Silly Question: If you don't mind my saying so
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Your support makes all the difference.WHY DO pedestrians always stop in doorways, or at the foot of escalators, or on the narrowest part of the pavement, where they will get most in the way?
Why do people say 'I'll be downstairs if anyone wants me', when they will be downstairs whether anyone wants them or not? A similar unconditional conditional is found in such phrases as 'If you want my opinion' and 'If you don't mind my saying so'.
Why, when pronouncing the name of a street, does the stress fall on the name: Oxford Street, Bond Street and so on, while roads, lanes and other thoroughfares have the name unstressed: City Road, Park Lane, Highbury Hill?
Why, when people say 'Thank you', do we reply 'Don't mention it', when they already have mentioned it?
Why do many British people have the surnames Black, White, Brown and Green, but rarely, if ever, Blue, Yellow or Red?
As track athletes always run anti-clockwise around the stadium, their right legs must run a little farther than their left. Is it therefore an advantage for a runner to have a right leg slightly longer than his left, and would it not be fairer to athletes with long left legs to have a clockwise race?
Why are surrealism and fish inextricably linked in the minds of joke tellers?
The standard semiotic device for obtaining a bill in a restaurant is a left-to-right squiggly hand movement, as though signing. Do Hebrew speakers squiggle right-to-left, and the Chinese top-to-bottom?
Why don't small pieces of soap stick properly to large pieces?
Why do innocent victims of accidents say 'I was in the wrong place at the wrong time', when either being somewhere else at the same time or in the same place at a different time would have been perfectly safe? They were clearly either in the right place at the wrong time, or the wrong place at the right time.
And why does Sainsbury's at the Angel, in Islington, north London, put the bacon so far away from the sausages?
If you have the answer to any of these questions, or have any similar problems you would like our readers to address, write to Silly Question, The Independent, 40 City Road, London EC1Y 2DB.
Every Thursday, in this space, we will publish the best of the answers and the most intriguing of the questions in the firm expectation of shedding light on some of life's mysteries. Monday's piece of inconsequentiality above the chess will be Strange But False, instant disinformation on a topical subject.
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