by Tom Cutler
Sue has two children, Mitzi and Sophie, who love her just as much now as they did before their father left them. They are identical twins, and always do things together, but from their earliest years their mum made sure to dress them in different clothes and treat them as individuals. In any case, although they look alike and are sometimes mistaken for each other, their personalities and attitudes are quite different.
Mitzi likes ponies, while Sophie loves sweets and netball. Mitzi has pictures of handsome film stars on her wall. Sophie has a picture of her mum.
Today Suzanna is picking up her children from St Juthwara’s primary school. She is excited because they have been giving a talk about the Second World War (together, of course) to the assembled children in the school hall. Despite their confident personalities, the twins have been nervous for a couple of days. After all, addressing the whole school would be intimidating for anyone, and this is their first ever talk. Luckily their mum helped them with the preparation.
Sue arrives at the school gates and tries to chat to some of the other mums, but they have their own buggy-pushing clique, so she decides to wait in the car.
The doors open and the first out are Sue’s children. They walk slowly to the car, they never run anywhere, and get in carefully. They tell their mum that their talk has been a great success.
As they are putting on their seatbelts, the school secretary runs across to the car, waving an envelope. She hands it through the window. ‘Don’t forget your fee,’ she says. Sue’s children open the envelope to find a £50 note. Something they were definitely not expecting.
Sue drives them home slowly. They all live together in the same block of flats, St Catharine’s Court, but on separate floors and in separate flats. The fact that the block is a retirement home with stairlifts, assisted-living facilities, emergency alarm pulls and good wheelchair access doesn’t worry them, and none of the very old people they meet remarks on their presence in a place purpose built for the elderly and infirm.
The problem
Why do Sue and her children live in an old people’s home, and why do the people in the home not find it peculiar? They are not obliged to live there. Sue has plenty of money in the bank and they could afford to live anywhere else they chose.
Tap here for the solution.
The car in the river
The mystery
One day in July, after weeks of rain, the rivers as the foot of Skiddaw in the Lake District were brimming. The Derwent, which rises at Styhead Tarn below Scafell Pike, England’s highest peak, was flowing rapidly through the valley of Borrowdale and into Derwentwater. Its journey continued into broad Bassenthwaite Lake before it picked up more water from the stony River Greta, outside Keswick.
Returning home from a lunch near Keswick in his Land Rover Defender, Farmer Wynn Loss was driving through the magnificent Cumbrian scenery. The sun was high in the sky, the great horseshoe of Scafell Pike was away to his right, and, as he drove, he whistled happily to himself.
Reaching across to pick up his cigarette lighter, which had fallen from the seat onto the floor of the van, Wynn suddenly found himself spinning off the road and out of control. He smashed through a fence and began to tumble down a steep gorge before the Land Rover plunged into a fast-flowing river.
Wynn was suddenly alert. In slow motion he analysed the situation. The vehicle was in the river, and air bubbles were boiling up to the surface. He reached for the door handle but realised that he had broken his arm. It didn’t hurt but a little spike of white bone stuck through his check shirt.
When he tried to unbuckle his seatbelt with his good arm he found that he couldn’t do it. Neither could he operate the windows, which were closed except for a long thin one at the back which he knew was going to let in water, and through which he realised he could not escape. Before he had a chance to think of what else to do the car sank to the bottom of the river, with Wynn trapped inside.
For two hours the vehicle stood on the river bottom until, finally, a team of rescuers reached it. They found Wynn in the driving seat, still alive. He was complaining that his arm had really begun to hurt, and wondered what had taken them so long as his lunch had worn off and he was ready for his dinner.
They dragged him out, onto the bank, and a kindly soul took him off to hospital. A local garage volunteered to pull his car out.
The problem
Wynn had no artificial air supply in the car. How did he survive for two hours, strapped into his Land Rover at the bottom of the river?
Tap here for the solution.
The sad end of Felicity Ffolkes
The mystery
Felicity Ffolkes had saved up for the holiday of a lifetime. She had always wanted to go on safari, and South Africa seemed a good bet: giraffes, elephants, zebras, leopards and, of course, lions. Felicity had always loved lions and hated to see them cooped up in a cement zoo in the wet city, pacing up and down like hospital outpatients waiting for their brain scan results. The sunlit expanse of the open savannah was, she felt, their proper home.
For her holiday Felicity settled on the Onvoldoende Game Reserve, a large safari destination, about the size of Israel. Onvoldoende has a full complement of wildlife, and the animals are accustomed to game-viewing vehicles driving up and down all day. This would mean a good chance of seeing the big cats that were her great love.
She was just getting over relationship failure number nine and would be going alone. She’d decided on the self-drive option through the reserve so that she wouldn’t have to listen to loquacious guides talking about elephants not having scrotums, or sit next to sweating businessmen with tight shorts and porky polka-dot wives.
The time for her holiday arrived and, on the day, Felicity was finally ready. So, with factor-500 sunscreen and rubbishy holiday book safely packed in her luggage, Felicity took a malaria tablet and boarded her flight. It went without a hitch.
