Paul Thomas: There are more things in heaven & earth ...

My own suspicion, wrote Scottish biologist J.B.S. Haldane, is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

He'd probably word it differently today. As it stands, though, this sentence succinctly conveys the limits both of mankind's knowledge and our capacity to grasp that the known universe may be a tiny fraction of an unimaginably vast existence - a speck of dirt under a giant's toenail.

I know as much about science as Prince Harry appears to know about the Third Reich but I'm sure Haldane's on to something, if only because there's so much weirdness in our own little world. One person's mystery is another person's irrelevance or thing that speaks for itself, but I can't be the only person who's mystified by much of what swirls round us, both trivial and momentous.

For example: You can wear tight dishwashing gloves that make soapy plates easier to handle but cling to you like leeches, or loose ones that can be slipped on and off at will but aren't ideal for fast and accurate dish-handling.

When I'm doing the dishes wearing loose gloves, the phone never rings; when I'm wearing tight gloves, the phone always rings and getting the buggers off in a hurry is like peeling off a layer of skin. Why?

The fact that cricket can be played for five days without producing a result is by no means the oddest thing about it.

Take leg byes: The bowler delivers the ball; the batsman misses it; it hits him on the pads or body. If it ricochets away from a fielder, the batting team can take runs. Put simply, leg byes are a reward for failure.

Then there's the Victorian attitude to injuries (It's all in the mind, lad) which dictates that the replacement for an injured player can field but not bat or bowl. Why not? Apparently because it's character-building to bat with a broken arm or bowl yourself into the ground shouldering an injured team-mate's workload.

If cricket ever decides to join the rest of us in the 21st century, it might also care to consider the absurdity of having umpires make decisions that are immediately seen to be wrong by the players, the crowd and the TV audience. But should the victim of such a mistake be rash enough to dwell on it, he'll be fined and haughtily dressed down by the match referee.

This is the stuff of fairytales, specifically The Emperor's New Clothes.

Iraqi babies are fairly mysterious little beings. When they were dying like flies as a result of UN sanctions (at least 300,000 perished, according to the humanitarian agencies), they generated widespread outrage mostly directed at the Western powers, although there was reason to suspect that Saddam Hussein exacerbated the situation for his own twisted ends.

But one would have to look long and hard to find evidence that this outrage has been replaced by joy, now that Iraqi babies are no longer dying like flies.

Perhaps the greatest mystery of modern life is the durability of the British monarchy.

I'm not particularly referring to Prince Harry's idea of a little harmless fun - although the confluence of technology that makes anyone with a cellphone a potential paparazzo, privilege without responsibility, genetically transmitted stupidity and Rupert Murdoch's subversive contempt should ensure that the House of Windsor continues to career like a dodgem car from one shuddering embarrassment to the next.

At least the Brits can trot out the old chestnut of the monarchy's value as a tourist magnet to justify gifting lives of extraordinary privilege and places at the heart of their constitutional system to a handful of mostly unsuitable people solely on the basis of birth. What excuse do we and others have?

Our neighbours had the opportunity to bid the Windsors a polite but firm farewell.

You'd have thought the referendum would have been a lay-down misere, as they say across the Tasman. Anti-Pom sentiment throbs in most Australian breasts (an obvious exception is John Winston Howard's); the Irish-Catholic influence is strong and, unlike New Zealand, Australia drew many immigrants from countries with no emotional ties to Britain and which dispensed with the services of their own royals some time ago.

Australians are an aggressively egalitarian, self-confident people with a strong sense of national identity. Their closest political, military and economic ally and socio-cultural lodestar is the spiritual home of republicanism, the United States.

But when it came to the crunch, they voted for Elizabeth Regina. It seems many Australians can't shake the nagging feeling that all that stands between them and anarchy is an English grandmother with an unfortunate taste in hats.

If that's not queer, I don't know what is.

* Paul Thomas is a Wellington author.