How to | Improve Your Pancake Toss

Illustration by Kavel Rafferty

There’s still time to sneak in a bit of pancake day training…

Easy wins

Use a non-stick pan, and don’t add too much oil. Brad Jolly, a chef with the World Record for most tosses of a pancake in one minute (140), says you don’t want too thick a batter and should wait until air bubbles form before tossing. Shake or tap the pan to loosen, then slip the pancake towards the side before you flip.

All in the wrist

Grip the handle close to the edge of the pan. You want a flick of the wrist rather than involving your forearm, or whole arm. Gordon Ramsay says to “push away, and flip back up with your wrist.”

Employ science

Dr Mark Hadley, of Warwick University’s Physics department, estimates that to get your pancake up to half a metre in the air, you need to launch at 3m per second. Pan-handling practice Mike Cuzzacrea – who runs marathons while tossing pancakes and has over three decades of records to his name – practises daily. He uses his maple tree to judge flip height (we don’t know if maple syrup is his topping of choice). He also trains toget “the arm strength and the right technique ... I practise the movement bending up and down.”

Be inventive

Even Mike relies on more than skill. To help his pancakes survive marathons, he glues a few together and wraps them in plastic. Not something we advise if you also fancy eating them.

These instructions for improving your pancake tossing skills come from our March Miscellany pages, which are always full of topical information and seasonal silliness.

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Competition | Win a copy of A Year of Birdsong

“As the birdsong season winds down, a few birds are still singing lustily. One of these blessed birds is the yellowhammer. Multiple-brooded, the male is seized with the need to keep going. On a summer day it might repeat its ditty 7, 000 times.”

We get to know a little bit more about the yellowhammer in the July issue of The Simple Things. For 12 months of avian delights, we’ve got three copies of A Year of Birdsong by Dominic Couzens, with illustrations by Madeleine Floyd and published by Batsford to give away.

To enter click here and answer a simple question. We’ll pick the three winners at random. Good luck!

Eggshell tea lights

A smashing make to light up a long weekend - and you can use the eggs themselves for a leisurely breakfast

YOU WILL NEED: 
Empty eggshells
Candle wax (or leftover bits from old candles)
Old saucepan
Egg carton
Wicks (try hobbycraft.co.uk)

1 Clean the eggshells in soapy water and let dry.

2 Heat the wax in an old pan over a low heat until it melts. Take off the heat.

3 With the eggshells held in their carton, carefully pour the wax into the shells.

4 As soon as the wax starts to become solid, stick a piece of wick of about 10cm length into the centre of each eggshell, so that it reaches the bottom.

5 Leave to harden, occasionally wiggling the wick into the middle. The wax should take a couple of hours to harden completely.

This was originally published in the March 2018 issue of The Simple Things. Get hold of your copy of this month's issue - buy, download or subscribe

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From the April issue…

Miscellany | How to do Coffee Art

Think it looks easy? Wake up and smell the coffee! One estimate is that you’ll need around 1,500 coffees to start getting heart art right – the simplest latte art shape to master.

Get the kit: a lipped steel milk jug, milk thermometer, and steam wand (part of the espresso machine).

And the right ingredients: whole milk (its fat content makes things easier) and a freshly made espresso.

Put in the prep: cold milk goes in the jug, with the wand near the base.

Gradually draw the wand upwards until it’s just below the milk’s surface. Look for small bubbles and a temperature in the mid-60Cs (don’t top 70C!). Go with the flow: to pour, tilt the cup and aim for a constant – not too fast, not too slow –pour. Level cup when nearly full to create what Jori @baristainstitute, calls the ‘canvas’. Add artistic flourishes: move the jug closer to add details – practise a gentle wiggle. For a heart, pour a circle and use a final pull through with the jug’s lip to make a heart. This final step is key to many designs.

Capture on camera: Jori suggests filming yourself. Note that he says it took him half a year to master latte art, only becoming ‘great’ after a few years.

The cheat's way: Use a stencil for chocolate or cinnamon on top instead.