Once she’d arrived at the hotel, Felicity unpacked, put on her expensive new safari outfit, and popped down to the bar to show it off. There, a man with incredible creases in his trousers tried to buy her a drink. He was sent packing in a nimbus of aftershave.
Felicity polished off a couple of Martinis looking out across the pool into the shimmering blue distance. Then she hit the sack to catch up on her sleep before the next day’s adventure.
She was greeted next morning by a magnificent sunrise, and after a light breakfast she got into her hired car, which was a new, expensively made, very solid German vehicle. It was a high-end model with doors so heavy they gave a satisfying thwoomp when you shut them. The electric windows worked well and there was excellent air conditioning so she’d decided against a sunroof. Felicity could photograph the lions with the windows up without any trouble. She checked she had plenty of water, and then set off.
The nearest entrance to the safari park was a mile away, under a swing barrier operated by a sleepy barefoot fellow in a floppy hat and dark glasses. He was smoking a funny-smelling cigarette and seemed rather too relaxed for Felicity’s liking. He told her to follow the trail, not to get out of the vehicle, and not to open her doors or windows. He then waved her through and ambled back to his modest cabin.
It wasn’t long before she saw half a dozen lions standing by a wizened tree. She stopped the car and took out her camera. As she started clicking, one of the lions sauntered towards her. It was a large male, with a handsome golden mane. This was great.
Felicity got some terrific close-ups as the big cat approached her. Her last picture was of the animal’s open mouth as it gave an almighty roar. Thank goodness all the doors were shut and all the windows up. Then, with one swipe of its huge paw the lion pulled Felicity from the car and ate her.
They found her vehicle the next day. The doors were locked, the windows all up and nobody was inside. Some shredded safari clothes beside the car told the story. That was the sad end of Felicity Ffolkes, the woman who was eaten by a lion.
The problem
How did
the lion manage to get hold of and eat Felicity while she was sitting in her well-made, new, hi-spec car, with all its windows up and all its doors firmly shut and locked?
Tap here for the solution.
The blind beggar
The mystery
Nobody who has seen St Paul’s Cathedral can forget the majesty of this towering masterpiece of English Gothic revival design. This lofty Anglican church is one of the finest and most interesting examples of early Victorian architecture in West Bengal.
Oh sorry, I should have said, I’m not talking about St Paul’s Cathedral in London, I’m talking about St Paul’s in Calcutta, now spelt ‘Kolkata’ by some rather touchy people.
St Paul’s Calcutta is definitely a cathedral worth seeing. Its bishop, at the time of writing, is the deliciously named Rt Revd Ashoke Biswas, who sounds to me like a children’s TV programme that I remember.
Calcutta is India’s intellectual and cultural capital, bursting with eggheads and dapper gentlemen parading themselves through the cool parks and dreamy backwaters in fancy clothes, their poised wives decked out in the most sumptuous wafting saris.
Though these metropolitan types have plenty of money to spend, there are in the city many very poor people. Here and there barefoot beggars ply their trade. The classic outfit of loincloth, turban, scratchy beard and begging bowl is de rigueur.
When I was travelling in Calcutta as a young fellow I remember meeting a one-eyed Indian mystic who was performing tricks in the street. Mingling with the mendicants and market traders – his brothers-in-flim-flam – he was known, I learned, for Larraj, the little monkey he kept on a piece of string. The monkey held a jug into which passers-by dropped the occasional coin, as nearby pedestrians dodged the unruly traffic.
The performer, who spoke good English, told me his name was Mandeep, meaning ‘Light of the mind’, though once I got to know him he preferred to be called Max. I remember him showing me an eye-popping trick in which he used a wooden stick to move three wooden cups around on a mat. To my delight, small birds’ eggs kept appearing and vanishing under one or another of these cups until, finally, he lifted all of them to reveal three tweeting yellow chicks.
I gave Mandeep a packet of Refreshers, which he found delicious, and he invited me back to his none-too-luxurious rooms, hoping, I suppose, for more sweets. As we sat chatting, drinking some white stuff he had made in his rickety kitchen, and discussing the unhappy condition of Calcutta’s beggars, the mystic suddenly closed his solitary eye and posed a short but very tricky problem. This I now realise was the first lateral thinking mystery I had heard.
I racked my brains all night over curried goat and mishti doi but I couldn’t work it out. When I looked for Mandeep the next day he had gone.
The problem
A blind beggar’s brother has died. How are the two related? (They are not brothers.)
Tap here for the solution.
A birthday message from the Queen
The mystery
On 24 June 2015 retired bricklayer and family man Charles Trimble reached his 100th year. He celebrated his birthday at a small party with four generations of his family, in the retirement home in Skegness, where he was then living. It took him ages to blow out all the candles on his cake.
When Mr Trimble was born, George V was on the throne, and he has since lived under three kings and one queen, witnessed twenty-four premierships, and gone through two world wars, one wife and twelve fishing rods.
