A shrub, over 2 metres high, with a very simple shaped leaf, mid-green, slightly shiny with deep lines, about 5/6cm long, not thought to be deciduous; no flower yet discovered. Stems a bit like...
My son tells me he has just received a message from the student loan company congratulating him on completing his repayments, and also telling him he had overpaid by £2,000. He queried this, saying...
I need to find a knowledgable source of information on light fittings. I have tried visiting showrooms, but their salespeople don't know enough. I have found a couple of specialist lighting websites...
This site is getting clunkier and clunkier, and I don't think it is my computer which is to blame. It is taking ages to click from section to section and from question to question. And now I find that...
Apart from the fact that my fingernails are in a pretty poor state anyway, one of them has started to part company from the nail-bed beneath. One corner of it has become detached, so the line between...
A friend was passing a few twigs round in the pub, so I can't photograph it. It grows about person-height, stems are quite slender, leaves are simple, light-green in colour, narrow and about the...
I once read a book ( many years ago) which was supposed to be the story of a chair, told by the chair itself, including all sorts of grand places it had been kept, and all sorts of grand people who...
Tomorrow I shall be making one of my huge beef stews. I was listening tot he Food Programme today, and they were talking about beans and how nourishing and tasty they were. I looked in the supermarket...
I now have a wonderful instant coffee ! But it is due to suffer the same fate as the cake in MacArthur Park. (You know the bit, "I'll never get the recipe again . . . . ") What happened was that I...
I am looking for a really good instant coffee which does not pretend it is real coffee with bogus froth on the top and bogus grounds in the bottom. I'll pay what it costs, but I'd like something...
I have "inherited" a large quantity of haberdashery, including numerous sewing machine needles. ( Standard Singer-style) The sizes seem to be stamped on them, visible with magnifying glass, but I...
Is it worth turning off my PC when I stop work for lunch ? Does it take more electricity to turn on, connect to the Internet and get ready to work than to just to leave it on for an hour or two ?...
We keep hearing about colossal salaries and eye-watering bonuses being paid to fat-cat bosses of various national and international businesses. What on earth do they do with all that money ? School...
Occasionally i shell an ordinary-looking pistachio ( from a fresh packet, not more than a few days after purchase ) and the nut tastes really disgusting. Can this be dangerous ? ( Of course I spit it...
My open fire has a hearth made of earth-brown quarry tiles, but several of these have come a bit loose. They used to be stuck down - and grouted - with something black, onto what looks like a cement...
The public library staff told me they had e-access to various databases for tracing ancestry, so I went along to try to find the precise date of birth for a colleague who we suspect is approaching a...