Just your garden-variety 4am cook-up
"There are two things you should know before I tell this dark tale," tweets Alexis Hall (@quicunquevult). "1. Our hob is black. 2. Other creatures are also black. H & I are currently on holiday. This makes us basically behave like we're in an all-girls boarding school in an Enid Blyton novel ... Because I am the best human being in the world, I decide we should make naughty 4am bacon. That's not a euphemism. It was 4am. We like bacon ... In the kitchen, we pile a pan with bacon and put it on the hob. The black hob. Despite the excitement of naughty 4am bacon, I am a bit sleepy. I turn on the gas. I check my phone. I notice movement on the stove. There should be no movement on the stove. Concerned, confused, I lift up the pan. And then I see the slug. And the slug is on fire. It is surrounded by a blue/orange halo like when you flambe fruit in whisky. Except this is a slug. And it is on fire. And it is racing Mission Impossible-fast across our stove, slime exploding in all directions and in incredible quantity. 'How fascinating,' says H. 'The increased mucus production must be counteracting the fire.' Eventually H rolls the slug gently in a tea towel. And the fire is extinguished. There is slug slime everywhere. H is singing: 'This slug is on fire. It is basically fine. I am not fine. The end.'"
Yellow Pages pure gold to job hunters
"I am a Vocational Consultant with 20 years' experience," writes a reader. "What a lot of people don't realise is that the Yellow Pages are a job-seeker's Bible. When planning on which employers to cold-call, every employer in the region is listed with full contact details. It's also broken down alphabetically into the various trades, professions and services. If you're not sure about what sort of job you would like to pursue, the index is a great list to read through to get some ideas. The online Yellow Pages is useless because it does not give you access to every listing. On one occasion I was only allowed to view 200 out of 350 listings - very frustrating. The book is much better. I hope that they keep publishing it."
