Friendly Advice

So, the other day we went to the mail sorting office in Hull.

This wasn't a day trip, allow me to elucidate, rather it was a journey in order to obtain one of the many parcels that my wife orders, probably of materials needed as part of her burgeoning Etsy shop (www.denkaidesigns.com).  All of the parcels seem to have one thing in common, that being that none of them fit through a letter box, and as the postman carefully times his deliveries to coincide with when no one is in the house, they end up back at the sorting office for me to collect.

Opposite the sorting office is some metal railings, from which you can look down into a muddy bit of the River Hull - back in the day it was probably some form of boat dock, but now it's just a load of mud.  My son decided to have a look through the railings at the muddy water for a minute, and not being in a particular rush, I joined him.

After a couple of seconds of looking at trolleys stuck in the mud (the nearest supermarket must be at least half a mile away - someone must have gone to a lot of effort to dump a trolley here) a helpful voice from behind us broke the silence.

"Excuse me - it's not very clean over there!"

I turned to see a chap addressing us.  I thanked him for his advice, and turned back to my son to tell him that it was about time to go to the sorting office.

The helpful voice sounded again.

"Yeah, I'm talking Weil's disease."

I turned around, surprised that he hadn't walked on, and once again I thanked him for his advice, although it did cross my mind that from the first piece of advice it hadn't been a massive leap of imagination to conjure up the possibility that he had been talking about some sort of infection, so the second piece was, to my mind, superfluous.  Again, I turned back to my son to ask him to come to the sorting office.

And yet, there was more to come.

"I would get his hands washed sharpish if I were you!"

Of course, I'm certain that the fellow was only giving advice in order to protect my son.  A nice gesture.  A helpful human being, by any account.

As a result I didn't even get my son to rub his hands on him, obviously with the man being so concerned with his well being I can only assume he'd be more than happy to have any germs removed by liberally scrubbing my sons hands on his face.  Always think twice before acting, that's what I say.

Melted chocolate

So, I was going to a meeting last week, and decided, being a team player, to pick up a pack of biscuits en route to take for everyone to enjoy.

I decided to purchase a pack of KitKats (as an aside did you know that in the Dubai airport duty-free, 1 tonne of Kit Kats are sold every day?) put them on the passenger seat in my car and immediately forgot all about them, going to my meeting without them.

It was a hot day, and when I returned to my car several hours later, the packet of KitKats was decidedly warm to the touch.

I took them home, and put them in the freezer for a day with the hope of salvaging them.

When I took one out, it looked like this:

Not too bad, you might surmise, the silver foil looks a little crumpled, but otherwise not too shabby.

However, inside they had essentially moulded into a single lump of chocolate, with two biscuits hidden somewhere within, plus they had taken the opportunity to absorb as much of the foil wrapping as possible.

How long does it normally take you to eat a Kit Kat? A minute? Two? If I'm in a hurry I could eat a two fingered KitKat in one bite, pop it sideways into my mouth, use my tongue to snap it in half and crunch the sucker into a chocolatey biscuit goodness.

These babies took a good ten minutes to eat, simply because you had to carefully extract tiny bits of foil from the confectionery, bits of foil which cheerfully ripped into even tinier bits of foil whenever you touched them.

You'll be pleased to know that the saga of the KitKats is now well and truly over, each one has ultimately done its duty and been eaten, and I feel that the world is a better place for it.