Pronged

Maybe I'll try to squeeze another one in, under the wire.

Here's a bit of hilarious stand-up that will really make you think.

You know when you're watching a nature programme, right, and they describe the animal's sense of smell? Or sight? 

It's always either really good or really bad. It's never just... average.

You never get them saying: "The leopard's most useful predatory tool is its eyesight. A leopard's vision is around... 1.1 times as good as a human's. So pretty much the same as ours, give or take. It's not even, like, always the case. It's an average. Some leopards have worse vision than some humans. It's really very, very similar.

Anyway..."

I suppose mediocre qualities get omitted from the final voice-over. They go without saying, really. They don't start each section by telling you the animal is composed of atoms. 

You see?

Pretty solid stuff.

It's funnier if you imagine me doing an impression of Richard Attenborough. Or David or whoever. As long as it's an Attenborough, the laughs will be there.

How about this for the first line of a novel?

I've never had people gang up on me. But once, last Christmas, I had some people gang down on me. I didn't even realised what had happened until afterwards.

I'm asking to have it printed in blue.

That's two good ideas so far: the stand-up material and the novel first line. One more and I can get back to my Neptune jigsaw. It's pretty tough going. I still can't even tell whether it's supposed to be the planet or the god.

Is this piece a trident or Triton?

AAHAHA! That's a proper Neptune's moon/god confusion joke.

"But Paul, don't both terms come from the same classical root? Obviously the planet and moon's names are an intentional parallel to the Greek myths?"

Yes, fine. Still. I thought it was clever.

Here's my third idea:

Bring back sacks. Sacks have fallen by the wayside. In the old days, everything was in sacks: potatoes, coal, kittens. But the box and the bag took over so quickly that we didn't even register it.

Bring back sacks.

Remember what made Britain great.

Sacks. 

Sacks did.