These instructions are from our January Miscellany pages, which are always full of fascinating facts and seasonal silliness.

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How to | Give Living Gifts

Ideas for gifts that will keep on giving… and living!

PLANTS
Rehome house plants: the plantlets on spider plants are simple to snip off. Start them off in shallow water in a jar, before transferring to potting soil and a pretty pot. Works for Devil’s Ivy and Swiss Cheese Plant, too. Take seed: if you’ve had time to collect and dry seeds, pop them into decorated envelopes with instructions. Give a tree: £5 contributes one sapling to the National Trust’s Grow A Tree fund: nationaltrust.org.uk/features/plant-a-tree

PROBIOTICS
Have a SCOBY (aka a Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast): a necessary part of home kombucha cultivation culture. To share, slice around 2cm off the top of the wobbly disc that forms on batches of kombucha, before popping into a fabric-covered jar. Likewise, kefir (an edible, yoghurtstyle probiotic drink) needs a SCOBY: to gift, put a small quantity into a jar of whole milk and seal. Spread the dough: prep your sourdough starter for passing on by feeding it up, before dividing and placing half into a jar. Treat the spinoff to a daily 1:1:1 mix of starter: water: flour (max. 100g each), until it’s ready for use.

PEOPLE
Give skills or time: pledge to take on a tedious job for someone or simply offer to babysit (or pet-sit), a gift to be redeemed at a point of their choosing.

This guide to Living Giving is from our December Miscellany pages, where you’ll find lots more seasonal fun, facts and puzzles to amuse you all month.

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Make | A Solar Oven From a Pizza Box

A bright idea for when the sun is baking hot 

1 Leaving a gap from the edge, cut three sides of a square into the pizza box lid. Score on the fourth side to make a liftable flap. 

2 Tape foil over the inside side of the flap.  

3 Open the box and tape a tight layer of hole-free clear plastic over the inside of the lid (including over the flap-hole you just made).  

4 Tape foil over the rest of the inside.  

5 Add a square of black card to the inside base of the box.  

6 Get ready for use on a hot and sunny day by sticking in direct sunlight for as long as possible with the flap held open. Angle the flap so the foil directs the sun towards the plastic.  

7 Wait until the box/oven gets hot and pop something inside on the card to cook (marshmallows are probably a better option than pies for now). Use oven gloves to get out when ready. It takes a while but who needs to be anywhere on a sunny summer day, anyway? 
 
 This make was from our July Miscellany pages, but we thought it was fun enough to share now. Find more miscellany in every issue of The Simple Things.

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From our August issue…

How to | stay warm outside on cooler evenings

Keeping the chill away on late summer evenings that feel a bit brisk

Imagine that it’s been a pleasant September day, and you’re outdoors happily socialising. Then, the sun goes down, and you’re freezing. Without cutting the fun short, what can you do? Ideally, you’ll pop on some extra layers, fetch a wool rug or gather round a fire pit and carry on your fun.
In reality, you could try:
‘Borrowing’ clothes Bust out the Apprentice-style negotiations – friends don’t really need both arms of their cardie, do they?
Drinking something warm A hot cider will probably fit the bill.
Make sure you’re not sitting on a cold surface, as it’ll make you cooler.
Gentle exercise will warm you up, although avoid any sweating. Just five push-ups then?
Eating: purely to get your metabolism up, obviously.
Stuff your clothes with scrunched-up newspaper (more useful if you’re in trousers, rather than a skirt).
Or, erm, take the gathering indoors. Now that’s nice and toasty...

This advice is from our Miscellany pages in our September issue, which are full of more facts, fun and random silliness. Buy this month's The Simple Things - buy, download or subscribe

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Make | a candle from crayons

Because you can never have too much emergency lighting or fun with crayons

Perhaps there’s been a power cut and your home has been plunged into darkness? Or maybe you just want a project that puts to use of all those broken Crayolas lying around (that’s enough to make any healthy and safety inspector grind their teeth to dust). Here’s the hack for you.

