow is the lowest class, followed by orange, red an...

Our cities are in ruin. The homeless are in charge. We wander the liquorice avenues in our pashminas and clodhoppers, alone in need of lungs, exchanging the following phrases: “Please welcome the bearded men inside.” “Leave the tractors alone, they mean no harm.” “Goodness gracious… look at the state of the farmhands!” The leather jackets we wear are less spectacular than those of our cousins and our coffees are undercooked. It is quite possible that one in two men are named Clarence. This mu...

Sometimes the old saying is true, and a change is as good as a rest. In my case, however, the rest resulted in my nose growing septic and for a dangerous build-up of plasma to start seeping into my throat. The need for change was academic. Having taken involuntary retirement from teaching for the time being, I spent most of my days locked into protracted depressions; often hanging around the bathtub with a knife or contemplating a heroic jump from the rooftop. It was not a good time for me. I...

1. When a printer is blocked it helps to massage the cartridge with silken gloves. Should your hands be nimble enough, it will permit you one sheet of paper at a time, making the noise: “Oooooh…” 2. Never insult a modem. 3. A modem is a fickle creation, rather like a cream cracker or a French waitress, so it is best to coat it in velveteen curtains and sparkly doilies. When you log on, your modem will feel 54.2% cosier. 4. There are various things you can do if your computer spews out printed...

A few weeks passed and I learned how to hate my face a little more. It was simple process, really – you may even care to try it yourself. What to do is, you stand gazing into the mirror of your one-bedroom flat and catalogue each and every item that repulses you about your face. It's simple. Three weeks after I started this process; one of abnormal self-disgust for a basic feature of one's body; I began to incorporate it into my daily routine with measured success. After my first ever bowl of...

A couple of days after Plasta Pops was made available in the supermarkets, corner shops and pharmacies of the land, one of my now-deceased boffins introduced me to the work of Louis Pasteur. I wish to this day he hadn't. Apparently, Louis was a 19th century French chemist who arrived at the realisation that the fermentation of milk was caused by microorganisms (any tiny organism of bacterium or virus proportions). This ruffled me no end. It threw the entire project into disarray for the follo...

A couple of days after Plasta Pops was made available in the supermarkets, corner shops and pharmacies of the land, one of my now-deceased boffins introduced me to the work of Louis Pasteur. I wish to this day he hadn't. Apparently, Louis was a 19th century French chemist who arrived at the realisation that the fermentation of milk was caused by microorganisms (any tiny organism of bacterium or virus proportions). This ruffled me no end. It threw the entire project into disarray for the follo...