BUTTON YOUR LIP OR ELSE

I get laughed at for the way I tie my shoelaces. It's a bad case of Lace Discrimination and an even worse joke.

No doubt, like me, you tie your laces the way you were taught to when you were knee high to a grasshopper. The thing is, when I was that size it was so long ago that we kept a pet dinosaur.

In those days, we were told to make a loop with each lace ('bunny ears') and then tie the rabbit's ears together in a normal knot. No-one I know does it like that. They seem to make one loop and then perform some sort of magic trick in a blurred flurry of hands which leaves me mystified.

I was reminded of this when I came to put on a rugby shirt this morning. No of course I wasn't going off to play rugby I was just looking cool. Anyway, the shirt had buttons at the top.

Now I'm sure that you and I button our buttons in exactly the same way - again just as we were taught when we were toddlers. I'm equally sure that you, like me, would have had a problem buttoning this shirt. We are like those robots who assemble cars. We open the hole and insert the button without needing to think about it. Unless that is, they move the goal posts, or in this case the rugby posts.

They only went and made the buttonholes horizontal! Don't you dare laugh. Just you wait until you have to button up with horizontal holes. You'll see.

ALL BUTTONED UP

Have you ever entered a lift - you know, one of those things which our friends across the pond call an elevator - and pressed the 'close doors' button to speed up the process?

Worse still, have you ever done it because you remember seeing a big fat bloke wheezily running towards the lift doors but at a sufficient distance to mean that he won't quite make it as long as the doors close quickly? No doubt if he gets there and jams himself in the doors as they are closing you will have your line all ready...

"Oh sorry about that. I tried to press the 'open doors' button but I think I pressed the wrong one by mistake."

Well it turns out that most of the 'close doors' buttons don't work. In fact they are often not even wired up. They are known in the trade as 'placebo buttons' because they are only there to make you feel better when you press them.

I bet the guy who thought up that stunt is a big fat bloke who hated having to run to catch the lift doors before they close.