"AND SOMEONE SNEAKIN' ROUND THE CORNER..."

Another day and another phone call from the hardware shop.

"Your knives are ready"

Dark Lady loves cooking and so over the years has amassed a formidable array of weaponry. Yet years of constant use mean they have become somewhat blunt. Like many things in life. Eyesight. Gum recession. Walking pace. This has been a gradual process until you realise that cutting a tomato means sawing away to little or no effect or squashing it on the work surface.

Something had to be done. So last week I took 9 of the not-so-lethal weapons to a local hardware shop to have them sharpened. Due to an intervention by the DL I didn't take them all to be fixed at the same time. Blunt they may have been but a blunt knife is better at cutting than no knife.

So the final four were ready and I slunk back to the shop to collect them.

"You a Chef?" asked the guy behind the counter.

Suppose it must have looked a little odd. Same bloke comes in with a load of knives. Goes away and comes back the next day with a load more to be serviced.

To begin with I was a little concerned to be wandering around a populous area laden with lethal weaponry. However, in the end you just forget about it and get on with it.

This was the undoing of a rather ditsy friend of mine who had linked up with a few mates in the pub one night before heading off to Germany to following morning early.

Well the evening wore on and much drink was consumed and she accepted a little gift from her friends and weaved her weary way home.

The following morning the alarm shook her noisily awake and, realising that she would be late if she didn't hurry and had - in her inebriated state - forgotten to pack for her weekend away, grabbed the bag she had been given by her friends the night before and flung a few things in, being careful to not include her ticket and passport. After all there are fewer dumber things to do that turn up for a flight without the right paperwork.

With minutes to spare she rushed to the check-in.

"Is this bag yours?"

Asked the rather stern unsmiling airline employee.

"Yes"

"Did you pack it yourself"?

"Yes"

"I SUPPOSE YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY?!!!!!"

…barked the official who had now been joined by the Police.

She was hustled into a side room and every item was removed from her bag as questions were hurled at my hung-over, bewildered and increasingly frightened friend.

Eventually her belongings were handed back to her with a lecture on how, in this day and age, chances could not be taken with anyone and she should have thought of that before she played such a terrible trick on the hard working front line staff.

As she tottered out to catch her plane (although by now that had gone so she had to get a seat on the next one) she wondered what on earth she had done to elicit this terrible response.

As she sat down and prepared to put her bag in the overhead locker, she got the first sober chance to look at it since she had received it in the pub the evening before....

It was a novelty case. Written on the side in large black letters was one word:

BOMB!