Thursday, September 13, 2012

Nail varnish

I have learnt that the Human Species has been on the verge of extinction for the last million years because nobody had invented LA Girl Magnetic Toenail Varnish. Without it, mating partners cannot be attracted. A person whom I won't identify borrowed a small bottle of acetone to remove said varnish, and replaced it in approx. the Wrong Place on the Bench, viz., the edge, which was discovered by my knocking it off, and the workshop thereafter enjoying the delightful odour of hydrocarbons while I rummaged round for eight hundred thousand shards of glass.

Here is the varnish.

Willa, I am chagrined to observe, has 242 followers of her blog and I have a meagre seven, so if you chance to be one of those seven and are thinking about setting up in business then I'd focus on fingernail enhancement products rather than home-made recumbent bicycles.T'other day the person who I'm not identifying went for a microlight fly, she being on the verge of departing and the Tasman coast being rather prettier than, if not as interesting as, London. Microlights abound here: people subsidise their hobby by pretending it is a Business and charging for flights. I being curious asked the pilot afterwards such things as how many ccs (1300) and how many horsepower (100) and how fast (70mph cruising) and how much petrol (12 litres per hour) and from them all was able to deduce things like 26 ½ miles per gallon, which is rather better than a modest planing powerboat that I went in which did 4.546 miles per gallon. -

"What's that dial?" I had asked the boat owner, it registering 27.
"Twenty-seven miles per hour."
"Miles?" (New Zealand measures things in kilometres.)
"Miles," he had said.
"And what's that one?"
I had pointed to another dial that also said 27.
"Litres per hour."
"So that's one mile per litre of fuel."
"No it's not! How do you work that out?"
The boat owner was a Rotarian.



The microlight pilot told me the big windscreen in front of him caused massive turbulence, such that his overalls were sucked forwards when he was flying. I watched as it took off - three seconds from the engine going from full power to lift-off - but didn't see the landing, though she - the person - said it was fun drifting along a few feet above the ground, and it stopped in no distance at all. I decided that when all the people who assure the Internet that there is no oil crisis are proved right, and when all the people who assure the Internet that the frighteningly rapid melting of the polar ice caps is perfectly normal variation and nothing to worry about are also proved right, then I shall buy a microlight and fly it out of our garden.

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