Sideswipe
Alternative ways to say fart
● Air biscuit: An air biscuit is “an extremely malodorous fart or belch”. The act of farting or belching is known as floating an air biscuit, by the way.
● Bottom burp: This is generally a children’s usage, but it was popularised on BBC TV’s 1980s comedy The Young Ones.
● Breezer: A 1920s term for an open-topped car, and also an early 70s Australian term for a fart.
● Opened one’s lunchbox: An Australian term for fart . . . You can apparently also say upon tooting that you “dropped your lunchbox”.
● Ringbark and shoot a bunny: Ringbark is a term used in New Zealand for breaking wind. Reed’s Dictionary of New Zealand Slang helpfully notes that “ring is old slang for the anus”. Shoot a bunny is another New Zealand way to say fart. As a bonus, “Empty house is better than a bad tenant” is what you say in New Zealand after you’ve farted in public.
Move over week-old lockdown sourdough . . . This is the ultimate piece of toast: a loaf of bread made in the 1st century AD, which was discovered at Pompeii, preserved for centuries in the volcanic ashes of Mt Vesuvius. The markings visible on the top were made by a Roman bread stamp, which bakeries were required to use in order to mark the source of the loaves, and to prevent fraud. The loaf kept its shape and texture, through both the volcano eruption and the ravages of time. It’s a very unsettling tribute to the normality of day-today life leading up to the catastrophic event.
Unsolicited advice
“Our power was out due to a storm. I had a camp stove to use for boiling water to make a coffee pour-through, but I couldn’t use my electric grinder for the coffee beans. I tried fashioning a mortar and pestle but it was taking too long. So, I put the coffee beans in a couple of ziplock bags, placed the bag right behind a car tyre, then ran over it back and forth a couple of times to crush the beans. Worked like a charm.”
Mad cartoonist
A reader writes: “My favourite Don Martin onomatopoeia was “Shtoink”, the sound of a human being accidentally impaled on a sharp object (tree branch in eye, say). Don must have loved it too: according to his Wiki page, SHTOINK was his personalised plate.”