Pick up three of those surplus colouring devices, all roughly equal in size, and remove their labels (soaking them in cold water makes this easier).

Now bunch them together, with a string of natural fibre (think a length of wool, or a strand from an old-fashioned mop) running up through the centre as your wick.

Bind the lot with a couple of straightened out paperclips and secure its base carefully. Make sure you keep a close eye on it, but your makeshift candle should burn for about an hour.

OK, you won’t be giving Diptyque any sleepless nights, but you’ve certainly acquired some valuable survivalist skills.

This was just one of the miscellaneous makes from our bumper Miscellany pages in our May issue, where you can also learn skills including getting rid of slugs, telling apart all the different pasta shapes in the shops, recalling Romeo and Juliet accurately, and listing the component parts of a flower, among other things. There’s also a wordsearch, a spot the difference and a game of Eye Spy to keep you busy.

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Make | Rhubarb leaf stepping stones

Turn over a new leaf with this simple project for your garden

You will need:
One rhubarb leaf per stone
Chicken wire, cut to just under the size of each leaf
Plastic sheeting
Sunflower/olive oil spray
Ready-mix concrete Trowel

How to make
1 Put down your plastic sheeting and lay your leaves on top, with veins facing upwards. Spray on a layer of oil.
2 Prepare your concrete mix, and smooth on a layer of concrete, to around 3 cm. Tap carefully to get rid of air bubbles.
3 Lay a piece of chicken wire on top for strength, then cover with another concrete layer of about the same depth. Tap and smooth edges with your trowel.
4 Cover with plastic, and leave to dry out overnight.
5 Spray with water to remove the leaf. Over the next week, spray regularly until the concrete is hard enough to take a person’s weight.

You’ll find more ideas for intriguing things to make, do and just know in our regular Miscellany pages.
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Make | parsnip panpipes (yes, really)

Looking for a new project this weekend? Each month, we publish a ‘veg box music’ idea, ingenious ways to make those edibles audible

Got some spare parsnips? Then you’re all set to try Blowin in the Roots. Don’t forget to send us photos of your band practice!

You will need:

4 or 5 parsnips (as many as you can hold in your hand comfortably)

Knife

Apple corer / drill

How to make:

1. Slice the skinny ends of the parsnips off at the point at which they are still of a good thickness – 1 or 2cm in diameter, let’s say.

2. Bore wide, cylindrical holes down into the parsnips using an apple corer or a drill. Make the deepest one as deep as the parsnip will allow without breaking through the other end, then repeat on the other parsnips, ensuring that each hole is progressively shallower than the last.

3. Finish them off by slicing across the top of the holes at an angle and hold them upright in a row, from deepest to shallowest, with the highest part of the parsnip closest to the face.

4. Blow diagonally across the parsnips down the same plane as they have been cut – the angle makes it easier to get a note.

Taken from Musical Experiments for After Dinner by Angus Hyland, Tom Parkinson, and illustrated by Dave Hopkins, is published by Laurence King. Available at.laurenceking.com.

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Unboxings | Blue Peter time capsules

At the turn of the year, we often think about what’s behind and what’s ahead. Join us on a trip to the past and future, and tell us what we should put in our Simple Things time capsule!

Just the number 2020, sounds a bit futuristic doesn’t it? And it’s got us thinking about our connections to the future, what we’d want someone to know about life now in hundreds of years time. Of course, these days, our descendants will have endless records of what life was like for us in the form of the internet, but back when we were in short trousers and all this was fields, we knew the most reliable way to capture information about our present for future generations was through a Blue Peter time capsule. The whole of the internet is one thing, but it’s not half so exciting as digging up a capsule Peter Purves buried, is it?

So here’s the story of a few Blue Peter time capsules and what happened to them…

The 1971 capsule

Unearthed: 2000, with the aid of a map, defying the pervasive urban myth that the BBC had lost the plans that detailed the place of its burial. 

