The Royal family

One argument for keeping the Royal family is that it brings a lot of tourists to this country. We would get even more tourists at a fraction of the cost if we put the Royals in a theme park and employed them, at the market rate, to act out the lives of royal people. They could be put in the stocks from time to time so that the tourists could throw toy fruit at them.

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Holes

Holes can be divided into three categories: good, middling and evil. Among the evil holes may be counted manholes, pinholes, peepholes, and bogholes: they are treacherous and difficult to guard against, especially manholes, which often appear in the street without warning and swallow up the unwary passer by. The middling sort includes holes in the sleeves of cardigans, fenceholes made by cows' horns, holes in soap, sieveholes and unfinished tunnels. The good holes are instantly recognisable by their perfect shape and functional aptness. All bodily orifices have these characteristics: eye-sockets are exactly the right size and form for the eyes they contain, while sound would not dream of passing into the nostrils, nor smell into the earholes. Other good holes are those in the middle of birds' nests, the hollow spaces in dead tree trunks and the fingerholes of a flute. Out of a hole we came and into a hole we shall pass.

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Don't answer

Don’t answer that call! If it’s something important, the caller can leave a message. If it isn’t, then you are going to have your ear bent with all sorts of repetitive nonsense. You will have interrupted an important activity, such as dozing on the sofa, in order to hear that the guinea-pig has fainted or that there aren’t any broad beans in the shops. You will kick yourself for the rest of the day.

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Illusory existence

From time to time it is quite a good idea to check that you are not a fictional character. List your vital characteristics and search through a corpus of world literature to see if any of the characters is idealistic, generous, noble, just, romantic, heroic or magnetic, just like you. If so, it is probably the case that you are leading an illusory existence. Somehow you have escaped from the pages of a book, and you should return to it as quickly as possible.

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