At some young age I acquired my - much older - brothers’ air rifle for a short while. I mucked around doing stupid things with it for a week or two until one day I fired at a thrush in a tree. I had no thought of consequences up to that point, but I hit the poor creature with the first shot and it immediately dropped from the branch. An understanding of death hit me at once, and I did not touch the rifle again.

In terms of etymology:

• Catapult comes from Greek, meaning “against” & “to hurl”, which is what they do.

• Sling(shot) comes from a Germanic word meaning “swing to and fro, twist or wind”. That may be the way you use the kind thing that David would have used against Goliath, but it certainly isn’t the way you use a handheld catapult.

Yes. For one thing, we have Reform in place in Suffolk, since the others didn’t run a full campaign, on the basis that it was all going to be unitary within 24 months. Now they will be there for the full term.

You can abuse your body a hell of a lot up to that age without too many issues. Those issues will start hitting home within the next decade or so though. Make a change for the better while you can.

I only accepted the invite from one friend, but did so a couple of times. They were a large and competitive family (I had been warned) who seemed to view family gatherings as part inquisition and part contact sport.

After the first time, I thought that it wouldn’t be as bad now that I had met them, but then discovered that they had been holding back out of politeness the first time. I realised the error of my ways after that and could see why my friend was in two minds about going at all.

Yes, a few times.

Why? Because I could. Various friends were spending time with their families. I was invited, but politely declined, having made the mistake of accepting in previous years.

It was glorious: pizza, pot noodles, mince pies, cheesecake and whatever I wanted to binge watch, read or listen to for about 4 days solid.

Sock, sock shoe, shoe.

Usually because I put my socks on in the bedroom, but my shoes are by the back door: i don’t put them on unless I am going outside.

I post between 3 and 5 a day. Is that ‘many’?

I am the mod of the sub that I post in. I didn’t expect to be the mod: the original mod has dropped off the radar, leaving me there. Since the I am only mod, I kinda think that I shouldn’t just leave it to die - and I like to keep up with the news in that field anyway, so…

All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

– Blaise Pascal

I had a ghettoblaster with tape-to-tape at some point in the '80s and certainly copied a couple of albums that way - but I’ve never really been into music that much, so it wouldn’t have been many.

Prior to that we did have a horrible old mono tape recorder which I used to record some HHGTTG episodes on it’s original radio transmission by standing it beside the radio and begging the family to be quiet. I may even have those tapes somewhere - for sentimental value. They were appalling quality as you would expect.

The remainder of the most dishonest people she has ever met presumably being the ones who stayed.

Do you have any examples that would support that? I can’t say that I have seen any tendency myself. If anything, dark comedy tends to come from marginalised groups, I’d say.

Memphis Belle (1990) - set in 1943, but at one point you can clearly see ‘tramlines’ - unsown strips - in a wheat field, which did not come into use until the 1960s.

UK - local authorities are busy un-declaring climate emergency, nationally they are blaming the wildfires on re-wilding done by lefties and anyway, they say, it is no worse than the summer of '76.

Brought up in the UK being expected to go to Sunday school etc - but Christianity seemed utter nonsense to me, and I was at a loss to understand why so many adults appeared to take it seriously.

Early 20s (still pre-internet)- I met someone who was involved with an evangelical church and I determined to give Christianity another proper ‘go’ and try to understand what people were finding in it. That eventually resulted in me crying in a heap in the corner of my room as I first felt that I could not even find ‘the door’ let alone open it and let Jesus in (as that church was keen on expressing it) and then realising that it had once and for all confirmed that there was no ‘door’ at all.

Shortly after that, I met a group of pagans and started reading some books about neopaganism, wicca and druidry. There was a lot of dross, of course (as there is in Christianity) but the underlaying ideas clicked immediately. I have been though several phases of how I express that and it is pretty low-key these days - but I have considered myself a pagan ever since. I changed career a couple of years after that and became a wildlife ranger for the next 20+ years and was a visiting pagan chaplain for some local prisons for several years as well.

I think only two now:

• The Hobbit - one large, illustrated edition but also my original paperback version, which I am loath to let go
• Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - both my wife and I are very fond of our individual copies.

I do have two versions of Plato’s Symposium, but one is in a volume along with the Karma Sutra, and another is with a couple of other Socratic dialogues, so not really the same book as such.

Non-existant. However, my older brother did have Fanny Hill, Lady Chatterly’s Lover, Portnoy’s Complaint & The Doors of Perception on his shelf - and we also had encyclopedias.

It seems completely alien to me.

Then Wells has done his job!

This is SF fulfilling it’s role as satire. Wells is commenting on the Victorian heroic, imperial ideal that was sold as the ideal for manhood at the time.

He is holding it up to question by an outsider: the Selenites.

He us saying much the same here as Wilfred Owen did in his Dulce et Decorum est.

Favourites include Lord of the Rings, Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey & Maturin series, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! trilogy.

Currently reading Bleak House.

From the article:

Closer to home, whilst the Isle of Man does have a small number of feral ponies located in the north east, it’s the wallaby and feral goat populations that cause debate between conservationists, ecologists, animal welfare campaigners and landowners.

They differ from the Dartmoor ponies in that they are classed as non-indigenous, but calls for a cull of both species are constant and can be undertaken entirely legally by anyone with a licensed shot-gun.

It seems that public opinion will be what saves the Dartmoor pony – let’s hope it does the same for wallabies and feral goats, and that they are afforded suitable legal protection.

It’s a bit tenuous, I agree, but it is an opinion piece, and people from the Isle of Man are allowed to have opinions on things elsewhere.

Regardless of the actual metabolite responsible, this does raise the question of whether, if any other species consume them and are susceptible, they see tiny versions of their own species?