Buried by: Valerie Singleton, John Noakes and Peter Purves

The first ever Blue Peter Time Capsule was buried in 1971 in front of BBC TV Centre. The idea seemed to be that it would be opened at the start of the new millennium, giving children we all assumed would be wearing space suits and watching Blue Peter being streamed directly into their brains by Davros from Dr Who, an insight into a simpler time. But what did they choose to bury for posterity? 

What was inside? A set of decimal coins that were introduced that year (in retrospect, some of those haven’t changed so a set of pre-decimalisation coins might have been a better choice), a Blue Peter Annual from 1970 (which sadly got rather waterlogged), and photos of the three presenters (who were there when it was dug up again in 2000). 

What makes it special? This capsule has an air of mystery about it. The producers in 2000 made the decision not to broadcast the opening of the time capsule live just in case nothing had survived. Most of it had survived, albeit in rather dank state, but it became clear during filming that the items inside had been rewrapped at some point… This was likely when the capsule was moved to a new site in the Blue Peter garden during redevelopment work. We prefer to think it was the ghost of Shep, getting busy with the sticky-back plastic. (OK, we only said it had an air of mystery…) It also had a distinct air of cheese about it. The opening of the capsule can be watched on YouTube, with the presenters heard to be loudly commenting on the stench. No one wrinkles their nose like Valerie Singleton. 

The 1984 capsule

Unearthed: 2000

Buried by: Simon Groom, Janet Ellis and Peter Duncan

The second time capsule was buried along with the first (which had to be moved) in the Blue Peter Garden. 

What was inside? Some of Goldie the dog’s hair (??!) - we can only assume the hope was that by 2020 Goldie could be cloned using her own DNA and reborn. Also a record of the Blue Peter theme tune, arranged by Mike Oldfield, and video footage of the statue of Petra (the original Blue Peter dog) being moved (there wasn’t much newsworthy happening in 1984, clearly).

What makes it special? Dead dog hair is pretty unusual, we’ll give it that. We wonder how Mike Oldfield felt about it.

The millennium capsule (1998)

Yet to be opened but scheduled for 2050

Buried by: Katy Hill and Richard Bacon beneath the Millennium Dome, London, as it was being built. 

What is inside? As well as the usual Blue Peter ephemera, they also buried a set of Tellytubby dolls, an insulin pen and a France 98 football. 

What makes it special? It’s the most well-travelled Blue Peter time capsule. In 2017 the box was damaged when a builder at the dome had an accidental  ‘here’s one I buried earlier’ moment and dug it up unknowingly. The capsule was taken back to the BBC in Salford and restored, but it was decided that rather than rebury it the contents would go on tour to mark the show’s 60th birthday in 2018, meeting with ex-presenters at various spots around the country. After the Tellytubbies had enjoyed their airing the capsule went to the National Archives where it will be stored until it is opened in 2050. 

The 2000 capsule

Yet to be opened but scheduled for 2029

Buried by: Katy Hill, Konnie Huq, Simon Thomas and Matt Baker at BBC TV Centre. Later moved to Media City in Salford when the show decamped there.

This capsule was buried when the first two were unearthed… Well, when you’ve already got a dug hole, why would you not?

What is inside? The 29th Blue Peter book, details about the presenters, some video programme highlights, ,a gold medallion and set of badges to mark the 40th anniversary of the show in 1998 and - this is our favourite - instructions on how to make a George the Tortoise toy! The presenters also added items of their own: a CD from Konnie, an old mobile from Simon Thomas, a ring from Katy from her Mongolia trip and from Matt Baker, a Geordie phrasebook. 

What makes is special? Clearly, the George the Tortoise project! With only 19 years to wait, we’re counting down to this one. 

The Diamond capsule (2018)

Yet to be opened but scheduled for 2050

Buried by: Not buried at all, but kept in the National Archives. This capsule was stored by the winner of a Blue Peter competition as well as a raft of presenters past and present: Radzi Chinyanganya, Lindsey Russell, Valerie Singleton, Peter Purves, Janet Ellis and Katy Hill.

