Creativity: Using your bottle
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Your support makes all the difference.ACCORDING to Dr B Pollington, there are only 11 2 uses for an empty one-litre fizzy drink bottle with cap. His main suggestion, however, sounds too dangerous to recommend, even on 5 November, while his second, as he admits, requires a two-litre bottle to be much use at all. Other readers have been less pessimistic.
Involving the use of a Yorkshire terrier: Shut cap tight, hit dog with bottle, enjoy sound of dog killing bottle - it's cheaper than a squeaky toy and has a similar two-minute lifespan (Roger Wilson). Cut off sealed end to make pooper scooper (Duncan Bennett). Clamp in mouth of small dog to enable it to rush around the house sounding like a large dog (Bernard Coleman's small dog).
Dismembered bottle: Cut in half and use inverted top end as funnel (several readers). Small plant protector (with bottom cut off) or in strips as slug deterrent (Rosemary Pettit). Cut off top end just below shoulders, replace inverted in body of bottle and place open end down in pond as newt trap (Nancy Dawson) or eel trap (John and Fiona Earle).
Cap only: Satellite dish for doll's house (GMT).
Practical: Emergency repair lens for Hubble telescope (Otto Black). Anti-squirrel device atop birds' nut-filled snack container (full designs for this and emergency pond-filter repair kit supplied by D T Davies). Bird-feed dispenser (as recommended by the RSPB). Container for tame spaghetti, rolling-pin, cocktail shaker, post-modernist vase (all Heather Gregg). Make pin- hole in bottom, fill with water, calibrate as water-clock, adjust periodically with cap to regulate flow (R Bannerman). Large number of bottles to form huge chandelier, as displayed at Dulwich College Prep School, according to Christine Osborne.
Exotic: Independent Personal Equity Plan - money tipped in weekly and kept under bed (H Gregg). Give it pride of place on mantelpiece after building miniature rubber-dinghy inside (Mollie Caird). Fill with pins and plastic bits of shirts in case you think of something else to do with them (Ruth Langley).
Acronymic: Collecting Old Key Ends; Putting Extra Pennies Straight Inside (both Vivien Lichtenstein).
Rude: Ministerial-strength condoms (Steph and Paul).
Ecological: Squeeze bottle, screw on cap and feel virtuous for saving space in garbage - this also provides valuable saving of air (Michael Rubinstein). Fill with cuttings from Silly Questions and Creativity columns and send into space to deter any would-be invaders of Earth for the foreseeable future (Geoffrey Langley).
Next week we shall report on uses for a plaster cast from the regal wrist. In the meantime, Frank Stevens has suggested that readers might turn their creative minds to providing some modern nursery rhymes.
Nothing more than six lines, please, and any entries beginning 'Bibbity Bobbity had a wife who cut off his tail with a carving knife' will be immediately eliminated on grounds of good taste.
All other suggestions will be welcomed at Creativity, The Independent, 40 City Road, London EC1Y 2DB.
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