Dear Haribo.

I recently purchased a bag of Fantasy Mix sweets.

The reason I opted for Fantasy Mix, as opposed to your other wonderful selections, was simply this; I wanted fantasy. I wasn’t in the mood for your otherwise excellent Tangfastics, and since our abysmal performance in the World Cup football match, where we didn’t kick enough goals or something, neither was I in the mood for Football mix. Starmix is also a particular favourite, and I also love finishing off a full packet of Strawbs. But on this occasion I wanted Fantasy.

To me, fantasy is a whole world of things you can only imagine. Mythical creatures that don’t actually exist. Unexplainable things like aliens and dinosaurs. So as I opened the Fantasy Mix bag, optimistically I was hoping for unicorns, wizards, wands and other things of fantasy.

The first thing I pulled out was a yellow lion. Disheartened at my initial pluck from the bag, and at the fact that lions do actually exist, “maybe the fantasy will start soon,” I said.

Next, I pulled out a kangaroo. Again, not a particularly fantastical animal. In fact, an animal I have seen in real life a few times on visits in my youth to various zoos.

“Third time lucky!” I told myself, as I plunged in and whipped out two sweets at once; an edible childs dummy and a fish, both of which I have seen far too many of in real life in my time.

Very disappointing, people of Haribo.

NONE of the items in the Fantasy Mix were things of fantasy, in that they all exist in real life. In fact the closest things to fantastical that I found was a mole apparently wearing red trousers, pictured below.

Imaginary, yes, but "fantasy" is pushing it.

This was the ONLY item with even a hint of fantasy. If I’m being honest, if you fantasise about animals in trousers then, quite frankly, that is a little disturbing.

I think calling it “Fantasy Mix” is wrong. If anything, it you should rename it to “Fantasy Mix – Ironic Remix ™”

Have you ever thought of branching out with other equally disappointing and lackluster attempts? Why not create a "Sports Mix" range that contains absolutely no sport items? Or add "Made With Real Fruit" to packets of sawdust?

Why IS it called Fantasy Mix? Do the people that make your sweets seriously get out so little that things that are everyday occurances for the likes of you and me really are the things they dream about? Have they never enjoyed looking at lion or a real fish? Were they deprived so much that they never had a dummy when they were young?

Please let me know, as the more I think about people not appreciating normal life, the more concerned I get about people missing out on these things.

And if you could let me know if you ever put fantasy items into your Fantasy Mix, that would be ace.

Yours,

Craig Anderson.




Quick F.A.Q. to answer your emails en mass...

Yes, I have complained officially to Haribo UK.

No, no reply as of yet.

Yes, the mole, possibly actually a badger, is safe. He lives on my keyboard now. Sometimes I put his nose over my capslock light, so his nose glows green.

It was originally a lot longer, but I chose to remove a couple of paragraphs after I shocked myself with how perverse the "animals in trousers" description ended up being.

There are many Celebs on both Twitter and Facebook, and it occured to me that the "fame" that many celebrities have is mainly dictated by the number of followers they have. The more famous you are, the more followers you have. If you're popular, you are more famous. If you were once famous but it was years ago, you don't have as many followers. On Twitter, at the time of writing this, I have 270 followers.

Now I'm not famous by ANY means. I've been on the radio a couple of times discussing the 80s for one of my other websites listed on the right, and I was recently on the BBC Genius panel after sending in a Genius idea to the BBC that they wanted to include in the TV series. To be honest, hugging Dave Gorman in the green room afterwards was probably the closest I've ever been to fame. Oh, and I shook hands after interviewing Matthew Smith, creater of my all time favourite ZX Spectrum game Manic Miner. That is it. Those events are my entire list of "claims to fame".

So how many Twitter followers DO famous people have?

I did a search and was quite suprised how many, or how few, some celebs have.

Lee MacDonald, who played Zammo in Grange Hill, has just 659 followers. Gordon Burns, Krypton Factor presenter, has just 2453. Surely these people should have MANY more than this?

Moira Stuart, my mate informed me, has just 54 followers. She presents the National News! 54!?! I'm already more famous, follower-wise, than her!

And so it began - I decided to try to get more Twitter followers than famous people.

I compiled a list of celebs, along with their follower numbers and their Twitter IDs. I sorted it by follower numbers, to show celebs with the least followers at the bottom.

I then set up a new Twitter account, called @MoreFamousThan and proceeded to become More Famous Than celebs.

