What are they?

So, it seems that an fund manager is a person that manages funds. We, well not me because I don't have any (I'm a hedge fund trader - a hedge for short), give these guys our hard earned money and they spend all their time looking in minute detail at the bazillion of stocks (chicken, beef, fish), shares, exotic cocktails, and shoes on offer and invest wisely. They spend their working day working for us and their sleeping nights sleeping for us. They are so smart and they do a good job. The investments, on the whole, tend to have lots of ups and downs. Which is a bit like life - although the investments tend to have catastrophic downs which makes us feel a lot better since our lives aren't that catastrophic.

They tend to approach investment with an avant-guard philosophy. They are daring. Investments in schemes that perhaps yesterday were shunned are now seen as highly lucrative. It's clear to me that Ponzi schemes are now considered highly profitable 'exotics'. Guaranteeing stable returns even in the case of horrible times. Clearly this is the reason why many invested in Mr Madoff's scheme.

MP Hour

Where I come from we're heavily into metrics. This is a good thing. We design metrics for everything: metrics for the number of shoes you're allowed to buy, the number of times you're allowed to oversleep the alarm, the number of left and right shoes you're allowed to buy.

Recently, we have discovered that our Politicians aren't metric. This is bad. We cannot appreciate the work they do if we don't know how well they are doing.

So, our Politicians have hired an external metric consultancy to metricify them. The main problem the consultants faced was exactly what metric to use. Since, nobody, not even the Politicians really knew what they did.

After much study they determined that speaking constituted 98% of the job. They determined that Politics appeared to be a game involving people capable of selecting items of no particular interest and then arguing viciously for many months about them.

Once this discovery was made it was simple to design metrics consisting of the number of words spoken, how long a Politician has been standing on their feet for, the number of uninteresting statements made. Extra points are gained if a Politician makes a definitive conclusion (regardless of the manner or truth).

With this system we have metrics that show us the fantastic amount of work being performed by our Politicians. Other countries would do well to follow our approach. We even have done away with the 1 party system and have gone to leagues. We are very proud that our local Politican's play in the Premier League (missing out on top-spot on goal difference).

Consumerism: how to get out of the current crisis

In a consumer society there is a real danger that once everyone has brought everything they need the eekonomy will freeze and fail.

This is the problem we have at the moment. Everyone has brought everything and there is nothing left to buy.

The only way out of this current consumer crunch is to institute legislation to do the following:

a) Create 2 new teen music-bands with stupid names and songs and generate hysteria about them encouraging an upturn in the number of CDs sold.

b) Institute legislation to change the style of women's clothes every month such that no woman would be seen dead in last months clothes.

b1) Institute legislation forbidding any two women from wearing the same style of clothes within a 50 mile radius.

c) Change the side of the road that people drive on in a country forcing people to buy new cars with the steering wheel on the other side and necessitating workmen to replace road signs.

d) Change the power ratings for all electrical applicances forcing consumers to buy new electronic goods with the correct ratings.

e) Change the national language forcing new books to be printed in the new language, new web-sites to be created etc.

This package should stimulate the economy and encourage consumerism at an increased rate.

Age-old philosophical puzzle solved!

Whilst trawling through innumerable philosophical-science papers I found a paper detailing an
ingenious and logically valid solution to an age-old philosophical problem that I strongly believe should be a good candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize:

Problem: Which came first the chicken or the egg?

The solution relies on recognising that a few years ago, during prehistoric times, ancient-man had an incredibly strong affinity to eggs. They collected eggs of all shapes and sizes. They ate then, used the shells as a form of currency.

Slowly, they realised something was missing. Eggs were ok, but around the middle of the day they wanted something more substantial. So, they invented the chicken. This gave them many more culinary combinations. They could have chicken roast, fried, flayed, egg-stuffed chicken, chicken wrapped in omelette.

The combinations were endless and it took more than 1000 years before they exhausted the combinations and invented the sheep and cow.

The logic of the paper is faultless and clear. I have recommended the paper for publication and would wholeheartedly recommend the paper for the Nobel Prize for Economics.

Finance 101

Do you understand finance?
Do you understand exotic options, hedging and futures?

