Sunday, March 1, 2009

Tomato Soup, Polo Mints and Rubber Bands

I had tomato and basil soup for lunch today. Delicious and, in a way, perplexing.
When you stir tomato soup it obliges and goes around the pan in the direction you are stirring. If you then pull your stirring spoon out quickly it continues on for about a centimetre then reverses for a few millimetres. Now I'm no scientist, but that is odd. Quite anti-Newtonian.
Not so odd though as when you break polo mints in conditions of utter blackness. Get under your bed, or in that cupboard under the stairs with a packet of polo mints and break a few. They give off light! Amazing. When anyone knocks on the little triangular door and asks what you are up to, you can say "breaking Polo mints". You will then hear speechlessness.
Even that is not so amazing as unstretching rubber. If you stretch a really fat rubber band across your lips (very temperature sensitive are lips) and then suddenly let the rubber unstretch* it feels very cold. Quite incredible.
I must get out more.

*unstretch? God knows what the right word is.

2 comments:

Fiona said...

This made me giggle quite a lot! May I ask how you discovered the polo phenomenon?

GC said...

Well, I would say 'contracts'. However, that is the opposite of 'expands' and not 'stretch', so it's not worth the paper it's written on.

How about 'shrivel'? Stretch and Shrivel - they sound like they go together. It's a good double-act. I'm not too sure if I needed that hyphen but I don't really care anyway.

On TV and in movies (especially in very sunny weather) why do the alloy wheels of cars momentarily look as if they are going backwards as they pull away? Have you noticed that one? I have.

I'm trying to work out which is more disturbing. You hiding in cupboards breaking Polo mints, or tomato and basil soup. I still don't have the answer.