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History? It's All Tabs And Slots To Me (The 'Flip-Book' series, No.13)

Okey-dokey folks, we're risen, shiny and zingy; let's now pile into our frukost.  It's Day 13991 (for at least one of us) and another breakfast in Stockholm is delightfully imminent.  Orange juice (with 'bits' of course: the smooth variety carries unpleasant reminders of orange squash, the additive-ridden mainstay of childhood), and a generous bowlful of Quaker Havre Fras, bobbing about in a milk-bath.  That will set me up for the next four hours or so.

"Havre Fras, Paul?  What's that all about then?"

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Playing My Face (The 'Flip-Book' series, No.9)

In the perfect illumination of the strip-light above my shaving-point (Swedish efficiency again), I squint skeptically at my reflection and attend to my facial hair.

My facial hair has fascinated me since the first isolated strands poked out of my chin like tree-clippings through a plastic sack, when I was 14 or 15 (yes, I came somewhat late to the puberty party).  I do like the way my appearance can be transformed in so many ways, by mucking about with those tussocks on my phizog.

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If The Wind Changes You'll Stick Like That (The 'Flip-Book' series, No.8)

"Lawks, it's five to seven.  Is he still in the you-know-what?"  Yes madam, I am: in a very square, windowless, Small Tiled Room of Ablutions, in an apartment on an island in Stockholm, Sweden.  On Wednesday 13th August, which as you now know is Day 13991.  Now please, madam, be patient.

The room is not quite six feet square, and is home to the shower, toilet, wash-basin, and a front-loading washing-machine.  It also boasts a formidably powerful extractor-fan in the ceiling: I've had very high hair while living in Stockholm.

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Promenade 1: Puzzle Corner (The 'Flip-Book' series, No.6)

I saunter from the bedroom and through the apartment.

(By the way, apologies for the next paragraph, which reads like estate agents' particulars: let me assure you now that I've never been, slept with, or bought drinks for, an estate agent in my life.  However, as a breed they are quite a lot like radioactive fallout: is there any way we can adequately protect ourselves from the taint?)
 

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No Pooka Required (The 'Flip-Book' series, No.5)

Hello, world. 

Now stop that.  Stop it, I say!  I'm not going any further with this until you stop sniggering, and pull yourself together.  I know you might well have studied computing, maybe you learned your earliest C programming from Kernighan & Ritchie, and as soon as I spoke those two words at the start of this piece you immediately thought of that damned little scrap of beginners' code.
 

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Upsy-Daisy (The 'Flip-Book' series, No.4)

In my previous article, I mentioned that I consider myself a morning person.  Now: I apologise if you're an evening person and your sensibilities are offended by this notion; nevertheless I am now going to enlarge on the subject !

What does it mean to be a morning person?

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