Me neither. Technically, we call such newbies that don't have an inkling of such matters and have a naive, irresponsible attitude to money, Bankers or Traders or Financial analysts.

Anyway, it's come to my attention that there's a serious lack of understanding of basic finance terminology So, we explain it here (again):

Basic financial planning and investment and trading is EXACTLY like growing mushrooms.There is no analogy. Of course, you're not using mushrooms, that's plain silly, instead you're using coinage of the realm.

Now, for options investment you need to pick 5 locations. Shady ones are good under an Ash or Oak tree cluster and plant brown chestnut mushrooms and all your money in late autumn, just after the third rainfall that's light-to-medium-heavy. They're the best and the ones nearest to oak trees are superb. After about 3 months you should get a nice yield. Due to the monetary-philic processes that are unique to the mushroom species.

For exotic options simply replace the type of mushroom with shitake mushrooms and plant under willow or hazel trees.

Hedging is a lot simpler. Being the most basic and fundamental form of finance there is you need an abundant form of mushroom. Toadstools although technically poisonous are the best mechanism for hedge funds. Take the red spotty ones and plant them along with all your money in roughly 20,000 locations under lime trees. Within roughly 6 months you should have a huge number of red spotty toadstools and a whole load of dead flora and fawna.

For those of a literary nature the exact relationship between the killing you will make and the initial investment is given by:

killing = sqrt(w*d**(1/3))*exp(mp/my)*atan(nf/tf)

where:
w = weight of earth above the mushrooms.
d = distance of mushrooms from base of tree.
mp = number of planted mushrooms.
my = number of yielded mushrooms.
nf = number of flies above the mushrooms.
tf  = total number of flies of that type in existence.

Getting Lost

I tend to stay in a lot of hotels as part of my work. My experiences may help you to significantly improve your experiences.

I'm a delayed airline passenger. That's my job. My job requires me to devise formulae to determine the flight with the highest probability of being delayed. I use a dart-board. After I find a candidate flight I get myself a ticket and take the flight.

More often than not the flight takes off and lands in the wrong place, usually due to chronic shortage of:

(i) direction, usually due to the passengers taking part in the online poll-vote on the best route not
                   being conversant in Geography or the native language.

(ii) ambition, usually due to the poll-vote held being held by passengers being not feeling they were
                    worthy of landing at their destination and opting for a less conspicuous destination usually
                    5 miles from take-off.

As you may know most airlines have been quick to follow up on the success of phone-in reality shows and empowered the passengers, or audience, to take part selecting a variety of things for their journey. They can vote on the flight path, the destination, food, in-flight entertainment and the amount of turbulence they should experience on the flight among other things.

Passengers are expected to phone in on monitored premium-rate, poor-quality lines and vote on a 34 page list of topic. Those passengers that fail to vote are usually forcibly requested to serve as flight attendants.

Once I have arrived where I have not expected to arrive my task is to find myself a hotel and a ticket for the next flight to approximately my destination with maximum helpful destructive interference from the helpful airline ground staff (the level of helplessness that the ground staff exhibit is determined by the on-line airline poll).

The ticket is the easiest part of the operation as the ground-staff simply run the random ticket generator that will generate a ticket to a location weighted by the destinations you have been to.

The hotel is more tricky since the selection algorithm used by the ground staff is based on the GDP of the city you are in as well as the density of hotels and the size of the airport. Contrary to popular belief, the time of your flight does not play a role in the selection of the hotel.

My last expedition resulted my being hoteled in a hotel that was over 300miles from the airport where my next random flight was taking off. But, as luck would have it, 5 minutes from where I actually wanted to go. Rules being rules, I still had to take a taxi, at my own expense, to travel the 300 miles from the hotel to the airport to take my random flight that eventually got me to my destination three days later. But, that's another story. It's worth remembering this point as you could forefit your entitlement to travel by that airline for 5 years if you circumvent the rules.

I arrived at the hotel just after 2am. Just after the hotel night-staff and switched to unhelpful mode. The night-hotelier requested the usual information and after the customary hour-long interrogation gave me the key to my room. The best time to get to a hotel is around 11pm when the night-staff have just started and are releshing the nights entertainment.