If you're passing Twitter, please stop by and click to follow me. The list is the background image on my Twitter account. All I'm doing is getting as many followers as possible, to outfame celebs. It's purely for a laugh and in no way malicious. If any celebs take offense, I will remove them from the list.

As of right now, I'm more famous than Fred Talbot, Moira Stuart, Julia Hardy and Lee MacDonald.

@MoreFamousThan

20 meg connection, 50 PCs using it at once...

Just for the record, I don't think it'll work.

I could be wrong.

I absolutely love the TV show Most Haunted. I've watched it from the first series, when Derek Acorah was the man who could sense paranormal activity and talk to the dead through his spirit guide, Sam. I've watched every live episode, whether it was a one nighter, a three nighter or the recent week long "Faces of Evil" live series.

I am also an avid fan of Ghost Hunters, with Grant and Jason, the Roto Router plumbers, who do their best to either prove or debunk paranormal claims made by home and business owners. They film around 6 hours of footage on four different cameras, record hours of conversation using digital recorders, and spend days analysing every detail of the footage before presenting the evidence, or lack of it, to the client.

But I know it's not real. I believe there are no such things as ghosts or paranormal activity, and that everything dubbed as "paranormal" will have a logical, real world explanation.

I don't watch these things because I believe in them, I watch them because it's great TV played out by great actors. I assume this is one of the reasons why you watch the programmes that you like too?

Recently, my appreciation of Most Haunted came up in conversation. I was talking with a friend who also watches it. They too had seen pretty much every episode.

I mentioned that I thought it was great TV, to which they obviously wholeheartedly agreed, but when I mentioned that it isn't actually real, they became quite defiant. Actually, I'd go so far as to say they became quite threatening.

"Of course it's real! They listen to the spirits, and they can tell you things that happened years ago that people wouldn't just know nowadays. They're passing on messages to living relatives. Do NOT say it's not real when the messages they're sending back are giving peace to the living relatives."

With the reaction I received, I might as well have said "Oh, by the way, I've just taken your dog to the orphanage, slaughtered it and smeared it's entrails over the kids faces, before shouting 'Happy Birthday, from your dead Mum!' "

It has always amazed me how adamant people are that paranormal activity exists. My take on it is: If the same things can also be accomplished by a more logical means, then it seems foolish to instantly attribute it as paranormal.

Lets say a ball rolls off a table in an empty room. Did a spirit move it, or is it more likely that a draft lightly blowing the ball off the table? Or a vibration caused by people outside the room walking past, or vibrations from a vehicle outside, made it start to roll? Or was it set up to roll off by being tied to fishing line? Or.... there are so many other possible causes.

Why jump in and commit to the paranormal theory, when there are many other plausible explanations for EVERYTHING.

This lead me to compile a list of alternative options that people should consider before deciding that an event is paranormal. They are sort of in order, with the most likely cause first, but is by no means a definitive list of alternative explanations.

• Other Humans - Unintentionally or otherwise, other humans are the most probably cause of "paranormal" events. Whether it's creaky noises that they cause underfoot from walking in old houses, or reflections of themselves (or apparitions as the "paranormal" sights are called). They can also throw things through the air, giving the impression of poltergeist activity, and make grunting and sighing noises to sound spooky.
• Weather (wind, rain) - Noises caused by wind can sound very spooky. Wind can also blow outside objects into the side of houses, causing bangs. Rain, including the long term effects of it, is very damaging. It can cause old beams to warp, floorboards to become uneven and electrics to become faulty.
• Changes of Temperature Affecting Surroundings - Old houses let in a draft. A cold draft can cause usually silent houses to become comparatively loud and bangy. Warped wood creaks as it's temperature changes, and pipes can clunk.
• Open air vents or windows causing convection currents - When a door slams, there has probably been an unnoticed, undetectable convection current involved. It's just the wind trying to escape as quick as it can, but pulling movable objects with it.
• Badly sealed fixtures, allowing initially unnoticed convection currents - In my house the central heating boiler is behind the fire downstairs. The boiler is on a timer. At 7am, the boiler kicks in with a whoomp. At the same time, through the closed downstairs door, up the stairs, around a corner and through another closed door, my bedroom curtain twitches. This is a convection current.
• Creaking floorboards - Caused by being walked on, or weather, or changes of temperature...
• Animals (rodents) - Scratching noises, rustling noises, high pitched distant screams? It's probably an animal.
• Passing vehicles - These cause noise, vibrations, light AND shadows.
• Imagination - When people are exploring a "haunted" place, the seed that it is "haunted" has already been planted in their conscious mind. Imagination runs riot, attributing every event as a haunted occurance.
• Mass hysteria - When you have a group of people all exploring a "haunted" place, everyone is of the same mindset and expecting something paranormal to happen. As soon as one person screams, everyone screams.

