This year our Ten Things series – which surprisingly appears on the tenth of each month – continues concentrating on the amusing, both real and fictional. So this month we have …

Ten Characters I Invented

1. Geisha Bottle (actually more likely Gaysha; East End 6-year-old; sister of Chardonnay-Madonna Bottle)
2. Leena Stagarova (Soviet gymnast)
3. Madeleine Cookie (pole-dancer/stripper)
4. Mangoe Stikky (Jamaican rapper)
5. Merkin Hick (American backwoodsman)
6. Serge Tyde (Harbourmaster)
7. Winnie Baygo (black American Country singer)
8. Shaggy Mats (Australian gay male stripper)
9. Sir Chiltern Waternut (retired diplomat)
10. Revd Wakefield Sconce (Victorian rector; specialist in the propagation of primulas; pictured right)

This year we’re beginning each month with a (potentially logical) oddity to think about, and to keep the brain cells active. This month:

Maybe oxygen is slowly killing you and it just takes 75-100 years to fully work?

Please leave your thoughts in the comments.

This year our Ten Things series – which surprisingly appears on the tenth of each month – continues concentrating on the amusing, both real and fictional. So this month we have …

Ten Oddly Named Animals

1. Alston’s Singing Mouse
2. Annamite Striped Rabbit
3. Jackson’s Climbing Salamander
4. Malabar Whistling Thrush
5. Penis Snake
6. West Indian Whistling Duck (right)
7. Zigzag Elm Sawfly
8. Screaming Hairy Armadillo
9. Raspberry Crazy Ant
10. Striped Pyjama Squid

This year we’re beginning each month with a (potentially logical) oddity to think about, and to keep the brain cells active. This month:

If you replace “W” with “T” in “What”, “Where”, “When”, you get the answer to each of them.

Please leave your thoughts in the comments.

This year our Ten Things series – which surprisingly appears on the tenth of each month – continues concentrating on the amusing, both real and fictional. So this month we have …

Ten Ficticious Books from Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time

1. Ada Leintwardine; The Bitch Pack Meets on Wednesday
2. David Pennistone; Descartes, Gassendi and the Atomic Theory of Epicurus
3. Evadne Clapham; The Pistons of our Locomotives Sing the Songs of Our Workers (retitled as Engine Melody)
4. St John Clarke; Fields of Amaranth (see right)
5. Vernon Gainsborough; Bronstein Marxist or Mystagogue?
6. X Trapnel; Dogs Have No Uncles
7. Russell Gwinnett; The Gothic Symbolism of Mortality in the Texture of Jacobean Stagecraft
8. Quentin Shuckerly; Athletes Footmen
9. Mark Members; Kleist, Marx, Sartre, The Existential Equilibrium
10. Revd Salathiel Brightman; Attick and Roman Reckonings of Capacity for Things Liquid and Things Dry reduced to the Common English Mensuration for Wine and Corn

This year we’re beginning each month with a (potentially logical) oddity to think about, and to keep the brain cells active. This month:

Do twins ever realise that one of them is unplanned?

Please leave your thoughts in the comments.

This year our Ten Things series – which surprisingly appears on the tenth of each month – continues concentrating on the amusing, both real and fictional. So this month we have …

Ten Obituary Euphemisms

1. Convivial: Habitually drunk
2. Gave colourful accounts of his exploits: A liar
3. A man of simple tastes: A complete vulgarian
4. A lively conversationalist: A crashing bore
5. An uncompromisingly direct ladies’ man: A flasher
6. A confirmed bachelor: Homosexual (see right)
7. She left no close relatives: A lesbian
8. Always had a twinkle in his eye: A drooling pervert
9. Colourful: Criminal 
10. Active in the community: A busy-body