The hotelier tested my skill and ingenuity by not telling me the room that my electronic card key fit. He thought a check of the 800 rooms would keep me occuppied until the morning shift started. Being an old hand at the game I knew that my hotel would be in the basement close to the dry-cleaners and the lift.

I then had the standard 30minute exchange with the night-desk to get them to activate my electronc card key and finally entered the room at 4am.

The room smelt of old socks and indeed the floor was littered with them. I found out later that the hotel night-desk had a side-business in selling socks and stole guests socks selling the unwashed items back to  different guests at a premium. Since all the guests in this hotel were in-transit it was a good business.

The aroma made me drowsy and I fell asleep after 10 minutes after asking for the wake-up call approximately 30minutes later which guaranteed that the vindictive night-staff would add at least 2 hours to the time ensuring that I would be able to get a taxi to catch my 8pm flight.

I thwarted the hotel night-staff by not wearing socks and not carrying anything of cleaning value (i.e. toothpaste, shoe-polish, detergent, bleach - standard items carried by all passengers). It's a good idea to bear this in mind when traveling. I had also had the good sense to unhook the lobby curtains for use as a blanket in the spartan room (another trick worth remembering).

Checkout in the brutal morning usually required a complex negotiation of proving that I had not made any use of any of the services offered by the hotel at ridiculous prices. You have to keep your wits about you as these negotiations require knowledge of complex legal presedences dating back 10 years (best to brush up on international hotel-law before you travel). Remember not to take the breakfast or dinner as that's a standard trap where they can sting you for a 2 week all-exclusive holiday package to experience all the delights the hotel has to offer.

The Origins of Cheese

I think that it's worth recapping on the origins of cheese to understand some of the modern cheese making processes.

[Apparently, prehistoric person was not a complete vegetarian. That took many years of badly prepared meat dishes and the discovery that raw vegetables that did not need to be massacred in boiling water before vegetarianism evolved as a palatable option (along with the abolition of boiled meat).]

Prehistoric person tried to make the maximum use of the animal they killed. In those days, the cow was a staple of their diet and they ate the meat. Used the skin for clothing and used the cows udders as a fashionable hat to protect them from prehistoric rain.

They soon discovered that the cow produced milk and that this was almost edible. To carry the milk as they moved around (for prehistorians were nomadic and moved from country to country in order to avoid prohibitive prehistoric land taxes) they invented the cows stomach which was a naturally non-porous and, provided they tied one end up, was a very useful bag.

As they moved  around the milk became agitated in the cows stomach and turned into what we now call cheese. They instantly realised the stomach was instrumental in the production of this new delicacy and set about finding more efficient means of making cheese.

As we now know, they discovered that force-feeding a donkey cows milk and then getting the most worthless member of the clan to tether the donkey with a string and then stampede it all over the place holding tightly to the donkey to make sure the precious cheese was not lost. They discovered that about one week of continuous stampeding was needed for a semi-hard cheese and two weeks for a hard cheese. They also found that if they  used old donkeys then more mature cheese was made and young donkeys produced much younger cheese. Once the cheese was made they simply cut the donkey's stomach open and removed the cheese.

This explains why in many organic cheese making houses you can see a large number of people tied to donkeys being dragged all over the place as the stampeding donkeys are making cheese. Clearly, in more modern plants cars are filled with milk and stampeded all over the place to produce much larger volumes of cheese.

Mobile Language

Have you ever been abroad?

Me too. But, usually I find that my language doesn't travel well and I cannot understand anything that anybody is saying.

Well scientists have now discovered the reason as to why your language does not travel well when you go abroad.

Years ago, large numbers of them, when there were as many people as live in Iron Age Road, well perhaps not that may, as many as lived in Paleolithic Gardens there were a small number of tribes that moved from Africa all over the place (not too sure why, many conjecture to look for options and hedges).

Each tribe had a big guy in charge who had the sense not to allow them to eat each other, but to eat other things and try not to die too quickly by eating the wrong things (which is another article that scientists have worked on). The big guy was admired by all as is amply shown by the amount of rubbish the followers poured on top of the grave of deceased big guys.

