Manic Monday

Here are this week's Manic Monday questions, and my answers to them.

1. If technology was sufficiently advanced, would you be willing to clone yourself?

Why not? It would be fascinating to see myself as a child. Then again, I have a few health problems, so cloning might not be too clever an idea.

2. At the local grocery store you see an elderly woman shoplift a chicken. Do you tell the management?

I doubt it. The old lady could be poverty-stricken and desperately hungry. She might be mentally ill. She may even have Alzheimer's, and be unaware of what she's doing. Plus I don't see why I should act as an unpaid security guard or store detective, if the ones employed by the store aren't smart enough to catch her. It would be different if she was younger and/or stealing non-essentials. But usually, if someone steals food, they do it because they're hungry and don't have enough money to buy any food. I think a society which leaves an old woman too poor to buy food, commits a far greater crime, than her bit of petty pilfering.

3. If you could be 8 years old again for an entire day, knowing what you know now, how would you spend it?

I'd spend it with my dad. He died just before Christmas, when I was eight. Also, knowing what I know now, I'd spend that day persuading him to stop smoking, lose weight, cut his cholesterol levels and get a full health check. He had a fatal heart attack when he was just forty one. I'd also spend some time with Tim, a black Labrador I used to play with when I was that age. Oh - and I'd buy some "lips" - they were funny little crescent shaped, quite hard, but chewy sweets, with a sweet, perfumed flavour, that I used to get from a shop in the village, which closed more than 30 years ago. Here's an old pic of the shop, and attached garage, taken in 1937. It didn't look as neat and well-kept in the days that I remember it.

© The Francis Frith Collection

Oh well - that's all from me for this week (as far as Manic Monday goes). Happy Manic Monday!