Ross H

If you live in the countryside at harvest time, you'll know those minute black flies, around half a mm long, that itch on your skin and in your hair! They appear to be able to creep inside picture frames and expire behind the glass. Yesterday one appeared, astonishingly inside the lcd display of my notebook. It's dead and immobile, and always seems to be where the screen is light! Any ideas anyone? Or maybe I just have to have the display taken apart and cleaned? And, PS: what are thunder flys for? Surely they're too small to be eaten, too tiny to have mouth-parts, and even water must be like treacle to them... perhaps they're pollinators?

I'm finding more and more people, friends and acquaintances, who do. Just curious to see. Honest answers are easy, as we're all running avatars and pseudonymns! I'm not being judgemental in any way. I drink a lot myself.

How many "I dunno" answers can I handle.

A while back we had a garden party in high summer. Temperature was around 85 and everything was tinder dry. The sun was blazing down. I threw out a challenge that I'd give a bottle of champagne to anyone who could make fire, without resorting to lenses, lighters, or any other modern aid. There were PHD's, BSc's and all sorts there, and no-one could start a fire, even though the stubble in the nearby cornfield would have gone up like a torch with a small flame. There were sticks being rubbed, flints being bashed, tinder being collected - to no avail. We all ended up realising what rotten Neanderthals we would have made!

I exclude anything rascist, sexist, or that pokes fun at disabled people.

I plan to drink it next year on my sixtieth birthday party, but I'm curious to know exactly what I shall be drinking. Apart from the fact that it is a sweet, fortified dessert wine from Patras, I've never experienced it. It's supposed to be special, Anyone out there ever drunk 1944 Mavrodaphne de Patras? This bottle claims to have come from barrels concealed from the German army in WW2, discovered and then bottled. It's in a very fancy wooden casket with an elaborate pedigree scroll. Wine originally made by the founder of Mavrodaphne de Patras Karela. Thank you.

I own a tiny small field/plot behind my house in East Anglia, only about 150 yards by 70. Right now it's just rough meadow but good soil. I wonder how much asparagus could eventually be grown each season on this plot. Although I grow asparagus in the vegetable plot, I don't know whether I can just multiply this up pro-rata. Any advice would be appreciated. There must be a commercial grower out there! Thank you.

Sold house, cars, business. Served my three years as a leper. (Nowadays only one year). It seems that if you were made bankrupt AFTER April 2005, my pension would have been protected. But a unit called the PRU - Protracted Recovery Unit has been formed to pursue pensions of people made bankrupt almost 20 years ago. £10,000 cash has already been handed over without my knowledge to the receiver, and my pension is being paid to them for the next five years. Are there any keen legal brains out there with any ideas? Thank you.

I work in a large global corporation, and receive up to 50 emails every day. It is unusual if they do not include spelling and grammatical errors. Some recent examples are:

-PLEASE SUBMIT YOUR FIGURE'S BY FRIDAY

-PLEASE ENSURE THERE ON TIME

- YOUR EXPECTED AT 10AM

Market stalls are famous for signs like: "Finest apple's"

My instinct is to ask "Finest apple's what? Finest apple's pips? Stalks? Skins?

Does any of this matter, or are we doomed to descend into a world of no punctuation, poor grammar and mobile phone text-speak?

That's my grump for the day.