Mountains

Mountains are like big old grumpy hills, except with snow instead of white hair. Some are built over millions of years by immense geological forces, while others are built in a very short time like the EU's Sugar Mountain, the Sherbert Fountain Mountain, and the Mountain of Naughty Children.

Many mountains have names, like Mount Cottonsocks, Mount Peter Tatchell, Mount Cragalot and Plumpy. In some parts of the world mountains have numbers, for example K-9 and R2D2.

The highest mountain in the UK is Ben Hur.

Dancing

Dancing is a form of bodily shaking accompanied by spasms of the limbs that are sometimes in time with music, though often entirely random. Dancing is generally used to express joy and convivial feeling, or to scare off potential romantic partners. In other respects dancing is like having a fit, except that it goes on for longer and is more embarassing for younger relatives.

Traditional dances are similar but tend to be slower, and involve more spinning, bowing and giggling behind fans.

Popular dances today include the Dirty Batman, the Menage-a-trois, the Fraggle Rock and the Lurgy.

Volcanoes

Volcanoes are formed when the Earth's tectonic plates swell up and burst, and molten lava comes steaming through like hot custard. Like a well-made custard, molten lava smothers and burns everything in its path, destroying trees, houses, cars and hopefully Robert Kilroy Silk.

One famous volcanic eruption was in AD79 when the rebel slave leader Circduglus pulled the plug from the top of Mount Vesuvius, releasing the lava and destroying the towns of Pompous, Humungous and Myopia.

These days, most volcanoes are extinct, as the species has been out-competed by mountains, which are far more adaptable and amenable and are therefore more widespread.

Some famous volcanoes include Mr Hottie, Mt. Burnalot, The Devil's Bidet, and Le Dejeuner Chaud de St Hubert.

Puddings

A course eaten after dinner and before cheese, or after cheese but before cigars, or after cigars but before skinny-dipping.
Poodles (pudding noodles) can be eaten at any time of day. Be careful not to confuse with puddles.

Also cf. colloquial phrase 'you're a pudding', used as a threat to a mischievous child who makes a mess of himself. This phrase dates from a time when cannibalism was common in British society. The practice died out with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, when Quorn was invented. This is why it tastes like chicken.

Jesus 'Jesus' Christ

"One day I'll be bigger than the VW Beetle"

Prophet, magician and bon viveur.

Jesus was born Jeshua Evan Williams in Bethlehem, Carmarthenshire, in the year 0000. Although West Wales was suffering from industrial decline and high unemployment at the time, he was fortunate to have a stable background. Both his parents were employed, his father working as a ghost for the local council and his mother as a carpenter.

Born with a full head of hair, a luxuriant beard and a halo, it was clear from the outset that he was a special child. At school, his academic performance was average, but in reports by his teachers we find indicators of his later career, such as the occasion when he resurrected a box of frogs intended for dissection in O Level Biology, or when he dissappeared for 40 days during a cross-country run.

As Jesus reached adolescence he showed no sign of entering either his father's or his mother's trades, instead choosing to sit on mountaintops wearing a beard of bees and meditating. It was only as he entered his twenties and became politically aware that he started to make an impact, first locally in Llandeilo and the Tywi Valley and then more widely as his fame spread across Wales and most other places in the world.
He started by casting out W.I. tea dances and farmers markets from church halls, then walked across the Severn Estuary and raised Elvis from the dead. Soon he was preaching to enormous crowds at the Millenium Stadium and Wembley, having fed them all with five portions fish and chips.

But as his fame grew, Jesus made enemies. The private health industry were worried by his healing powers, shoemakers lost trade as his followers took to the streets in sandals, and TV shopping channels were threatened by his renunciation of material possesions like cheap jewellery and remote-control hoovers. It was when his water-into-wine demonstration caused a collapse of the European wine market that the authorities decided to act.

He was arrested and subjected to a televised trial presented by Ant and Dec, followed by a public telephone vote to decide his fate. As the verdict was awaited, one of his followers smuggled a stolen key into his cell, hidden in the pages of a large book which wasn't the Bible because it wasn't written yet, and Jesus was able to unlock his door and escape. To this day his whereabouts is unknown, although apparent likenesses of him seen in potato crisps, oil stains, over-exposed holiday snaps and one of the Beatles suggest that he is still somehow working his magic.

Hair

Isn't hair amazing? It keeps one's head warm, it can be styled to suit the wearer's personality, and can be tousled affectionately (but only if it is on the head of a small boy. Tousling the hair of a stranger, your boss or a visiting Head of State can have unpleasant consequences).

But have you ever noticed that hair comes in a limited range of colours? Silvery white, blond, red, brown, and black...why is that?

