Old Wives get it right -

- again!

When my mum died, thirty-four years ago this month, her home was

 packed up by Pickfords and everything - including the coal box below -

was shipped across the country to us.

Today it sits next to our coal-effect gas fire, still

full of the nutty slack my mum dug out of the

coal house all those years ago.

You're probably thinking I'm 'Nutty Slack' for keeping coal

 that we don't need and can't use for more than a third of a century.

 But that would be the short-sighted view

'Some day,' I thought, 'that coal will come in handy'

And I was right. Today, this little heap of dirt is our pension plan.

  

The idea was sparked by a little flurry on Facebook -

someone had discovered the amazing regenerating

power of a lump of coal on a limp lettuce -

and, suddenly, baby-boomers were remembering how their

mums revived a tired old butterball lettuce by putting it

 in cold water with a small piece of washed coal and - voila!

 - an hour or so later it emerged as crisp, fresh leaves.

So....

Dragons' Den - here we come!

Our plan is to break the coal up into 1-inch cubes and

sell it to the public as the Next New Thing. 

With a bit of careful wording we could

have every pensioner in Britain sitting in a

lukewarm bath with a cleverly-marketed cube

of nutty slack working its magic on their tired old bones.

Today Britain - tomorrow the world!

Order now - stocks are limited...