THOSE MORE ANSWERS
Questions answered on Thursday the 30th of October 2025
Selected answers offered by Tim Pearson
BLAME:
Are you to blame?
In my world - yes. Obviously, ultimately and for reasons of harmony.
LEARNING:
When do you stop learning?
When you stop caring.
When do you think you have learnt enough?
When you know you’ve learnt nothing.
SHAME:
If ‘pride comes before a fall’, what does shame come before?
An insight or a spiral.
What would the SHAME flag look like?
Grey with a twist of yarn symbol in black.
FLAGS:
What are flags for?
Fostering an identity.
Do flags create division?
More like a blinkered focus.
FOOTBALL:
What is football for?
Lubricating the world.
Why support a football team?
A random excellent reason.
Should the owner of a football team pay you to be a supporter of their football team?
No – that’s nuts! It’s an abusive one-sided relationship.
Would you rather be a football of a goalpost?
A goalpost.
Selected answers offered by Kirk Field
BLAME:
When were you first to blame?
When I was born a Roman Catholic with Original Sin (not the remix).
CHILDREN:
Do you learn more from your children than they might ever learn from you?
Yes, for they teach us how to love unconditionally.
LEARNING:
When do you accept that what you learnt in your youth has no value in the modern world?
When the air filter needs cleaning, your wife is experiencing something called the 'menopause', no one cares you can recite 'Ant-rap' in its entirety, and you still haven't seen an Oxbow fucking Lake.
MODERN WORLD:
Does Paul Weller know what the Modern World is?
Of course! What kind of fool do you think he is to know nothing of the modern world?
EXISTENCE:
Why do questions exist?
To prove we do.
SHAME:
What is shame?
Regret on steroids
FLAGS:
Do flags create division?
Division creates flags.
OTHER:
What is the other?
Sex in a 70s sitcom.
FOOTBALL
Should your agreement with the owner of the football team just be for one season or for the rest of your life?
The question is flawed and shows a lack of understanding about football. There is rarely agreement with the owner of the team you support. They are often despised. Furthermore, you don't choose to support a particuar team like you don't choose your sexual orientation.
TASTE:
Can the sea Taste the sky?
No, the opposite; the sky tastes the sea, and surreptitiously, silently sucks it up.
BEAUTY:
Are we all just spending our lives making content for the Algorithms?
Should you tell someone they are Beautiful when you don’t think they are?
No, or tell them they are ugly when you think they are.
QUESTIONS:
Is it better to ask questions or answer questions?
The two are the same thing.
Why does two and two always make four?
Who said it does?
Are we all just dominos waiting for our turn to fall?
We are actually rubber dominos; we bounce back.
GOD:
Did we create God?
Or...
Did God create us?
Chicken...egg, innit?
FEAR:
Why do people not run away when they see the Grim Reaper approaching with his scythe?
For the same reason the ‘d’ of ‘The End’ doesn't run from the full stop. It’s how it's meant to be.
Questions answered on Wednesday the 29th of October 2025
Selected answers offered by Graham Mackenzie
When did the last woman scrub her doorstep with a Donkey Stone?
My maternal grandmother used to scrub her porch and front doorstep daily in the 1980s. She lived on a busy road in north Edinburgh, with exhaust fumes from lorries turning the hedges black. I have come across the precise smell of pollution and detergent again recently, for example when seeing elderly patients during home visits. I think therefore that there are some women, and perhaps men, who are still cleaning their doorsteps with Donkey Stones.
Who is to blame?
Someone stole a curling stone decorated with a ship from my grandparents’ scrubbed step, circa 1988. Nobody confessed. My mother still talks about it.
Selected answers offered by Mr. Hopkinson
BLAME:
Who is to blame?
If we are all part of a deeply connected system - which I think we are - then none of us are blameless. So "all" are to blame, but are we "all to blame"? As in, "are we all to point the finger?". We don't have to, I don't think, though if we did - I wouldn't blame us.
If we can blame the past, can we blame the future?
"We must abandon, completely, the notion of blaming the past for any kind of situation we’re in, and reverse our thinking and see that the past always flows back from the present; that NOW is the creative point of life" - Alan Watts said that, in the past.
Is there more to be learnt from blaming others or blaming oneself?
Without others, blame would be functionless
If it is acceptable to blame our parents, is it acceptable to blame our children?
Epictetus said "What upsets people is not things themselves but their judgments about things."
Epictetus lived a life of great simplicity, with few possessions. He lived alone for a long time, but in his old age, he adopted the child of a friend who otherwise would have been left to die, and raised him with the aid of a woman. It is unclear whether Epictetus and she were married.He died sometime around AD 135. After his death, according to Lucian, his oil lamp was purchased by an admirer for 3,000 drachmae.