All the above are logical, plausible and scientifically provable explanations. If you experience anything that you believe to be "paranormal", please review this list in order to help work out what actually caused whatever you think you saw or heard. No doubt even after reading this you'll dismiss my list completely and still opt for the paranormal option, which is absolutely fine.

Wrong, but fine.

A few months ago, we had a challenge at work to see who could make the most money from Ebay, by selling things they had bought from a pound shop. We spent up to £5.00 each, buying up to 5 things, and sold them to see who could make the most money back.

I won, (obviously,) even though I only made about £2.80 back. I only bought 4 things, and only two of them sold. For some reason the James Bond replica car and and an old peoples "grabber" were more popular than sexist fridge magnets and a toy frog. The world is a bizarre place.

Recently the idea for a rematch surfaced and, as there are now more work colleagues interested in playing along, it was decided that some clear updated rules were needed. So here they are!

The idea:

• To buy things costing no more than £5.00 in total, sell them on Ebay and see who makes the most money.

Buying:

• You can buy as many items as you like, as long as the total spent does not exceed £5.00. (You could get five items from a pound shop, or two items from two different shops, as long as the total spent does not exceed £5.00.) You are no longer limited to pound shops.
• If you buy item(s) online, only the cost of the item(s) will count towards your £5.00 total, not the postage.
• Items can be bought and listed on Ebay up until the 23rd June.

Selling:

• Everything you sell must be sold on Ebay between June 1st 2010 and June 30th 2010.
• If an item does not sell, it can be relisted, but unless sold by the competition end date it will not add to your end total.
• Whoever makes the most money, not including amounts charged for postage, is the winner. (Even if the total made is less than the total initially spent.)
• On June 30th, Whoever has made the most money from the sale of these items is the winner.

If you fancy playing along, let me know!

When I was 7 or 8 and at primary school, there was a colouring competition. It was a Christmas scene that we had to colour in, from memory, and the prize was a full pack of 12 Conti Painting Pencils.

Conti Painting Pencils were at that time, in the opinion of every 8 year old child, the best pencils that money could buy. At first sight, they looked just like normal colouring pencils. BUT, if you dipped them into water, you could PAINT with them!! They were a prize well worth winning, so it would have been worth putting that little bit more effort into any competition that had them as a prize.

The night before the competition entries needed to be in, I remembered I hadn't yet coloured in my picture. I had forgotten about it up until that point, and upon finding it I burst into tears. It was about 8 at night, and I had to go to bed. It was far too late in the day to start colouring it. I realised that the pencils would never be mine, and I was absolutely gutted and went to bed very upset.

So that night, my Dad coloured it in for me.

It might be worth pointing out that my Dad is quite a good artist, and not just in school colouring competitions. Nowadays he has a website from which he sells his paintings - http://www.neilzart.co.uk - but it is something he's always been good at.

So the morning after, on the final day for colouring competition entries, I took the scene that my Dad had coloured in, and handed it into school.

At the end of the week, in assembly, they announced the winners. I forget who third place went to. I think second place went to my friend Helen, (who incidentally would also come second in a dressing up competition later in my life, when she went as "a blancmange",) and I ended up being announced as the colouring competition winner.

I went up to the front, collected my Conti Painting Pencils, and remember very little else about that morning.

The pencils stayed in my desk for months. I didn't use them. Just knowing that I owned them was enough.

So...... 15 years later, I'm sat in a pub with my semi-cousin Ivan and another good mate, Lee Phillips. Years previously we were all in the same school years, all through primary school and secondary school too. We were discussing stories from our childhood whist getting drunk.

I decided that whilst I was sat with good friends, in a good atmosphere, it was time to confess all. I started the story with "Remember in primary school, when we had that competition to win Conti Painting Pencils?"

"Yeah!" enthused Lee. "Didn't you win that?"

"Yeah! How cool was that?!?" I replied, "but I need to confess something."

They listened to me re-tell the above story.

Lee didn't take it well at all. As soon as I said the words "my dad coloured it in for me," I could see him start to fume. I thought that he would crush his pint glass in his bare hand out of rage. It's the one and only time that Lee has ever called me a b#stard.

