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Monday 16 March 2020

An 8 x 8 in. answer?

During WW2 we took The Daily Mail, a shocking admission given the mouth-foaming, rightwing rag it has become. I can’t be blamed: I was only 10 when Adolf blew his brains out.

But how did my parents regard toilet paper then? Izal had a shiny side and a dull side and, for a time, offered single-line, Christmas-cracker jokes on each sheet. Encouraging users to tear off more sheets - literally - for a laugh.

But I think my mother regarded Izal as a luxury. Instead she cut up The Daily Mail into 8 x 8 in. squares and this did the job. Leading to further problems. A user, fascinated by part of an article on his (unused) square, would riffle through the others to discover how things turned out.

Lack of toilet paper seems to characterise the Trumpian Plague presently visited upon us. So how about 8 x 8 in. squares of The Guardian? A key question: is the The Guardian sufficiently soluble? Given our ages (80 and 84), we may be house-isolated for FOUR MONTHS! A jammed toilet would be just dandy.

Any sewage experts out there?

Rictangular Lenses. My novel, 49,011 words.
Lindsay had become familiar with such tours and knew what to look for. Tidiness was important where metal was being cut and drilled, Renewell recognised this and the painted floors shone. A forklift with specialised attachment worked at Goods In, speeding the flow of raw materials and allowing the large delivery doors to be kept closed. CAD was rampant, but that was to be expected.

Lindsay queried the operator in charge of a laser-cutter burning out complex shapes in mild steel.“How long to set up?”

He laughed. “Ten times faster than manual programming...”

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5 comments:

  1. I like the humour, RR. Much needed at this time, especially for us oldies. We, too, used to have cut squares of newspaper, hanging from a string, in our only outside lavatory when I was a boy. At night one took a candle and matches so one could actually find the paper when the time came to use it. At that time we took the Daily Mirror which seemed to have decent absorptive properties. The current obsession with weekend magazines would not be useful as clay paper would be a skating rink!

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  2. Now I wish we hadn't cancelled our newspaper subscriptions! These are such interesting times. Stay safe and healthy there.

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  3. Avus: Absorption wasn't my primary concern. But it appears The Guardian was ahead of me. Click link at end of amended post.

    robin andrea: Be careful what you wish (ie, click link).

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  4. If it comes to the crunch and you run out of the proprietary stuff why not buy the Daily Mail just to use it for that purpose - it would be good for the morale.

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