A Few Stories From The Weird Side …

Curry In A Hurry ...

Well, blow me down with a chicken madras if an Indian gets his way with his latest entry into the Guinness Book Of Records. Sanjay Kumar Sinha took 60 students on a 3-day non-stop, no-sleep English grammar class. What makes you want to go for something like that?

In the city of Mumbai, Sanjay taught for 73 hours and 24 minutes in an attempt to get into the GBR for the longest lesson. Hang on, that’s twice the normal French working week!

He began teaching the students on Thursday morning and continued the lesson until Sunday morning. None of them slept a wink for three days, he says. "I have not eaten any food since the last two days” said Sanjay, “but I still feel very energetic. I have a craze for teaching grammar and am still charged up". The current record is held by a Pole, Elzbieta Malinowska, who taught for 66 hours in June 2004.

I was amazed that someone was awake to keep tabs.


Bump And Grind ...

This next snippet from the news pages is certainly not for the squeamish. It isn‘t the sort of thing you’d expect to find The Reverend W. Awdry dropping into a ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ story either.

The ‘Swedish Meats’ Company of Linkoping (bless that country and it’s flat-pack furniture) have developed a low-cost recipe to keep the national railway system on the right tracks. This, as far as I can gather, is the Delia Smith version;

1 x cow
1 x humane killer
1 x grinding machine
1 x vat
1 x syphon
1 x gas mask
1 x train

* Firstly, take your cow. Place upright and shoot
* Empty lifeless body of organs, fat and guts
* Place goop in grinder and start turning the handle
* Place gas mask over face and collect sludge in vat
* Take vat to storage depot and leave to stand for one month
* Collect gas, bottle and send to national railways operator

From the land of Abba comes this ingenious method of enhancing natural gas. According to the fat controller (sorry, scientists), the gas from just one cow is enough to keep a train rolling for 4km (2.5 miles).

The next project should have greater impact; Bile From Politicians To Replace Unleaded Petrol.


A Welcome In The Hillside ...

How would you set about promoting your local film festival? Amateur film-makers in the Welsh town of Machynlleth have taken a slice of inspiration from tinsel town and recreated the famous Hollywood sign. The lettering stands 5ft (1.5m) high and is 39ft (11.8m) long.

The brainchild of a group of local film-buffs, the sign resides on a hillside on Pen'Rhallt Common and can be seen throughout the town.

Made from chipboard and built in secret over 12 days, the friends secretly put it up by torchlight, the night before the festival, last Friday.

Thankfully, the talentless Catherine Zeta-Jones was a no-show …


It’s Not Only Onions That Make You Cry ...

An African prince who tried to smuggle cocaine concealed inside onions into the UK has been jailed for 12 years. Prince Adegbenie Olateru-Olagbegi (a fresh arrival from Lagos) thought that the whiff from a collection of onions would hide his £163,000 cache.

He also packed in his luggage with shrimps and other pungent dried seafood in an attempt to deter a sniffer dogs. The Prince denied all knowledge of the 17 hollowed-out onions containing 3.21kg of cocaine found in his luggage. Drug-pooch Max sniffed his way through the 23 onions and assorted fish as His Highness sauntered through the Nothing to Declare channel.

During his eight day trial, he told the court that his father is king to 450,000 subjects in Owo in southern Nigeria and that he has 149 siblings.

Oh well, one bad apple … and 23 dodgy onions later …

Allabest,

Stu