The Diamond Time Capsule was stored to mark 60 years of Blue Peter and is due to be opened in its 80th anniversary year. 

What’s inside? Viewers sent in suggestions in their thousands. The programme whittled that down to a list of 20 and then there was a viewers’ vote for the final ten, which is as follows:

2018 set of UK coins and notes
Souvenir from the Royal Wedding between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle
World map with endangered animals in 2018 plus memory stick with a list of critically endangered animals as registered on The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species
World Cup 2018 sticker book
DVD of The Greatest Showman
Bestselling children’s book of 2018 – David Walliams’ The World’s Worst Children 3
Smartphone
British passport (previously belonging to Ewan Vinnicombe the current Blue Peter Editor!)
Fidget spinner
Chart music from 2018 – Now That’s What I Call Music 100 CD and tracks on memory stick

What’s special about it? It’s the only one of the time capsules never to be buried outdoors. Lessons were learned from the smell of damp Stilton emanating from the 1971 capsule, it seems. Where’s the fun in that though?

You can read more about time capsules in our January issue’s Miscellany. 

Now help us fill our Simple Things time capsule

We’d forgotten just how much we love a time capsule and we thought, just for fun, we might put together our own Simple Things time capsule full of things that are very TST in 2020. Tell us what you’re like us to put in it and we’ll get a capsule together* and bury it in a secret (or simply as yet undecided) location in the spring. Maybe one day we can open it and reminisce about how simple things were much more simple back in 2020…

*Disclaimer: this may well be a Family Circle biscuit tin. We’re not the BBC, you know.

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A tale of two woodpeckers

A short biography of two very different birds. Because why not?

Here at The Simple Things, we love a woodpecker, so much so we dedicated one of our Magical Creatures pages to it back in February. You can buy that issue here. 

And when we saw this wonderful illustration of one in this month’s ‘Cosy’ issue, it got us wondering why you don’t encounter many Woodpeckers in books or on the silver screen. They are sadly under-represented, we feel. To go some way towards righting that wrong, we’re celebrating two famous, but very different woodpeckers. 

Picus, Greek myth

Picus (Latin for woodpecker) was a man originally known as Stercutus and was the first king of Latium. He earned his nickname for the fact that he was enormously talented in augury and used woodpeckers for his divination (best not ask how). He was a handsome chap and women, nymphs and a myriad of assorted other females couldn’t help but throw themselves at him. What’s a King of Latium to do? But he came a cropper when the witch, Circe, tried to seduce him and he turned her down with little care for her feelings. Well. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and the witch turned him into a woodpecker as punishment. And for good measure, she turned his friends into a variety of other creatures and his wife into a nymph. The wife went mad and wandered the forest for six days before laying down on the banks of the river and dying. And all because a simple ‘I’d love to but I’m washing my hair’ would not suffice. Lesson learned, chaps.

Woody Woodpecker, Universal Pictures

The inspiration for Woody arrived on cartoonist Walter Lantz’s honeymoon when an acorn woodpecker disturbed Walt and his wife’s peace repeatedly by boring holes in the roof. Walt was going to shoot the bird but his wife suggested he instead make a cartoon of him, and a star was born. 

No one is quite sure what type of woodpecker Woody is, but his laugh has made many assume he is a pileated woodpecker. So now you know.

Woody, voiced by Mel Blanc (who also voiced Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and more) first appeared in the cartoon short Knock Knock on November 25 1940, in which he tormented two unassuming pandas. 

Woody made the move to television in 1957 with The Woody Woodpecker Show, which was revived in the early 70s. And in 1999 he saw another renaissance when The New Woody Woodpecker Show ran for a few years on Fox Kids. A new series is available on YouTube now, where Woody continues to sweep back his quiff, bore holes in things he shouldn’t, irritate all creatures great and small and laugh his infamous laugh. And how is that laugh, written, we’d like to know? According to the lyrics to the Woody Woodpecker Song, it is notated, thus:

Ho-ho-ho ho ho! Ho-ho-ho ho ho!

