Pursuits: Creativity

Serena Mackesy
Monday 19 October 1998 23:02 BST
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PLASTIC MILK bottles: ideal containers, as many pointed out, for storing plastic milk. And for other noxious liquids including, writes Martin Brown, bull's semen: "care should be taken to ensure it doesn't end up in Tesco's dairy section alongside the semi-skimmed and full-fat". Thanks for keeping the tone up, Martin; a family newspaper needs someone like you.

Susan James suggests that they should be used "as missiles for throwing at feeble boy bands who would probably burst into tears if faced with anything more solid". The obviously deranged Mark Bottomley thinks that they could come in useful as votive containers for the ashes of toy cows belonging to Californian converts to Hinduism. Someone by the convincing name of S Hade writes: "now that everyone is giving up smoking, the age- old tradition of filling drinks containers with old butts at parties has died out. Plastic milk bottles were obviously not suitable for this use, but would make ideal ashtrays for the Nicorette Inhalator".

Jean Miller provides interior design tips. "Fairies could use them as lovely substitutes for Chinese paper lampshades," she says, "and for model enthusiasts suffering a shortage of space, they would be of great assistance in making a rubber-dinghy-in-a-bottle". Magy Higgs provides another handy tip: "Use four, to stand the legs of delicate tables in each pouring neck, to protect against termites. Works for mine, anyway." Ellen Newton raises the week's top groan and head-slap, and wins a Chambers Dictionary to boot, with her "spare petrol tanks for Cow-asaki motorbikes". Dictionaries also to S Hade and Jean Miller.

This week: at this time yesterday, not that I'm boasting, I was checking in at the airport in Indonesia. I arrived home to find that some paperwork that I was relying on, posted in London on Thursday, had failed to arrive. We live in a world in which I can go the best part of 10,000 miles in 24 hours, but a package is hard-pressed to move five miles from Canary Wharf to my house in four days. Everyone must have a modern anomaly to share. Please send them to: Creativity, The Independent, Features 18th Floor, 1 Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5DL. The top two, or three if someone has won one for suggesting the week's theme, will win a Chambers Dictionary. Results two weeks from today.

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