Twelve More Big Pyjama Sleeps

Today, myself and my learned sister did some Christmas shopping at Fort Kinnaird. It is a wonderous place, containing all the shops you might go to in town, but larger and closer together. Plus there's a Thornton's Cafe, where the seats are made from chocolate and the coffee is made from stardust.

As if that wasn't fictional enough, I am happy to announce that thanks to the ugly but brilliant piece of architectural planning that is the Fort, I have finally acquired a halogen heater for to set myself and Captain Tact on fire when we least expect it. Or alternatively to warm up our room. Ha. This happenstance fills me with the lukewarm glow of mild optimism that I can spend some time in there without wrapping up like Captain Oates. I'll let you know how that pans out. Unless I forget.

This gem of Korean workmanship (sadly the box doesn't specify which one) was not the only treasure in the big Poundstretcher though, oh dear me no. There was also this little fella.



See how his eyes flash with a desperation for your love that is borderline psychotic? This is going to be presented to some poor child in less than a fortnight, and they're going to have to pretend like it doesn't make them want to cry. If that's not a case for calling in the NSPCC I don't know what is.

Ancient Niddrie Mystery Solved

Researchers from QMU have been getting to the bottom of the famous Edinburgh adage that ‘folk fae Niddrie dinnae wear socks’, with some interesting results.

A group of students camped in and around the Niddrie/Craigmillar area over a period of several weeks. They discovered that whilst people did often buy socks from local retailers, they seldom got to wear them more than once. The reason for this, they say, is bears.

“On several occasions we watched as mums put out their washing to dry,” explained group leader Professor Abraham Munchkin, “only to return an hour or two later to find everything on the line intact bar their foot sheaths. To be honest, the first few times we had popped over to Greggs in the interim so we just assumed the socks must have been taken inside first – they’re quite small, so will dry faster than jeans and stuff. But then we set up some cameras, and it was around that point we began to notice the bears.”

Munchkin hypothesizes that the bears have been using the socks to make puppets to entertain their cubs with.

“We followed one of them home to its cottage, and there was all sorts of detritus outside… Googly eyes, bits of loose thread, that type of thing. And when we looked in through the window, the daddy bear was building a sort of Punch and Judy stage thing out of old cardboard boxes. He displayed remarkable dexterity, for a bear.”

Next year Munchkin hopes to secure funding for research into the possibility that foxes were responsible for the recent theft of a job lot of tap shoes from Fort Kinnaird.