Silly Questions: Left on the right side in bed

THIS week: beds, dogs, moons and many new questions.

The handedness of beds was raised by Mr A Lawrence, sleepless with worrying that he, lying on his front, and his wife, sleeping on her back, both thought they were on the left of the bed. Nicholas Gough, with the aid of a diagram, argues: 'Left for the bed is left for Mrs L, so I conclude that Mrs L sleeps on the right and Mr L on the left. This is consistent with an onlooker's view.'

We are confused by this argument, which appears to assume that the bed is lying on its back. Adding legs to the bed in the diagram, we conclude that the bed is looking downwards, with the Lawrences lying on its back, not its soft underbelly. Mr Gough's answer is therefore correct.

G N Crockford advises: 'Since both are on the left side, the right must be empty. They can therefore accommodate a lover, confident that Mr or Mrs, knowing he or she is on the left, will assume the person on the right is a spouse. If morality precludes this procedure, the empty spaces could be used to house the homeless.'

Len Clarke takes us to task for asking why there is only one moon. 'The question is wrong,' he says. 'The rules of Proportional Representation (we think he means Geopolitical Correctness) require it to be phrased: Why has the moon only got one planet?' D Humphries is equally puzzled by the question, pointing out that we often get a new moon and asking what happens to the old ones.

Finally, why the dog always thinks it's for him when the doorbell rings. Most responses mentioned Pavlov, some with added conditioner. Stuart Cockerill's dog is conditioned by the fact that most visitors to the house are indeed for him; Len Vaux's dog comes from a line conditioned to expect pizza deliveries; Steve Prowse believes it is a Communist plot to substitute all our dogs with descendents of Pavlov's animals, thus wearing down our resitance by a combination of bell-ringing and barking.

This week's questions: Why do women have longer necks than men (G Langley)? Where can I buy a spray to mask the smell of my deodorant (S Cockerill)? Why are there no bins to recycle used chicken feathers, and does this account for the prevalence of bald chickens in supermarkets (John Benson)? When a label says: 'Shake well before use' how long before use is 'well before' (Professor Rex Last)?