Fiction Useless Inventions
The Considerate Vacuum
A vacuum cleaner that stops the instant anybody in the room begins to speak, so that it never once interrupts, and therefore never once finishes.
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Fiction Animal News — Fiction
Fox Returns Single Shoe, Offers No Explanation
The boot was taken from the doorstep in June. It came back to the same doorstep in September, cleaned and facing the house.
Fiction Useless Inventions
The Weather Doormat
A handsome coir mat with a small display in the corner, which tells you, as you come in, exactly what the weather was doing an hour ago.
Fiction Animal News — Fiction
Bees Vote to Keep the Hive Exactly as Warm as It Was
After a full day of consultation involving every worker in the colony, the hive has resolved to maintain thirty-five degrees, as it has every year since the hive existed.
Fiction Animal News — Fiction
Hedgehog Completes Census of One Garden
Four nights of fieldwork, one garden, and a final count of every slug, step and gap under the fence, published in full to an audience of nobody.
Fiction Useless Inventions
The Loyal Trolley
A shopping trolley engineered, at considerable expense, to turn only left, on the grounds that a trolley which can go anywhere encourages a shopper who has thought about nothing.
Fiction Animal News — Fiction
Seagull Declares Chip Shop a Protected Site
The designation covers the pavement, the low wall, the bin, and a strip of air above the doorway that the gull describes as historically significant.
Fiction Tiny Stories
The Traffic Cone That Became a Landmark
It was put over a pothole on Marsh Road in 2011. The pothole was filled in 2013. Nobody has been able to remove the cone since.
Fiction Useless Inventions
The Doorbell That Knocks
A small brass fist mounted on the inside of your front door, which knocks politely whenever a visitor presses the button outside.
Fiction Animal News — Fiction
Badger Denies Involvement in Missing Garden Gnome
The gnome went from the rockery on Tuesday night. The badger was in the garden on Tuesday night. The badger describes this as a coincidence of a very ordinary kind.