For all their intelligence each big guy had a speech impediment (either from a deformity or from allergies). Since the big guy was a sensitive soul he tended to massacre those that made fun of his ailment. Very quickly, the rest of the tribe figured out it wasn't too wise to poke fun at the leader. So, since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, they started to speak like him. They too artificially developed a speech impediment and in turn became sensitive to their failing.

Gradually, over time as the tribes prospered countries were formed with people with similar speech impediments.

Scientists have discerned clearly that French originated from a tribal leader with a bunged-up nose and a bit of a lisp. Dutch and Welsh originated from a leader with persistent catarrh. English and German developed from a leader with a pretty nasty sore throat. Italian developed from a leader of a tribe heavily into Karaoke.

The Fastest Train in the World

Today I sat on what I believe was the fastest train in the world. Ever.

I got to the station the customary 4 hours before the train was meant to depart. I know most train companies in the UK request their passengers to get to the station at least 6 hours before their train departs in order to get into the swing of things. But, I was in a rush.

For new-comers, UK trains travel with such energy that they operate beyond the Planck-scale which means quantum fluctuations come into effect. Which means, that you need to wait for the departures board to settle (after 30 minutes) and then take the average of all the platforms indicated for your train and go to the average platform number. This is important. I have lost count of the number of people that have complained to the platform staff that the train has not left from the indicated platform. It's clearly stated in the Train manual people, get with the program!

Anyway, I got onto my train on the average platform. The train was much shorter than usual. In fact, there was 1 carriage. I sat on the train and went to sleep, as I usually do. After one hour I woke up and the train was back in the platform that I had departed from!
Since I was going to Glasgow this meant that the train had traveled at more than 1000Km/hr! in order to get me from London to Glasgow and back again! It is clear that I had been to Glasgow since I was sitting on a copy of the Glasgow Herald.

Clearly this train was experimental as there was only one carriage. It was such a smooth journey. The next time I had better sleep for less time as I don't want to miss getting off at Glasgow again.

Nano Tube

We have another laaarrrge program going on that's not getting any attention ANYWHERE. It's our deployment of little blue plastic tubes under the roads. The company responsible for digging up the roads with minimal coordination and maximal disruption, which necessarily is needed to enable the whole system to be placed in equilibrium and harmony, is called Thames  Water. Which, if you follow the links provided, is actually a revolutionary (in a circular manner) enterprise innovating the use of smaller underground trains!

The first phase is to deploy the tunnels underneath the roads in a harmonic manner. Then the next phase is to install small trains in these small blue tunnels underneath the road. But, how can we fit into the trains in these small blue tubes? Well if you follow the links you will find that the really revolutionary idea from Thames Water is to change change the diet of everyone such that they shrink and can fit into the small trains! Genius! It will sort out the overcrowded trains and also allow the whole system to extend indefinitely.

Ok, at the moment there are a few teething problems: we have an obesity epidemic at the moment, but all that takes is a slight alteration of the formulae and then we will all become nano commuters able to fit into these nano tubes.

We will also reduce our Carbon smudge on the environment.

Aisle

I have forgotten one of the most basic supermarket theorems:

This week Marmite is on Aisle 3, but next week Marmite will be on Aisle number
maxAisle - (exp(Aisle)-log(staff))/log(week). Other foodstuffs are moved as a attenuated function of the marmite function weighted by the weeks takings (after tax and benefits).

It's worth remembering. Each week I go to the supermarket and each week everything is somewhere else. Sometimes, staple foodstuffs are discontinued in favour of more exotic foods. For example:

Excuse me, where's the bread and milk this week?

They're discontinued this week. We are pushing nightingale's tongue puree and Kangaroo offal bread. Both are superfoods high in important profits for us.

It is worth stocking up on items you desire to hedge against they're becoming extinct at your supermarket. Then you can, as I have seen others often do, setup a little table outside the supermarket and allow fellow shoppers to buy the extinct items from you at index-linked prices.

Or, as a majority of people do, bring your refridgerator and stand outside the supermarket with the door open all day allowing people to buy fresh, frozen items from your refridgerator.

Where do the tubes go?

It has come to my attention that a good chunk of the London Underground network does not exist on the weekends. This has been happening for the past 10 years at least. I am slow to recognise things.