It's because hair is made of wood, and those are the colours that wood comes in. Little spiders make hair by chewing up wood and secreting a keratin-based substance from their bottoms. While you sleep at night, the spiders come out from their hiding places and spin new 'webs' of hair on your head. It is worth noting that as men age, their smell changes, causing disorientation in the little hair-spinning spiders. As a consequence they spin less hair on a man's head and more in his ears, in his nostrils, on his eyebrows; indeed, often any part of the body except the head.

Some famous hairstyles include the 'Jesus', the afro and the 'cat that climbed in the washing machine and you didn't notice until you heard miaowing several minutes after the cycle started'.

James Bond

(c. 19th Century) a type of glue. (modern) A financial instrument allowing investment in popular Jameses, such as James Mason, Jesse James and James I of England and VI of Scotland.

Bonds in James Dean and the homonymous Mancunian indie band have been particularly highly valued recently.

Henry 1/8th

The first arachnid king of England. He had 6-legged wives, which he ate after they failed to produce male spiderlings to inherit the throne.

Henry started the schism between the English State and the Roman Church, after the church wouldn't let him leave his car in their carpark while he popped into the supermarket.

Henry was remarkably fat, and would be frequently seen swimming in the seas off the British coast, using his beard to filter krill from the water into his mouth. According to Cardinal Wolsey he could consume up to 4 tonnes of the tiny marine organisms in one day.

Pixies

Pixies are diminutive mythical creatures that live in woods, meadows and sheds. They have blurry outlines, and it is from this that we get the word pixelated.

Much like gnomes in the 1950s and goblins in the late 1960s, pixies had an important cultural role during the late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly in popular music. Their silly hats, mischievous behaviour and raw angst-ridden music inspired grunge bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden, as well as millions of grumpy teenagers around the world who took to wearing colourful pointy hats to show how angry they were.

Trousers

Although originally designed for warming the legs of horses and ponies, trousers have been worn by men and women for at least a century. They are today one of the most popular tubular fabric leg storage devices available.

Trousers are grown in enormous 'kek farms' in the Mid-West of the United States of Americay. Harvested twice a year, they are then refrigerated before being shipped around the world and delivered to clothes shops and the bottoms of wardrobes.

Most people now have at least one trouser, and many find a pair more convenient.

Computers

Computers were invented by Prince Albert Einstein as part of his Great Festival of Exhibitionism in 1851. Since that time computers have become an integral part of life, like buses, children and toast. Today computers are all around us: in the workplace, in the car, in the home, indeed in everything from humble kitchen appliances to mighty intergalactic battle cruisers wreaking death and destruction at the flick of a switch or the typing of an incorrect password.

In fact, although you may not have guessed it, I am a computer.
So how do I work?

Computers understand the world by breaking everything down into tiny units of data called bits and bobs. A bob is worth 2 bits and a three bob note is bent. 3 bent bobs is a kilobob, 5 kilobobs is a megadon, 10 of those a pterodon, and 1000 pterodons is a gigapig, or gig. 1000 gigapigs makes a hig, which is short for higgledy piggledy giggly piggle. And so forth.

At the time of writing, the most powerful computers can cope with up to 4 higs of data (or one squegg). But technology moves quickly, and the number of times you have to turn a computer off and on again to get it to work doubles every year.

As for the future, who knows? Perhaps computers will take over the world. Or perhaps they will be content with their lot in life. Or will they? Perhaps they won't. Or perhaps they will! Or they won't. Who knows? Perhaps you do? Or perhaps you don't. Do you?

Amphibians

Is it an animal, or is it a fish? Well, the word amphibian comes from 'amphi' meaning half, and 'bi' meaning both, because an amphibian is both an animal and a fish, and neither, and half not either of them.

It is widely known that frogs, toads and salamanders are amphibians, but did you know that seagulls, mice and the tea plant Camelia Sinensis are also amphibious? No, I didn't think so.
In fact, many high-earning businessmen are now becoming amphibious, as amphibians pay tax at a lower rate than mammals due to their being cold blooded.

Insects

All insects have 6 legs but only one knee, which links the insect's head to its thorax, in place of a neck. Some biologists call this a kneeck, especially in Scotland.

Insects can see into the future using tiny magic telescopes. They can also eat more pot noodle than you can shake a stick at.

If you want to see some insects in action, good examples look out for are the fly, the swim, the Beatle, the earwig and the eyehat.

The Compass

A compass is a device that travellers often use to aid orientation.

It is like a watch, but for space instead of time, and you don't need to wind it up.

The four points of the compass are Nobbins, Eck!, Sompft and Wohag.
You can remember the points of the compass by never eating shredded wheat, as constipation is a proven aid to memory. If you must have your roughage from elsewhere, you could try eating hay, or perhaps bristles.

Usage

One uses a compass by drawing around it to create a circle, or by drawing around a pair of compasses to create two circles (Fig. 1).
As every schoolgirl knows, a circle always points north. This allows you to orientate yourself easily, provided that you want to go north.

Other methods to discover north include eating the moss from one side of a tree, or looking at a map, or by travelling to the south pole and then going north.