Mrs Doris Pemberton recently revealed the secret of her longevity on the occasion of her hundred and twenty-fourth birthday. "Well now, you see, I've always thought that the best way of staying alive is 'not to die'. My feeling is that if you go and let yourself die, then you're just asking for trouble, frankly. Oh, I have my critics, of course: people have said to me that this is pretty thin, as far as fitness regimes go, and as a philosophy it's quite unhelpful. But then, I'm still here, aren't I? Living proof, you might say."
Mrs Pemberton, who was recently found to be 78% Valium, has been studied by doctors from all over the world, most of whom concur that she has not yet died. They are at a loss to explain her great age, but have proffered the opinion that 'it's probably a virus.'
Mrs Pemberton, meanwhile, has no time for the medical profession. She has been happily ignoring their advice, chomping through sixty cigarettes a day and smoking anything up to sixteen pints of beer. It's all about determination, willpower and shortbread," she said. "But you can't live in a bubble, can you? All my friends made that mistake. Too busy concentrating on staying alive, they didn't notice they were dead till it was too late."
Mrs Pemberton died early yesterday morning in the freezer section of her local supermarket.
Emergency services were called to a Lincoln supermarket yesterday after a misaligned caster caused a pile up in the cakes and cereals aisle. The incident happened after a shopping trolley veered wildly out of control and careered into a pyramid of individual fruit pies. Four more trolleys then piled into the back, causing mayhem and destruction, and resulting in serious tailbacks stretching as far back as the Crunchy Nut Cornflakes. A police spokesman revealed that one woman had been taken to hospital after suffering severe lacerations from a Victoria cream sponge, but that otherwise there had been no serious injuries. Accident investigators are yet to make any official comment about the matter, although it is believed that a spillage of Frosties may have exacerbated the situation, following the discovery by forensic experts of a thin film of sugary coating on one of the lower shelves.
Fact: there are more miles of shelving in China than anywhere else in the world. The Chinese love their shelves, and use them for storing all sorts of things, such as small pottery figurines, half eaten packets of sweets, assorted items of stationery, art and craft materials, photographs of elephants, tigers and other exotic animals, self-tapping screws, dried fish, ingenious battery operated devices for the removal of nasal hair, nasal hair, models of famous Korean generals fashioned out of matchsticks and pipe cleaners, small metal washers which have thus far proved useless, but which may come in handy one day, the complete works of Neil Sedaka on eight track cartridges, tiny, pale blue round things, big, bright red triangular things, a man with one eye and a wooden leg called Dave, a 1975 Austin Allegro user's manual, paperclips, cocktail sausages and fluff.
Startling new data suggests that the amount of fluff in the Earth's biosphere will shortly reach catastrophic proportions. Until recently, most of the fluff on the planet was of natural origin, usually produced by dandelions, certain birds and as a result of particularly woolly sheep becoming snagged on bushes. However since the invention of the 'pocket' in 1542, levels of artificial fluff have risen dramatically. Today's modern synthetic pockets can produce fluff at an alarming rate, and in 2001 an initiative was introduced to encourage clothing manufacturers to convert pockets to more environmentally friendly polymers. This went some way towards stemming the ongoing tide of fluff, but critics have suggested that it's too little, too late. Besides, pockets are really only part of the problem. Fluff is also found down the backs of refrigerators, it forms spontaneously in attics and it is one of the chief by-products in the manufacture of lard.
With the seemingly perennial debate regarding the issuing of identity cards once again demanding media attention in the UK, one commentator has suggested an ingenious solution - the Lard Card. With the bearer's personal details and an identifying photograph clearly etched into its greasy surface, the Lard Card would carry none of the stigma attached to plastic cards, and would also come in handy for impromptu fry-ups, releasing small boys' heads from park railings, alleviating jogger's nipple and resurrecting the dead.