Correct usage of fire blanket is to place it over fire and not flap it like a panicked banana salesman.

Before giving food, smear toddlers' faces, necks, hands, arms and any other exposed skin liberally with vaseline. Encrusted sauce, jam, crumbs, chocolate, milk, pastry, etc can now easily be whisked off with a putty knife after feeding.

Don't bother feeding toddlers - encourage them to forage. This can be turned into fun indoor or outdoor game and will also solve spider problem.

vaseline trick also works if you are painting. thin smear will wipe off skin easily and leave hands younger looking. Used to use it when enamel paints were used - not so necessary with modern water based paints.

Another trick is to wash with laundry powder. thsat removes anything including loose fingers etc and stings to buggery in any cut, scratch, skin blemish you've got.

[Am on limited syntax and grammar ration this week, so words may vary from that shown in text book illustrations.]

An idea for a @#$%& Christmas gift: Got an elderly relative with a habit of talking to themselves in public? Don't bother buying them an expensive mobile phone. Instead, just purchase the cheapest head-set you can get, and tell them that wearing it with the end of the lead in their pocket will make them look invisible.

This one really works. Miraculously, everyone will stop sidling away from Great Aunt Gladys in embarrassment, and think she owns the latest 'hands-free' Blackberry instead!

As an alternative to the spider solutions mentioned previously, consider that spiders are good hunters of household pests, and if left undisturbed will keep your house a happy, pest-free house to live in. This advice is particularly useful in the following circumstances: 1) you're too lazy to do much cleaning, and the spider has had ample time to build an elaborate web that you don't want to touch, or 2) the spider is big enough that traditional roles are reversed and the spider is deciding whether or not to squash you.

Considering that on average a person eats 4 spiders in their lifetime (usually in their sleep), why not catch 4, make a spider omelette and and get your quota out of the way, now!

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My computer beat me at chess, but I won at kickboxing

Do you have a recipe for huntsman spiders.?

Now is the early summer of my discontent and I moved a couple of permapine logs from the front drive to out the back and was greeted by 2 geckos (these would be finger food entree if I could be bothered to catch them - they are hiding under the window ledge and probably think I didn't see them), several huntman spiders - who didn't panic but calmly awaited me to relocate the posts and then calmly walked - not scuttled - to their new homes. (Must do a count of dogs - it's been very quiet out the back) and several of those nasty little black buggers whom I squashed as soon as I saw them. Some of these scuttled (not in the Fred style) to temporary hiding places, but I have new hose fittings and they suffered from catastrophic inundation and subsequent two dimensionality.

I'm afraid that redback pate is not to my taste, even if leavened by white spot paste.

As an alternative to behaving rationally about spiders, point out that most of the worlds most dangerous species of spider can be found in our houses.

Maybe for you. Here in New York they're pretty innocuous. On the other hand, we have house centipedes, which are particularly dangerous for their tendency to incite heart attacks by appearing very suddenly.

Tinned fruit make very useful weapons for unexpected encounters with scorpions. I never knew that Victoria had scorpions until one appeared on the floor when visiting the peninsula. I bravely jumped onto the bed in order to give accurate orders for the scorpion's assassination.

MS,

How are the cockroaches?

Friends of mine from London went to NY and the only thing they talked about were the cockroaches coming out of all the holes in reality.

It seemed to me when they made 'Men in Black' they were not making a fiction movie, in that respect at least.

But then Attenborough showed the big ones from somewhere in the tropics and I thought that if you could train these big buggers then you would have a very handy set of mobile drink coasters.

In about 1974, or 1976, or 1979, I was in Perth WA and in the week or so I was there I think in Oz a couple of people were taken by sharks, a couple were killed by box jellyfish, a few were killed by blue ringed octopi, and red backs got a couple. There may have been the odd stone fish in there somewhere too, after all this time one tends to get the details a bit smudged. I cannot recall if any tiger snake/taipan/black snake peradventures were reported.


But Oz is still the safest and best land in which to live.

I haven't seen any cockroaches yet, and I'm hoping I never will. I like bugs when they're in their natural habitat, but I don't want them invading mine!

> But Oz is still the safest and best land in which
> to live.

You've got that right--especially right now when winter is making its presence known. Brrrrr!

(subliminal message follows: Come to Australia.... Come to Australia... Stimulate our economy... no, that's not a double entendre...)

Come to Wales... we have Welsh people... no, don't run away!

Sigh.

Go to Australia... go to Australia...

Household tip No.45

On no account allow your husband to start working from home - you may never get on the computer again....

Household Tip No 87: Don't let your last teenage child grow up. You need them to program all the new electrical equipment you buy.

Yet it would seem to be a double edged knife- would you want to share a house with a teenager for the rest of your life?

Only if he was also Dr Who

That would be just strange. Though I am sure Kitten would like to know if any of you had a son who was also Dr Who.