A COMPLETELY USELESS PIECE OF TRIVIA

Whaddaya mean 'useless'? That's a fascinating insight!

And how did you discover this, Tommy?

Well Roger. I was lucky enough to win a prize on the Gerry Ryan Irish Radio Programme - a week's safari in Kenya and, while travelling from Isiolo to Muranga - we saw what looked like a small hill glittering in the distance. Immediately thoughts of an undiscovered diamond mine flitted through our minds. Alan Quartermain eat your heart out. So we prevailed (you tend to talk like this after reading King Solomon's Mines) upon our guide to approach the hillock. He was strangely reluctant, all the while muttering about 'obeah' (am I in the right continent?) and evil spirits.

Anyway, to make a long story boring, we arrived at the mound and - you'll never guess!! - it was thousands and thousands of glass eyes and marbles - Honest. Apparently, according to our Guide, about 50 years previously, a very large excursion of one-eyed marble players arrived at Isiolia (this is Swahili for "One-Eyed Man") for the annual marble playing championship. Unfortunately all 1,256 entrants were struck down with a mysterious malady. The organisers also succumbed and as there was no one to give a decent internment, the vacuum cleaners od Africa did the business. But the vultures couldn't digest the glass eyes. So there you have it.

That story will knock your eyes out!

Tommy, you've got the gift.

Equus, it did.

Met a bloke this morning with a glass eye.
No, he didn't tell me - it just came out in the conversation.

In Russia, suppositories cut from raw potatoes are used to help relief of haemorrhoids.

I would say "It couldn't hurt," but goshdarnit, it could.

Is vodka still made out of potatoes?

Is wine must still stamped out of grapes?

As I consider these potato suppositories (papas-itories in Spain, perhaps), I find myself asking these questions.

By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you can't sink in quicksand. Try it out if you don't believe me.

I do, and I won't.

There is a large population of wild camels in Australia. (Which isn't so trivial, really.)

All Polzar Bears are southpaws

And Polar Bears are also southpaws!

does the potato work?

curious minds are trying to figure it out.....

great story, Tommy.

did the vultures TRY to digest the eyes? And, if so, what possessed them all to crap in a heap?

Most animals are lefties. We yoomans are unique. Make of that what you will.

Well Dlowan, I don't know whether you know this but the vulture always goes for the eyes first - seems to be a delicacy among our feathered (carrion) friends. Doesn't matter whose eyes. In fact, its a bit of a race and a battle between the Tauregs and the vultures who gets the sheep's eyes first. Personally if I was dining with a Taureg Family, of mutton stew, I'd kinda hope that the vulture made it to the sheep's corpse first.

But enough of the dining habits of our feathered and desert friends - except to say that the origin of the old saying "Making Sheep's Eyes" at someone came from the hospitable practice of Desert Dwellers to rummage in the mutton stew pot and offer the honoured guest the eye of sheep.

But your question about the potato suppository as a cure for piles. Believe it or not how it came about was during a crack-down (Er...no pun intended) on drinking during Yuri Andropov's reign as Secretary General of the Communist Party of the USSR. What happened was that every one's breath was smelt by the KGB and anyone whose breath was a bit dodgy at all was hauled of to the Lubyanka for a spell of enforced Total Abstinence. Now the drunks got around this by having a Vodka Enema. They got the same kick out of it - so to speak - but none of the taste. And, of course there wasn't the usual social interaction between drinkers. I mean you want to insert a few slugs of the old Stolichnya into the appropriate orifice - it doesn't make for starting a discussion on how the Moscow Dynamos are going to do this season.

Back later with the Vultures Marbles - I need a drink.

Oh goody - this is better than the "Just So Stories"..........

Ahem, yes, just so.

in the 1970's, Norway used to be the biggest exporter of camels.
Don't know who the buyer was....

"User" is the computer professional's word for "idiot"