In the Dark

Not a lot of people know that one of my first publications was a contribution to the Top Tips section of the esteemed Viz Comic, which originates from my home town of Newcastle upon Tyne. The aforementioned Top Tips offer absurd, impractical or ludicrous suggestions to parody those in “lifestytle”  magazines proposing handy hints to make domestic and everyday life easier.

I’ve been tweeting a few of my favourites over the last few days, including a couple of (very) vaguely astronomical ones, so I thought I’d collect some of them here. The first is relevant to this week’s festivities:

• Avoid feeling uncomfortably hot during your graduation ceremony by wearing only underwear underneath your gown
• A ‘guide bat’ tethered to your finger with a short piece of string is the perfect way to avoid trees and horses in the dark.
• Prevent your shoes from giving you blisters by lining their insides with sticking plasters
• Astronomers avoid total blindness when viewing the sun  by using a telescope rather than binoculars
• Reduce the risk of night-time fires by soaking all your furniture with a hosepipe before going to bed
• Make your own inexpensive mints by leaving blobs of toothpaste to dry on a window sill
• A used condom filled with water and left on a radiator makes an attractive yet inexpensive lava lamp
• Avoid the need for expensive binoculars by simply standing cl0ser to the object that you wish to view
• Avoid hiring unlucky people by immediately tossing half the CVs into the bin
• Sausage rolls sewn together side by side make an excellent emergency wig for judges
• Dabs of silver model aircraft paint can transform  repulsive facial warts into fashionable piercings

Feel free to add your own contributions- preferably original and, even better, with a physics or astronomy theme – through the medium of the comments box…