And now...two jokes

I have a load of maps on the wall of my office. I do like a nice map.

I just turned my head to look at one and my eyes immediately alighted on the part of Egypt shown to the left.

Sacre bleu! So Dora the Explorer is really set on the Suez Canal.

Bridge, Crocodile Lake, Abu Sultan.

Say it with me: Bridge, Crocodile Lake, Abu Sultan.

So you tell Dora... [And so on]

I'm now looking hard for the real-world locations of Wizzle Mountain and the Dancing Forest.

Moments later - out of the window this time - I saw that First Group have a bus called "Chris Moyles".

I'm pretty sure there's a joke there somewhere, but I will leave you to fill in your own details.

Space Raiders

I have never bought a pack of Space Raiders, nor do I know anyone who has. I am nevertheless very familiar with the image to the left.

Which led me to wonder – or “got me to thinking” I might say, if this was “Sex and the City” and not “Oh Dear. How Sad. Never Mind.” – why are there empty packets of this low-price, corn snack in my back garden?

And outside Tancred’s nursery?

And – in fact – every damn place I ever look, why is there a discarded pack of Space Raiders?

They say that in London, you are never more than 6 feet away from a rat. I’m not sure if this is true. It would probably be true if you substituted “a rat” for “a dickhead”.

Well, I would hypothesise that between you and the rat – or dickhead – there is at least one screwed-up, indestructible, radioactive-smelling bag with a picture of an alien on the front of it, which the rat (dickhead) is avoiding.

They’re everywhere. I can feel those over-sized, black, almond-shaped eyes on the back of my neck right now.

I have two theories about this.

The first is sociological.

• Premise 1: Space Raiders are the crisp of preference for the sorts of people who throw empty crisp bags on the floor.
• Premise 2: Space Raiders are cheap.

You may be wondering how, unless I handle these empty crisp bags – which is, to me, only marginally less revolting a prospect than handling discarded underwear – I know this.

Well, I did actually Google Space Raiders this morning. That’s the problem with the internet. You come up with all these ideas about what things might be and why they might be, then you Google it and you find out the truth (or something like the truth).

It is the death of the imagination and of memory, when you can just find out the reasons for something or what something you half-remember was really like with a few keystrokes.

Marcel Proust would have had literally nothing to do with his life if he’d lived in the internet age. He could have just Googled “Madeleine smell” and got four million results.

Anyway, I disgress. I learned from the Space Raiders Wikipedia page that they are:

“A British cheap snack food, intended to fill the same niche market as crisps”

Which seems to the untrained eye an unnecessarily cautious description.

So Space Raiders are cheap and are eaten by people who drop litter. You do not see anywhere near as many discarded packs of, say, Waitrose Hand Cooked Sea Salt crisps.

Get to the point: Space Raiders are prole feed. They are eaten by people for whom a tracksuit is formalwear and whose bin is the great outdoors.

Malevolent little eyes...

OK, that’s theory number one. Coherent? Well-reasoned? Yes, but theory number two is MUCH more ambitious.

Space Raiders packs are not the abandoned containers for low-cost crisp-style corn snacks AT ALL.

They are in fact an invasive species of fungus or algae with astonishing powers of mimicry.

Stay with me. Let’s assess the evidence (you will by now be familiar with what I call "evidence"):

• No one I know or who you know has ever eaten any.
• No one knows how they got where they are.
• No one is willing to touch or remove them to find out once and for all if they are what they appear to be.

I believe that back in the 1980s Space Raiders were a real brand of crisps, featuring cartoon intergalactic pirates and shit like that. Natural selection has favoured members of this invasive species which encourages people to leave it alone – and so they have grown gradually to resemble the most unpleasant kinds of litter, re cheese-stink plastic bags.

They’re an algal bloom, spring from the contaminated earth like a red tide. That alien face is the plant world’s crude attempt to replicate the appearance of a Monster Munch monster – and it has succeeded to the degree that no one wants to look closer as soon as they have established what they think they’re looking at.

Do not touch, or it may release its spores in your face

I find it astonishing that mainstream science has not recognised this. We are all in terrible danger. Space Raiders are coming. 

More Lost Soles

Has it really been a month? Well, yes.

What have I been doing all that time? From what is about to follow, you would draw the conclusion that I had been lurking around woodlands inspecting litter.

That is not untrue, but it is a rather one-sided picture. I have been doing other things as well, many of them connected with my secret “real world” identity.

Apologies, then, if (i) you missed me or (ii) you thought I really was the 12th Century Norman king of Sicily.

And with that preamble still ringing in our ears, let us return to the mysterious world of abandoned clothing.

“Do we have to?” I hear you cry. 

To which I reply, "shut up".

OK, here we go - every parent's minor irritation: the lost single glove. No story here. Kids do it all the time. That's why some (insane) parents attach their offspring's gloves together on a piece of elastic. Clearly, getting beaten up every day of winter is a price worth paying to avoid having to buy a new pair. 

I don't know what this is and so I can't even begin to speculate about its story. 

Naturally, I don't touch any of this stuff. I might be strange enough to photograph stuff I find lying in the woods and in the gutters, but I do draw the line at physical contact. 

Is it a shirt? Is it some pants? Is it a onesie? No, I don't think it's a onesie. 

I suppose I will never know. 

This is a good one. A hoodie up a tree. Who left it there? Was it too hot? Why up a tree? I hypothesise that someone was playing football (or possibly kabbadi - why isn't that on TV any more?), took their top off and forgot all about it. 

Unlike most of my "captures" this looks pretty clean. Can't have been out in the elements for long. Perhaps someone came back for it shortly after this picture was taken. 

Now this is quite a haul. One boot, one sock and a pair of waterproof trousers. The other boot I found a few feet away, in case you were wondering. 

Oh, you weren't? Well, that's where it was anyway. 

I cannot begin to imagine the circumstances that would lead someone to take off their overtrousers, their boots and one or both socks while in a Yorkshire woodland. 

Well, I can imagine them. But I can't imagine them not needing to put them all back on again after finishing in order to get home without being caught. 

There comes a point I suppose where the most perturbing fact about all this becomes, not the never-to-be-told stories of the lost garments - but with what appears to be an unhealthy obsession on my part. 

It was funny to begin with. Especially when it was pants. Look, here are some more! Left in the middle of a footpath! 

But it's starting to look peculiar now. I think I had better stop.