Watchfulness Rewarded

We often take our domestic utensils for granted. We buy basic implements for cooking and eating and use them until they wear out. Or find new fancy ones. Or use more distinguished sets to try and impress the neighbours.

This lack of interest in our own purchases is a human weakness it is all too easy to take advantage of. Disposable goods can be made more disposable by the way they are made without too many people caring. Also it is expected that some will get lost along the way. If cutlery and cookware are plentiful they can be easily replaced. Filling in the odd gap goes with the territory even though no one can explain where the missing items have disappeared to or why anyone would take them away.

It is therefore very much in the public interest that a new study has now identified what happens to our cutlery and cookware when we are not looking. Its revelations should produce greater watchfulness in all of us. Military battles nowadays are fought at night so the enemy cannot see you. Consider for yourselves how damaging it is to be at the mercy of things you do not care enough to see.

Cutlery mismatches abound in households. If we buy a complete set of cutlery and we discover it contains the wrong number of knives or forks or spoons we do not accept the goods and demand a full set. Yet very few full sets survive. It is easy to see why forks would disappear as they are blessed with multiple legs and can therefore run faster than we can. Knives would find escape more difficult as they would be obliged to hop and run the risk of sticking into the surfaces they hop on if they do not remain exactly upright. Spoons similarly can only waddle backwards and forwards. Yet there is no differential patttern of absence between the different utensils. All sets which are missing a utensil are just as likely to have a spoon or knife missing as a fork. The new study reveals why this is. Our knives escape by cutting cleanly into any surface and allowing the rent to close over them. They hide there until they eventually dissolve into their surroundings. Spoons escape by sending and receiving satellite messages on their curved heads until they connect with a strong beam bouncing off a piece of space junk discarded by moon missions and the like. They then ride this beam when no one is looking to connect with the piece of space junk. Escaped spoons are the reason misconnections on the phone happen. The forks which run away do so under their own steam but all eventually go to the same place. We have all heard the phrase "forking hell" which refers to the flat straight marshes of Kent. The escaped forks are to be found in Forking Heaven which is a series of tangled steel joists holding up roads in the west of Iceland.

There may not be dangerous consequences to the escape of cutlery. But the same cannot be said of the escape of cookware. The study has finally answered one of the great questions of domestic man. Where do all the saucepan lids go? Invariably in any household there are more saucepans than there are lids and the lids that are there do not necessarily belong to those saucepans. Now it has been proven that the saucepan lids are all what we generally call "flying saucers". The ratio of correct saucers to correct cups in a household remains significantly greater than that of correct saucepan lids to correct saucepans. It is the lids that visit us from other planets observing our way of life and stealing our technology and culture. Every so often some go back and report to their native planets. As we have all seen some space creatures have now become quite proficient at earthly ways and languages as a result of the spy lids. The Star Trek programmes uncovered many which speak Americanised English and look and move like humans. Furthermore we all need to watch out for frying pans. Our remaining security is being ever more compromised by these untouchable creatures whose handles get longer and longer and are made of more and more broadcast receptive materials. Biscuit tin mountings began CB radio. What new forms will be created by frying pans controlled by them alone? How much will they damage or even destroy every other broadcast medium?

The new study uncovering the truth behind the disappearing objects should be required reading. It is published by Half Baked Press in Montana under the title "An Investigation Into The Degeneration Of Complete Sets Of Domestic Utensils With Particular Reference To Cutlery And Cooking Pots And Its Causes". The work is jointly authored by Drs. Josiah Abraham Mohammad, Gordon Quack and Marie Osmond of the University of Life. The same authors also produced the famous tome "A Comprehensive Overview Of The Angles Of Bends In Paper Clips Of Varying Degrees And Contexts Of Usage" which like this study was funded by the U.S. Government Information Department. That study demonstrated that every paper clip which did not bend or corrode within certain predefined limits was an agent of a hostile power and lived on Gatorade. It is widely believed in the academic community that although the conclusion of the first study and its research methods left something to be desired the authors have now incontrovertably hit the mark.

In all probability we will continue to care little about where our missing cutlery and saucepan lids have gone. No one ever cares about threats until they come to our door. But we do have an alternative. We would not need cookware or cutlery if we all ate in restaurants and the potential harm to our planet would decrease considerably. By an amazing coincidence the authors of the new study are about to open a chain of restaurants. Previously they produced magnetised rubber devices which were designed to replace paper clips. Of course there is no connection between the conclusions of the studies and their commercial interests. Similarly there is no connection between the conclusions and the fact the studies were funded by the U.S. Government. Now we know what we are dealing with we can all banish such thoughts from our heads upon pain of death. Can't we? Let us find out.