Luckily, although Lee was absolutely outraged at my cheating, buying him another pint seemed to calm him down. I don't think he'll ever fully forgive me.

My mother-in-laws mum, or Grandmother-in-law, had a dog called Toto. He was a tiny, fluffy dog that was quite giddy. I think he was a Scottie. He was brown and black, fluffy, and he disliked my ankles. Whenever we went around to where he lived, he often attacked my ankles. That was all he could reach.

I first met him in 1995 when he would have been about 5 years old. Over the next 10 years, with every visit at Christmas time, we saw him get noticably older.

By age 15 (in human years) he was nowhere near as spritely as he used to be. He had had to have his teeth removed at some point over this time, so had to eat a special type of dog food from the vet. He looked very tired, he did smell slightly, but he was still a lovely dog.

Then one November evening, in front of my mother-in-law and her mum, he collapsed. It was his time. He was 15 years old, which is a great innings for a tiny dog. His time was quite rightly up, and he fell over and died.

At the time that it happened, there were only 2 people in the house. My Grandmother-in-law, and my mother-in-law. Toto belonged to my Grandmother-in-law and she was, quite obviously, very distressed. She'd been with the dog for every day of his life. She had bought him from the pet shop, fed him pretty much every meal he had ever eaten, taken him for walks, played in parks with him and made sure he had a warm, secure home for the past 15 years. She was devastated.

So what did my mother-in-law do when Toto collapsed?

MY first thought would be to cover him up. Get him a nice blanket, cover him up and let him rest. Maybe I'd call a vet for advice.

But my mother-in-law. What do you think SHE did?

Phone a vet? Dig a grave in the garden? Console her mum, whose dog had just passed away right in front of her eyes? Nooo, that would be stupid...

She dropped to all fours, and gave him the kiss of life. She brought a 15 year old dog back to life, by grabbing it's face and blowing up its nose.

Just take a minute to imagine that......

The day after this happened, my mother-in-law phoned my wife to tell her the news. The conversation went something like:

"I have something to tell you. Toto died last night."

My wife, who had known Toto all his life didn't initially know how to react. Luckily, my mother-in-law continued...

"...but it's ok, I gave him mouth to mouth! He's back again now."

Out of the many things that my mother-in-law COULD have said at that point, THAT was one line I don't think my wife she was prepared for.

On our next Christmas visit, just 1 month later, Toto was there as giddy as a kipper. He still looked very old but he was definately alive. Along with the missing teeth and familiar odour, he now had small patches of fur missing and smelly breath. But he was walking and, more importantly, breathing! And he still loved sucking my ankles.

I watched him during this visit. In total I watched him for about 2 hours. I could tell what he was thinking.... "I'm 15. My arthritis is really bad today, I can't eat real food because I have no teeth, I smell and I KNOW I smell, but at least I'm still alive! *sigh* "

Anyway, he lasted another 6 months. Then, inevitably, he died.

Again.

At this point he still had no teeth, bad breath and smelly fur, but now the patches of missing fur were much bigger. 6 months longer is more than anyone could have imagined. He'd already had a great innings for a small dog, so having the 6 month extension was a massive surprise.

But once again my mother-in law, the dog snogger, desperate not to let him pass peacefully away, and came to the rescue by combining her mouth, his nose and some regulated blowing. He began his third spell of life.

Over the next 6 months more fur started to fall out. It was as though his mind believed he was alive, but his body had already come to terms with death and had started to decay.

Christmas came and we visited again. Technically this was the second time we had visited him since he originally died, and for a dog that had died over a year ago he was surprisingly agile. He had bald patches, still had no teeth, had bad breath, bad arthritis, was wobbly on his paws and had deveolped a sensitivity to light.

It really was as though he was trying to decompose in peace, but was unable to. Every time he tried to lie down and die he'd have my mother-in-law on hand with a defibrillator.

His appetite for ankles had returned, and he was feistier than I'd ever seen him before. I let him have a few nibbles, just for old times sake. Usually I'd shoo him away after a few sucks, but my reasoning behind letting him carry on longer than usual was "You never know, come this time next year he could have died. Finally."

At the end of our visit we said our goodbyes, and got into the car. As the frosty Decemer air touched my socks, my ankles stung. I checked my ankles only to see that Toto, the toothless decomposing dog, had managed to draw blood.

This was the first and only time I have ever been bitten by something that had died and decomposed, but was walking around as though it was alive.

Or, a "zombie."

Today, I invented a game – Midget Gem Gamble.

It’s such a great game!