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The beautiful illustration above is from I Like Birds: A Guide to Britain’s Avian Wildlife by Stuart Cox (Quadrille)

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More from our November issue…

How to | make an astronomy mirror

Go stargazing without straining your neck with this clever make

This make is fairly easy to put together and will provide you with hours of fun on a clear Autumn night. Head out with a Thermos and your guide to the night sky and see what you can spot.

You will need

A mirror, the bigger the better
Weather-proof sealant (optional)
Robust table or flat, stable surface large enough to hold the mirror
Binoculars
Planks of wood (one per viewer)
Clean pieces of cloth

1 Find a mirror and give it a clean so it’s as clear as possible. Treating the frame with weather-proof sealant can help it last longer.
2 Lay mirror onto your flat surface facing upwards. Secure in place.
3 Prop your plank against the mirror and wedge into place so it doesn’t move. Put your binoculars on top and angle so you can see the mirror.
4 Keep the mirror covered up until it’s dark, then use your binoculars to look at the reflection of the skies. Use a bit of cloth to wipe the mirror if it gets fogged up.
5 Make sure you take the mirror back inside or cover it up once you’re finished staring at the stars.

Find more makes, fun and facts on our Miscellany pages every issue.

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When St Swithin met Billy Bragg

‘St Swithin’s Day if it doth rain for 40 days it will remain.

St Swithin’s Day if thou be fair, for 40 days it rain na mair’

You can read more about St Swithin, the Michael Fish of the ninth century, in our July issue. But put briefly, if it’s damp on the day, invest in a good umbrella; you’re going to need it.

If you didn’t know that 15 July is St Swithin’s Day, you might know it as ‘Dex and Em’s Day’, the protagonists of the novel One Day by David Nicholl. The novel begins on 15 July as Dex and Em graduate and revisits them each St Swithin’s Day for the next 20 years. 

But what was the significance of the day for the author? A mixture of very little and random interest, it turns out. Nicholl says that he had to pick a day that would work as a graduation date and British universities tend to hold these in mid July. He wanted a day that wasn’t a ‘big date’ such as Valentine’s Day or Christmas: “St Swithin’s Day felt suitably random,” he told the Oxonian Review. But he needed a date that would resonate with the characters and act as a plot hook, too. “I liked the mythology of St Swithin’s Day, which is about our desire and inability to predict the future. Thematically that seemed right. And there’s a song about lost love by Billy Bragg that is called 'St Swithin’s Day'. To me, that song was the unofficial soundtrack to the book.” What St Swithin would have made of Mr Bragg we’re not certain, but suitably random it certainly is. We’ll be picking up our copies of One Day again to mark the date.

Read more about St Swithin’s Day in our ‘Stories Behind Superstitions’ slot in the Miscellany pages of our July ‘Embrace’ issue.

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More from our July issue…

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Stories behind superstitions | The wrong side of the bed

Why do we talk about the wrong side of the bed? There are sinister reasons underfoot

Having a bad day? It’s not because of that massive delay on your way into work or forgetting that appointment. No, it’s obviously because you got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning. These days, we don’t tend to have a specific side in mind, but in earlier times, the wrong side specifically meant the left. The Latin adjective sinister originally meant ‘left’ but later took on meanings of both evil and unlucky: inn-keepers were said to push beds against walls to prevent their guests being able to get out of anything but the ‘right’ side.

Thankfully modern surveys trump Roman superstition. Over the past decade we’ve not only found that those who get out on the left side each day are likely to have more friends and to enjoy their jobs, but they are also more likely to be in a better mood than those who instead choose the right-hand side.

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More from the October issue:

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Stories behind superstitions | New shoes

Why is it bad luck to put new shoes on a table? Turns out this bold move may be a step too far

There are many reasons why it’s considered bad luck to put your shoes on the table – none of them pleasant. Let’s look at the death-related reasons first.

