Yesterday was a long day. I travelled down to Portsmouth, on the South coast, for my grandmother's funeral.

My grandmother, Ethel Eileen Samphire (born Stroud), was 91 when she died, and she outlived her husband by about 55 years. To her family, she was always Eileen. To her friends she was Flip.

She was good to me and my brothers when we were young.

For her last years, she remembered almost nothing of her life, but she was happy, perhaps happier than for many of her fully-aware years; I think she forgot her grief. I saw little of her.

The funeral was well-attended, but short and not particularly personal.

Her coffin was very small.

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Five uses for a brick
Travelling down on the train to Portsmouth, I was sitting next to a guy who was writing a very uninspiring creativity seminar. It was all about a brick. The first exercise required you to think up as many possible uses for a brick. Having nothing better to do, I started this. Here are the first five I came up with. After this, my interest waned.

1. Include as the only object in a space probe, aimed out of the solar system, to confuse aliens.


2. Place in the centre of an empty room, to create an artwork called 'Brick'.


3. Remove, to create and artwork called 'Absence of Brick'.


4. Paint red.


5. Throw through the window of your local suspected-paedophile, outed by your favourite tabloid, only to find out that said victim was in fact a paediatrician, not a paedophile. (That's satire, folks.)

According to the creativity seminar, I am not creative. To be creative, you had to come up with 20. I say 5 is enough.

Any other uses for a brick?

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A message to all Australians: HA!