So, the question is where do they go? On these weekends when the London Underground is not in London where does it go?

I have done some research and it appears that the London Underground is distributed over Europe. It appears that the Northern Line is deployed to Oslo where more trains run on the weekend and new stations appear. This could explain the abundance of Norwegians at Leicester Square and London Bridge. The Piccadilly Line appears to spend the weekends in Paris which explains the large number of French Players playing for Arsenal and the Circle Line seems to have occurred in Rome because the Italians like to visit many interesting places again and again. The District Line appears in Berlin for obvious reasons. The Central Line in Zurich for obvious reasons too. Other lines appear to oscillate between different countries.

This could explain why the London Underground invariably does not work well on Monday morning as it takes quite a long time to move the underground back again. It could also explain why it costs rather a lot. It's not easy making a mobile undergound system.

Market Style

A puzzle for you. Why do supermarkets EVERYWHERE put the fruit and vegetables (ie soft foodstuffs) as you walk in and the tin cans and bottles of water at the furthest end of the supermarket?

When you come to buy your food you first load up with fruit and vegetables and then put more heavier stuff (like side of cow, 6 2x4 planks of wood, wardrobe) after you have put in the fruit and vegetables.

And, by the time you get to the checkout counter you are trailing a puree of your selection of fruit and vegetables.

This is clearly a clever ploy by the supermarkets to make sure that you go around and buy even more fruit and vegetables to replace the ones you have just pureed.

And, you have to first checkout because the supermarket one-way system will not allow you to go back and replace your puree. You have to first checkout. Which in itself is an interesting process. The checkout person is usually autistic and doesn't like any form of social interaction. Then you stand at the end of the conveyor belt with bags ready to catch the items as they are slung as rapidly as possible down the conveyor belt. Hopefully, you will be able to stuff everything into your bags as they arrive otherwise you risk the wrath of the autistic checkout person who will glare at you as you incompetently pack your food as quickly as possible.

I must get my supermarket to repeal the one way system and the overtaking on both sides (which is extremely dangerous).

Market Value

I, like you, shop for my food. I go to these biiig supermarkets where you can buy all the food that you want and more, much more! They sell everything knives, bandages, TVs.

I think, but am not certain, that you can buy shopping trolleys. Well, you put a pound or Euro into this little lock thing which, I believe, means you've brought the trolly. And, if you don't like it you can put it back where you got it from and get your pound or euro back. Heck you can even buy the checkout machine! I saw one at the Tate recently.

I believe that their ethos is that anything in the store is for sale. So, it should be possible to go in and buy one of those machines that they use to cut cured meat and take it home and use it to cut thin slices of wood for making veneers.


Anyway, these supermarkets are biiig business. They are constantly going out on our behalf to make sure that we are getting the best possible deals ever. They do these complex calculations and predictions and compare with other supermarkets. They are justly proud of their work and the fact that they are giving us value for money. I for one am very proud of my local supermarket.

But, I am puzzled. They do all these complex calculations. But, everytime I go into my local supermarket I don't see any charts or documentation on the studies. I have not seen any lectures on the studies. But, maybe I'm not looking hard enough or maybe they are only on Thursdays when it's late night shopping. Maybe they have lectures or talks on the analysis at your local supermarket.

public phones

Have you heard of these small tiny little phones?
They are small enough to fit into the palm of your hand.
They can fit inside your pocket, or handbag.
They are innocuous and discrete.

Except when you use them. Then they turn you into the most obvious person in your surroundings. Especially when you talk with a loud voice and exclaim and ask questions ensuring that all around you hear only half of the conversation.

Well, here's a suggestion. Try the following dialogue. It will not fail to impress your surrounders and elevate your status with all those in ear-shot:

Marmalade?

What's the status?

That much down?

Ok. Don't worry. Here's what we do. Buy half an M of Jelly Beans and three quarters of an M of Jelly Babies. Sharpish!

Put 100 of each in you mouth and chomp like crazy. Are the numbers on the ticker going up?

Ok. Now select out all the green ones and throw them away. They're only for a bull market.

Chomp another 100 mixed.

Are the numbers going up now?

