So I’m a red risk all of a sudden. It’s a shock for someone who’s conjured only green codes from so many apps this past quarter-of-a-decade. My red code will be a shock for some reading this, too.  Perhaps, blissfully green for as long as such colours existed, you just experienced a twinge in your buttocks, before remembering that, no, printed paper cannot transmit pathogens from some guy in Shanghai, and nor can an LCD screen. Mindful of the two negative results after my near-exposure and before my colour-slander, it’s not concerning me...

Delicious, isn’t it? Remember the smell when you unpeeled your first credit card? If you have bought electronics, you will know the excitement of transparent sleeves and instruction booklets. Let us also mention polyethylene. If I write here about the smell of new bin liners, you will experience something quite specific in your “inner nose”. Polyethylene. It is the softer plastics that seem more generous to give off their scent. PVC raincoats and toy umbrellas. We all know the aromatic explosion from a roll of bubble wrap. Tiny seams of injected modernity. It...

I couldn’t quite believe my eyes. There they both were. And it was my wife who’d put them there. Strewth. It wasn’t even that one of these dishes was left-overs from the previous day; no, she had consciously cooked both of them, set them there for the family to actually eat. Okay, it was a long time ago that she’d delivered the warning. Maybe she’s forgotten it by now. Or maybe I’m the one who misremembered. Anyway, here goes. Fish is not to be paired with sweet potato. Harmless individually, these two...

In a previous entry for Strainer, we explored the use of green tea as an additive in various processed goods; from skin creams to air fresheners to slimming pills to ice cream. We explored how seldom it is the flavour of the green tea that qualifies it as capable of “adding value”, which, by the way, usually means added shareholder wealth, not added customer pleasure. We explored how green tea carries connotations of “healthfulness” to most people in most countries, as well as ambitious health claims for anyone who cares to...