Thinking it would be nice if Mr Trimble received a celebratory greeting card from the Queen on his 100th birthday, Robert Nobbler, one of the nursing home’s staff, applied to the official Anniversaries Office a few weeks before Charlie’s birthday. He completed a standard form and sent along Charlie’s birth certificate, as proof of his age. He received confirmation that his form and the birth certificate had been received in good time.
After a bit of a wait, Mr Nobbler got an official communication from the Anniversaries Officer explaining that, because of a technicality, the Queen would not be able to send Mr Trimble a birthday greeting until at least the following year.
Nobbler was beside himself with fury, knowing that there was no guarantee that Charlie would still be alive in a year’s time. He rang the Anniversary Office and got through to a helpful person who calmed him down and explained the technicality to him. It was something of a shock to Nobbler and he was astonished to discover it. But when he went round to other members of staff to explain the point in question, nobody was surprised.
Anyway, Charles Trimble didn’t get his greeting from the Queen in 2015, though his family were hoping against hope that he would still be around in 2016 to receive it.
Charlie wasn’t bothered one way or the other. He was just pleased to discover that soft birthday sponge is the ideal foodstuff for a denture-wearer because you can eat it by taking your teeth out and just sucking.
The problem
What was the technical reason which meant that the Queen was unable to send Charlie Trimble a greeting card for his 100th birthday in 2015?
Tap here for the solution.
Talking rubbish
The mystery
In the 1950s and 60s domestic households created far less rubbish than they do today. Our potato peelings, tea bags and eggshells went in the compost and any paper that wasn’t torn into squares and hung on a string in the outside lavatory, or used to light the fire, was also put in the garden rubbish. Egg boxes were made of recyclable papier-mâché, not plastic, and housewives – remember them? – used to shop not by using a million plastic carriers but by throwing a string bag or a basket over their arm. Any greengroceries that were mud-covered or too wet to go into the reticule unwrapped were put into a brown paper bag, or rolled up in newspaper.
After a fish-and-chip supper or a curry, you didn’t need a low loader to get rid of the polystyrene containers, plastic cutlery and plastic bags. There was much less packaging on supermarket products, too. Half a dozen sausages or a few slices of ham did not require ten minutes of cursing with a knife and scissors to remove the vacuum-shrunk casing.
If your tailor or outfitter sold you a shirt, he wrapped it in a bit of tissue and might have pinned it here and there. You didn’t need to remove 1,000 mysterious plastic clips and acres of cardboard stiffeners.
If you ordered a cup of coffee you got a human-sized portion in a china cup and saucer, not a polystyrene bucket-load.
The morning after a party you were not left with an Everest of empty beer cans. You just had a few bottles that your friendly off-licence man would smilingly take back, before returning your deposit. Milk came in bottles that the milkman took away again every day, and the dustmen emptied one small dustbin per family per week, though they still managed to leave a trail behind them along the path. Nowadays, economy and make-do-and-mend have given way to so-called ‘convenience’ and instantaneous gratification. Just one skinny student now needs three huge wheelie-bins to dispose of just a week’s mountainous garbage.
As a token of all this there is one particular household product, used today by nearly everybody in the developed world, which has indisputably made everyday life a bit easier and more pleasant, but at a tremendous cost. Every year, thousands of millions of these things are employed around the world. Although they could be reused, they very seldom are. Often, after being used just once, they are simply put in the bin without a second thought. They are therefore responsible for more sheer waste than any other household article on the planet.
This product is lightweight and extremely convenient, and, though it is now a part of nearly everybody’s life, it first became widely available only in the 1980s. Since that time its careless use and disposal has increased at an alarming rate.
These very damaging commodities use enormous amounts of energy in their manufacture and, though small, they expand to many times their original size. They are difficult and expensive to recycle, so almost all are just thrown in the bin. Most end up in landfill sites, whe
re it takes something like 300 years for them to degrade, about the same time as it takes for plastic carrier bags to disintegrate.
Over time they damage the environment by breaking down into toxic particles that contaminate soil and water, eventually entering the food chain. If they are carelessly disposed of, their massive surface area can easily lead to blocked drains, causing flooding and sewage overflows, and providing a ripe breeding ground for bacteria.
Ironically, these things could simply be wrapped up and safely tied inside a plastic bin liner before being thrown away. But this hardly ever happens.
The result of all this is that governments and consumers alike are under increasing pressure to think twice before they simply chuck these convenient but very harmful things in the bin.
The problem
What are these damaging items, which instead of being put carefully into a bin liner and disposed of responsibly, are carelessly thrown away, ending up filling landfill sites in their millions?
Tap here for the solution.
The Flood
The mystery
Most people know the story of the Flood as told in the Bible, but not everyone believes it. Modern research has suggested that there must have been about 35,000 species aboard the ark, and to a sceptical mind it seems impossible that a wooden boat of the size mentioned – about that of a modern aircraft carrier – could actually have floated under all that weight. Indeed, since the 19th century scholars have agreed that the story cannot be literally true.
However, a recent study from Leicester University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy has concluded that the dimensions given in the Bible would actually have allowed the ark to float even with all those animals on board.