CABINET OF CURIOSITIES (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Ishmael]

[Mick Harper]

You're right. I got no responses at all.

[Mick Harper]

There's not many people that can fall asleep with the TV remote on their chest and find it still there when they wake up. It's called the sleep of the just.

[Mick Harper]

Do We Have Our National Priorities Right? (No 664)

Because the AEL index name clerk was away with her fairies, I needed to check Francis Walsingham's first name (it's Francis, by the way) on Google. Only to have to wade through acres and acres of stuff about some dead and alive hole in Norfolk with a Catholic shrine before any mention of England's greatest spymaster (of the ones working for England). I thought Walsingham had put a stop to all that.

[Mick Harper]

I can be contacted here if anyone needs me

[Mick Harper]

All's well that ends with Zoffany.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Can you tell me why all the youngsters are sniggering at me?

I am simply enquiring, after they have all told me they are going on to study Criminology.

"Are you thinking about joining the police?"

Puzzling.

[Mick Harper]

I've hit an all-time low in my non-understanding of modern telecommunications. I want to explore Kindle Direct Publishing for the new book and I've got an Amazon account as required, and have done for years, but they insist on a mobile phone number to send an authentication code. Fair enough, quite standard. Only they refuse to recognise my mobile phone number. I've tried every combination of 07, 7, 44, +44 but nothing works. And of course they haven't got a little 'having problems' button. I was this close to being the world's latest literary sensation.

[Mick Harper]

I cracked it. Unbeknownst to anyone but the software designer, you had to not consult the list of country ID's they had thoughtfully provided you had to select the country ID and then put in your own number (always remembering not to put the 0 at the front). Some people say I'm a genius, I prefer 'indefatigable'. An indefatigable genius.

After that it was reasonably plain sailing for about an hour as inter alia I tracked down what a SWIFT number and an IBAN number was, and then by trial and error entered them in the correct format, until at the very end, when I was feeling really cocky because I could see 'agree and sign' was just inches away, it asked my for my TIN. It only took me a further half hour to discover that you could disable both choices offered and have 30% deducted at source by the US feds. Or not, it wasn't clear. That's what Al Capone said of course but I won't be in his tax bracket so I can't see them extraditing me. But if they ever try, I can consult Jules in Bellmarsh just down the road. They'll be in for a fight, I can tell you.

My only problem now is... no, we've both had enough. Writing the book's the easy part.

[Mick Harper]

Sometimes I get sent (via M J Harper and variants) papers that even a polymath like myself cannot entirely grasp eg

[Mick Harper]

Guess who plans to have this on his tombstone?

[Mick Harper]

I had a dream last night about how to spell archiopiscopal. If I was still in full-time Freudian analysis, I could have found out what it meant. It's normally about sex but, one never knows, it may have been about my unresolved relationship with father-figures. Even my actual father. But I have emailed Canterbury and York to check whether there is such a word in case it's a simple error on the part of my subconscious.

[Mick Harper]

I have just received an email saying

[Mick Harper]

Hold the front page! I'm joining the Kindle Revolution. With the book coming out on Kindle Direct Publishing I checked it out and found, to my very great surprise, that people have to pay more than pennies for a download -- typically maybe half the price of the hard copy. So I decided we must take the plunge. I say 'I' because "Should we think about a Kindle version, Hatty?" "What's Kindle?"

Realising I would need a Kindle to make sure the book was kindlised properly I checked out how much they cost. £179, it said. No way, I said. Twenty sovs arriving today, said Argos. Wish me luck, I've got a feeling I'm in for immense trauma. Why oh why didn't I have kids?

[Mick Harper]