26 August 2002
Fatter earth blamed on selfish behaviour
Amid all the alternative excitement, you may have missed the announcement earlier this month that the earth is getting fatter.
Measurements taken during the last four years have show that its “dynamic oblateness” (a phrase I intend to make use of on a personal level) is increasing. Obviously, this is our fault.
Plans are already afoot to arrange a Fat Earth Summit in Reepham, to which all world leaders will be invited.
Pressure groups are already being formed to alert us all to the appalling effect we are having on the fatness of the earth by our thoughtless and selfish behaviour. Governments are promising to tackle the problem by increasing taxes on anything that promotes fatness, particularly in earth-like objects, and to demand as much paperwork as possible. There will probably be a charge for congestion.
The UEA School of Fatness Research has already put together computer models demonstrating that by the end of this century the earth will be so fat that life as we know it will be almost impossible, except for mosquitoes and some owls.
A spokesman, Dr Paul “Black” Grape, said that the recent flooding in Europe, the drought in America and heavy showers over parts of Norfolk were undoubtedly a result of the fatter earth – a far more important phenomenon than the Asian Brown Cloud. He said it was essential that we all stop using cars and jump up and down a lot, thus compacting the surface area of the earth. It would help if we could do this near the equator.
Meanwhile a controversial view was put forward by Professor V A R Scheinlich of Hingham, an expert on distortions of time, space and earth. He said the increase in earth fatness over the last four years correlated surprisingly closely with the huge growth in speed cameras.
Since road deaths had also increased, he urged that they should be abolished. “If not, we will all slide towards the poles, which hardly bears thinking about,” he said. Road humps would also have to go, for obvious reasons.
Missing from museum
![[Cartoon] Castle smoke signals](/articles/images/020826Castle.jpg)
The new-look Castle Museum in Norwich is a strange experience – veering wildly between hi-tech and no-tech, with iffy-tech children’s play areas thrown in. All in all, a surreal though occasionally enchanting journey that made me happy to cling on to the reassuring reality of those old pictures and stuffed birds.
Perhaps the most surreal thing about the museum, however, is that it doesn’t have a public phone. Which means that if you need to contact someone during your (minimum) two-hour visit, you have to leave the castle, scour the immediate vicinity for a telephone and then, having found and used it, decide you can’t be bothered to climb the hill back to the museum. I’m no expert, but that doesn’t seem to me to be brilliant marketing strategy – unless of course they’re going for a rapid turnover.
Clue to location of Atlantis in South Norfolk
Intrepid explorer Richard Meek, fresh from his triumph in exposing the threat to Norfolk from its two dormant volcanoes at Thetford and Sheringham, believes he may have pinpointed another little-known fact about the county.
“I believe that Atlantis is at the bottom of Diss Mere,” he revealed yesterday. “Everywhere else has been checked and, as Sherlock Holmes used to say, once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains – however improbable – must be the truth.”
Many locals talk about strange goings-on in the Mere in years gone by, but Mr Meek is the first man brave enough to put the jigsaw together and stick his neck out.
He believes the demise of Atlantis may have resulted indirectly from the explosion of Mount Beeston. “Of course, many people believe Atlantis was much bigger,” he said. “But that has not been proved.”
What convinced him finally was the clue that he believes was left by an Atlantis survivor, who named the town Diss.
“It’s obvious when you see it,” he said. “When you get close to the town, Diss appears. See? Disappears. He was obviously trying to tell us something. Atlantis is definitely in there.”
Rumours of dragons nesting under the Green at Hunstanton have still to be investigated by Mr Meek, who expressed himself “sceptical, though it might explain the pier catching fire”. The former Blue Dragon swimming pool in the town could be significant.
Aliens try to merge in, but get details wrong
Aliens are among us. They look like us, speak a bit like us, and some of them work like us: but they haven’t got the behaviour quite right yet. I don’t discard litter in the street, and I bet you don’t either. But they do. I have seen them in action, and they come in many shapes and sizes.
Last week I observed a retired-type alien “surreptitiously” brushing rubbish out of his car and on to a city street before, presumably, returning to his space ship. Younger aliens – and there are thousands of them – routinely discard packaging or anything else they don’t want before beaming up to the planet Me.
One trick these aliens are apparently unable to master is how to use a public convenience. I mean, how difficult is that? But surveys of these amenities routinely reveal the kind of unpleasantness that must presumably be normal in the home lives of aliens.
Attempts are being made to locate their planet and blow it up in an unneighbourly but satisfying way, but so far such attempts have been embarrassingly unsuccessful.