This is a great article! Some of the ways these inventions came about are crazy! Potato chips created by a vengeful chef? You couldn’t dream up such explanations. This has lead me to wonder how on earth some of the most pointless inventions in the world came to exist. How about leaf blowers? They just move a mess from one place to another without actually solving the problem. Aerobic steppers? Can’t you just use a few bricks, or better still some existing purposeful steps?

 Leaf Blower - Pointless!

Ah Pantomimes! Never a more hotly disputed art than that of the cliche-laden, audience-engaging, man-in-drag featuring panto. These scared me as a kid with their vibrancy and liberalism, but I have to say that a viewing two years ago at my local village hall swiftly turned my emotional tide. The commercial juggernaut panto featuring C-list celebs does little to tickle the senses and one has to question whether they would go out of their way to impede their lives with such crass banality. Kirsten from Childrens BBC? Brian Blessed? Are they deliberately trying to turn people away from the theatre? Pantomimes are a nice tradition but one in which I am not quite sure how to respond.

Man-made objects can sometimes be a glory and a bane to behold. However, you are correct in observing how over ambition is an interesting thing. These glories are not just London’s alone but look at some of our other European neighbours. Barcelona’s Sagrada de Familia is a monument in size, scale and ambition but a century after its conception it still remains a work in progress. Lamenting the idea of what could have been sometimes leads to a bit of desensitising for what we already have. Wembley is a symbol of completed ambition but it seems a little tame to those abandoned plans you mention.

I don’t really know what to make of this other than the argument that the best candidate for the job should get this position regardless of  their ethnic background. As Martin Luther King Jr famously said in his address at the March on Washington Movement in 1963: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”.

The secondary usages of the Cornish Pasty that you highlight have indeed sown several seeds in my ill working brain:

How about their replacement of bricks and mortar to build a house sturdy enough to withdraw the fervent huffing and puffing of any hungry wolf?

Due to their unfortunate shape how about their use as a substitute to the traditional leather rugby ball? Catching one in the middle of a game would certainly add a little more delight to the players faces, additionally it would justify the length and means (i.e. tearing each other apart) to get to the blasted thing.

The process of cycling is indeed more difficult than the eye suggests. Last weekend to my great suprise I saw a rather portly fellow riding a Penny Farthing along a busy main road. It occured that for a moment I had reverted back to the 19th Century and was no longer concerned with driving my automobile, but rather how to be an upstanding Victorian Gentleman.

Then after reading your post it all made sense. Penny Farthing’s were made so large precisely for the reason you highlight: that is in order to not get too dirty. The beneficial hight of the contraption not only gives you the air of certain superiority but also maintains that your fresh garments stay nice and clean.

Shouldn’t newsreaders just stick to familiar metaphor’s, tired old cliche’s just turn an audience off. In this case your comment on the news reader who couldn’t even get it right is justly valid:

“Opened a hornet’s nest? Surely it should be ‘stirred‘ a hornet’s nest, but opened a ‘Pandora’s box‘?”

Can I ask whether or not it did indeed turn you off the program or did it instill in you a deeper ranging interest in the hope that the presenter would continue his tirade of malpropism’s? Maybe the question is did the audience really care or even notice?

Wow! You are describing an experience I have regular pain with in leiu of my particular transmogrification over my teen years. First there was the provisional driving licence at the age of 16, with a army style crew cut, then there was the real drivers licence that came at a time I had particularly long hair but still used the same old picture. Then fast forward four years, I still have the same picture on the ID but a completely different facial outlook (more weighty, more pale). Even my friends find it difficult to accept that this picture on my driving licence is me and they have scrutinised my face many times over, ‘you were so ugly’ they echo, perhaps I still I am.