It may be because criminals were often hanged still wearing their shoes, or because it’s associated with a laid-out corpse. Back when shoes were more expensive and poorer folk had only one pair, it could also be a way of identifying a body. Which brings us to why new shoes are thought unlucky; when shoes were pricy, they’d be passed from the dead person onto another family member, as a “new” pair.

If not for deathly reasons, you don’t need to be a mastermind to understand why you might want to keep the soles of shoes away from anywhere involved with food. Back in less hygienic, less medicated times, it was quite possible the resulting illness could lead to another pair of shoes going spare...

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Stories behind superstitions | Broken mirrors

Why do we consider breaking a mirror bad luck? It’s a conundrum worth a little reflection

What do you see when you look in the mirror? In ancient Greece, they weren’t only a means of checking your lipstick, but also portals to the soul. So, you can imagine what an ill omen breaking one would be.

It was the Romans, however, who gave us the idea of it bringing seven years of bad luck – the time they believed it took to renew a life, and about the same amount of time that it seems to take to be rid of tiny shards of glass. (There’s also a superstition which claims that if it breaks into small shards, your bad luck will be smaller than if it breaks into large pieces.)

Ideas about broken mirrors can be found around the world – looking at your reflection in a broken mirror is considered bad luck in both Russia and India. Cunning ways of losing the bad luck include burying the shards under the light of the full moon, or waiting seven hours before you touch it.

Smashing.

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Natural first aid | Jellyfish stings

Anaphylactic shock is possible from jellyfish stings. Seek immediate medical attention if any of the symptoms of an allergic reaction: nausea, difficulty in breathing, difficulty in swallowing, fever, heart palpitations.

WHILE YOU WAIT FOR MEDICAL HELP:
* Prevent further stinging by brushing away tentacle fragments.
* Scrape off any remaining stinging cells with a sharp-edged object such as a credit card. A towel will suffice if nothing else is available.
* Rinse with seawater, not ever with fresh water (which can trigger further stings).
* Apply up to five drops of lavender essential oil to help neutralise the sting. Reapply every 15 minutes. (Pouring urine on the stung area has the same effect.)
* Start healing. Apply vitamin E or aloe vera juice to heal tissue and reduce inflammation.

Adapted from The Natural First Aid Handbook by Brigitte Mars (Storey Publishing).

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Stories behind superstitions | Wishing on a star

Why do we wish upon a shooting star? Heavens above! You’d be lucky even to spot one

“When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true.” Why, other than the reassurances from Jiminy Cricket, do we believe this? It’s an idea that spans cultures from all over the world. But even thinking of them as stars is wishful thinking – in fact they’re meteors going all ablaze entering Earth’s atmosphere.

Back in the 2nd century, Greek astronomer Ptolemy interpreted them as a sign the Gods were peering down at Earth – the stars slipped through spaces in the heavens – and therefore a good time to ask for what you most wish. It’s more likely their hold comes from their rarity, making a spotter feel blessed. Be thankful you only need to make a wish upon spotting.

In Chile, you’re also required to pick up a stone to make your wish, while in the Philippines you have to tie a knot in your hankie before its light goes. Good luck with that!

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Stories behind superstitions | He loves me, he loves me not

Why do we play “he loves me, he loves me not” with daisies? Daisy, daisy, give us your answer do

Pity the poor daisy, pulled apart by lovelorn types for many centuries. The answer why is hard to come by and even the where is disputed – there are a couple of countries vying to be the oldest daisy destroyers.

Among several 15th-century references in German books, nun and scribe Clara Hätzerlin included ‘The Daisy Oracle’ in her 1471 Liederhandschrift (or songbook). It also was dramatised in Goethe’s 1808 Faust. The French have the tradition of ‘effeuiller la marguerite’, literally ‘to pluck the daisy’. But, in a typically Gallic way, that game is more about how much they are loved, a little, a lot, passionately, to madness or pas du tout – not at all.

However, it’s another European nation that swoops in for the final bit of daisy lore. The world record largest number of people playing “He Loves Me He Loves Me Not” (331) took place on a TV show in 2009... in Italy.

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