Ok. Excellent! Sell on 80.

No problem. Citibank don't need to thank me just doing my job.


You'll instill confidence in the market and single-handedly inspire others to go out and buy like crazy. Happy days will be here again!

You've got to laugh

Markus did not believe in anything. He did not believe in God, in evolution or even in himself.

Markus was a trader in Explosive a company based in the City of London the financial centre of the known world (apart, of course from all those other financial centres outside of the City of London).

Markus was a very good trader he had managed to convince people he could make them money at short notice and had indeed done so. At the same time he had managed to ruin a respectable number of businesses in the process by dumping shares in their company and buying them back at a lower rate.

Markus was now having a little bit of a problem. He had brought an enormous number of shares in Explosive, in fact he had brought all the shares, apart from those that he held, and had short sold them making a handsome profit for himself and his backers. Unfortunately, he had managed to lower the price of shares to the point where the entire company was just about worth the price of a large plaice and chips from Hans Fish Bar.

Nobody at Explosive liked to be compared to plaice and chips and potential investors were also not keen on plaice and chips (or rather would wish to actually get plaice and chips for the price of plaice and chips) and future sources of revenue began to dry up making the company even less attractive as NOBODY, but NOBODY wants to invest in dried up plaice and chips.

In order to hide his mistake Markus used his profits to buy shares in the Office of Fair Trading a company that speculated on whether companies were behaving themselves or not. An excellent company where you could buy options on whether your company was behaving itself or not. Markus managed to buy enough shares to then dump them via his amazing short-selling technique and make an even more incredible profit which he used to buy more shares in Explosive at a more inflated price making it more attractive than plaice and chips.

Unfortunately, the Office of Fair Trading became worth less than a regular portion of chips and a pickled egg. Lucretius a high-flying trader at the Office of Fair Trading did not like chips and pickled eggs and decided to do something about it. Namely, by buying shares in another large company and short-selling to gain enough profits to buy shares in the Office of Fair Trading at inflated prices.

It was due to the selfless efforts of Markus and Lucretius and others and their dislike of certain combinations of fish and chips that the great depression of 2000s happened. It was only during 2011 due to the superhuman efforts of a handful of fish bars and their incredible batter that confidence in all combinations of fish and chips was restored and the economy picked up and the wheels of high finance began to grind smoothly as before.

Getting to the Meet of it.

At the airport arrivals have you noticed that some people arrive with no one to greet them? Have you noticed that sometimes even taxi-drivers, on their day off, go to the airport and hold up a sign just so some poor displaced person can feel at home?

Well, now you too can join in the fun! Here's what you need to do:

1) Buy some crayons and some card (white card although if you have white crayons maybe you need black card).

2) Print on the card a suitably obscure greeting. Something like: 'enjoy our weather', 'welcome to our smog', 'avoid our cheese' and other friendly greetings.

3) Greet all arrivers with drums, flash photography and wild screams.

If you have some friends who are arriving from another country, make a card for them!
Impress them with your grasp of languages: write your greeting in a language that you don't know. Better still, write a greeting in a language neither you nor your friends know!

Identify your friends by some article of clothing: 'hello dirty purple shoes', 'welcome back wrinkled green trousers'.

If you are a traveller and arriving in a foreign place, you are an ambassador of your country. Greet all the people that you see as you arrive. If you can, tell them where you're from and how many people live there, what your GDP is and how your currency compares to theirs.

Saving your sole

Without a doubt the most difficult thing to do is buy shoes. I have tried it and have been thrown out of quite a few shoe shops. The dialogue usually follows as:

Shoer: Hello Madam can I help you.
Me: Yes. I'd like a pair of shoes.
Shoer: Any particular type.
Me: Well a pair of clowns shoes would be good.
Shoer: I'm sorry, but we don't sell clowns shoes.
Me (looking around): But, I see some shoes here that look like clowns shoes.
Shoer: No I'm sorry they're designer shoes and are quite expensive.
Me: Well how about all these people they're dressed like clowns surely they're here to buy some clown shoes too?
Shoer: I'm sorry, but we do not sell clown shoes and I will have to ask you to leave.

At this point I'm usually asked to leave the store.
Clown shoes are indeed difficult to buy.