It’s so good in fact, that when I explained it to a mate and demonstrated how to play, he was that impressed he said “I’d high five you, but your hands are covered in drool.”

Everyone knows that black midget gems are either the nice blackcurrant kind or the nasty liquorice ones. This game can only be played with packs of midget gems that contain the nasty ones.

The idea is to try to single out the black one from a mouth full of other flavours, and spit it out while retaining the nice ones in your mouth. The earlier you spit it out, the more points you score.

How to play:

• Get a pack of midget gems.
• Take out 10 midget gems, ensuring that you include 1 black one.
• Throw all 10, including the black one, into your mouth at once.
• Mix them around inside your mouth for 20 seconds.
• Try to single out the black one by using taste only, and spitting it out into your hand.
• If you get it first time, you score 1 point (1 is the best score, like in the popular music charts)
• If you don’t spit out the black one, try again with the remaining 9.
• Each spit after the initial one must be made within 5 seconds of the previous spit, or the score also reduces by one.
• Each time you fail to spit out the black one, and reduce the number of midget gems in the mouth, the potential score reduces by one.

• If you get it on “spit 2” you score 2. “Spit 3” = a score of 3, etc… but taking into account any occasions when the 5 second limit has been exceeded.

Tips:
When buying midget gems opt for value packs, as it’s harder to differentiate due to cheaper flavouring.
Play in a group. Playing this game alone signifies a high level of self loathing.

When I was young, I used to think that everyones phone number was sequential like the house numbers. As in, your next door neighbour had almost the same phone number as you but minus or plus one.

As you know, my mobile number is 07919 390145. The numbers that have the same beginning but end in 144 and 146 are, in effect, my "mobile neighbours"

When you move into a new house, it's normal that you (eventually) introduce yourself to your neighbours. I'd had my mobile number for ages but had never put any effort in and introduced myself to my "mobile neighbours," so I decided to send them a text.

"Hi. Your phone number is just one digit different to mine, so we are text-door neighbours! Hope you're well. Don't worry - I'm not weird! Craig."

I realised it may be worrying to get a text from a random number, so I hoped to alleviate any fears my recipients may experience by adding the reassuring "I'm not weird" line. I felt it was a point I wanted to make as early on in our relationship as possible, to alleviate worries.

I pressed "send" and sat there, optimistically holding my phone.

An hour later I realised that my text-door neighbours were either out, or ignoring me. I didn't want to appear pushy to my new neighbours, but I also felt really let down by their lack of communication back. My original message specified "just one digit different to mine." I figured that it didn't matter WHICH digit was different, so I decided to change the second-to-last digit by +1 and -1 and text them too.

So texts went out to numbers that ended in 135 and 155.

Another hour passed and nothing.

I had sent texts to four random people, and it occured to me that there may be a few reasons why a response was not forthcoming.

1) They thought I was weird, despite my reassurance.
2) They didn't get the text. (Maybe their phone was off.)

Later that night, at around half seven, I popped onto Facebook and put a comment on my status asking "What replies would you get if you sent texts to your mobile neighbours, as in your mobile number +1 and -1?"

One "real life" friend (I say "real life" as opposed to "pretend" friend to differentiate between people I actually know and internet-only friends) thought this was a great idea and said he was going to do it. At the time of his reply it was around half eleven at night.

Five minutes later he re-commented that he couldn't wait and had sent them a "Will you be my friend?" text there and then.

How freaked would you be if you got a text at half to midnight, from an unrecognised number asking to be your friend? Personally, I would be "PROPER" freaked!

Next morning I checked my phone. Nothing. Nothing from all 4 of my mobile neighbours. Disappointed, I checked facebook. Anthony had also been unsuccessful in contacting his neighbours. But whereas I had let it go, Ant had decided to re-text them with "I can't believe you have ignored your textdoor neighbour. I hope you treat your real neighbours better."

I guess some people prefer real life.

As I'm sure you know, I very rarely share websites that I find interesting with people here, but I came across a photography site earlier that absolutely amazed me. Antarctic-Imagery is a collection of absolutely breathtaking images from the Antarctic.

The photos were taken by Malcolm Needham, while serving on the Royal Navy's HMS Endurance, and they include crystal clear images of icebergs, landscapes and seascapes.

Some are moody and eerie, some dramatically atomspheric, but all taken with absolute clarity. Genuinely breathtaking.

Go and have a look.

Go now, and thank Gary Spencer for a putting together a great, easy to navigate site.

http://www.antarctic-imagery.co.uk/