I have also had no luck when buying train passenger shoes (technically known as trainers). I usually use the following technique:

Me: I'd like a pair of trainers please.
Shoer: Yes madam we have a fine selection of trainers any particular make?
Me: Yes, I'd like British Rail trainers please.
Shoer: Ok, well most people tend to wear these green ones. Perhaps you'd like to try a pair of those?
Me: Yes indeed do you have them in my size?
Shoer: What size is that?
Me: I'm not sure.
Shoer: What size shoes are you wearing?
Me: I'm afraid I don't know. They're not my shoes they belong to a friend.
Shoer: Well do you know the size shoe your friend wears?
Me: Certainly not! I don't ask personal questions like that.
Shoer: Perhaps we can measure your feet then.
Me: I'm afraid that's difficult to do as I'm not allowed to take my shoes off in public.
Shoer: Right well if you could lift up your foot perhaps we could get a pair roughly the same size?
Me: That's a good idea. But, could you get them a bit bigger?
Shoer: Why?
Me: Well, these ones are a bit small for me.
Shoer: Any idea how small?
Me: They seem to be uncomfortably small for me. Can you find a pair that's comfortably larger.
Shoer: I'm sorry, but we're all out of comfortably larger shoes perhaps you could try Bond Street they sell comfortably larger shoes there.

Indeed, I have had great difficulty in finding shoes in my size, colour and for all my needs. I have had to resort to creating my own shoes.

I have found that by creating a paper-mache of paper, glue and water in a bucket. And then putting my feet into the bucket I am able to make a resonably decent pair of shoes. By then sticking half-metre square pieces of carpet to the underside I have a comfortable surface on which to walk on. I usually wrap the shoes in tape to make them waterproof.

I have found that these shoes tend to wear better than those elsewhere and may be worthwhile trying out yourself.

Hope this helps

Trash conservation...

Some countries are getting rather worried about the amount of trash (or rubbish to the non-technical) we refuseniks are generating. Well, I've been searching around and have found the following article.

Scientists have recently performed a large and detailed simulation on the effect of increased trash production and burial in land-fill sites. The results show that the land-mass increases roughly as the square root of the number of people occupying the land. Which means, in small countries like the USA and Russia that we generate enough material to increase the land mass to accomodate the influx of people into that country alleviating the space crisis and pressure on house prices.

Their simulations also reveal that the new land mass would be lighter than the existing land mass (by virtue of the high non-degradable plastic content) allowing the new land mass to rise with rising ocean levels. This technique is currently being used in Venice (or Venus to the non-technical) where huge amounts of non-degradable trash from China are being dumped. We are already seeing the benefits: Venice has risen by approximately the length of Berlusconi's nose in one year.

In a related piece of research archeologists have unrefutable evidence that Siberia and the mid-west of the USA are the direct result of bronze-age and iron-age landfill sites.

We have to be thankful that large supermarkets (shoporamas to the non-technical) are increasing the amount of packaging (by packaging the packaging) and we have to be thankful that the governments will be asking us to pay more to dispose of the packaging's packaging as we are really securing our country for our future consumers.

With my rubbish I for one am building a new extension to lower Russia. What are you doing to help?

Getting in tune...

Do you find it difficult to get up in the morning?

Do you find your alarm clock lying in the street every morning whilst rushing to get a double espresso (without cream, but with hazlenut syrup followed by an omelette on fried bread with smoked kippers and mushrooms)?

Do you always wake up too early and then sit in the garden wondering what to do?

Well, scientists have discovered the reason. It seems that each one of us inherits our body clock from our parents. Further, whilst in the womb our body clock is heavily influenced by the foods our parents eat. So, if our parents eat more food from, say, India then our body clock will be more aligned to the time-zones of India! It seems that this is because our little bodies are highly sensitive to maturity of the foodstuffs our parents eat. So, it's hereditary!

Scientists have suggest that if we move to the country that dominates our body clock we will get up at the right time. All we need to do is to scan the globe for timezones that match our body clock and then simply move there.

I've tried this and it seems to work. In the US I get up at a sensible time which suggests that my parents must have worked in a hamburger joint.