True Or False: A new book from Charles Fudgemuffin?

True!

True Or False:
A Collection Of 100 Light-Hearted Facts And Bluffs

It's been around a year now since I published my early scifi themed series of books, and after writing a story which spanned six books and approximately two thousand pages, I initially felt like I needed to recharge my batteries before writing my next novel. 

I have since started writing my next novel, but it may be quite a few months before it's ready for publication, so as a diversion until then, I've also written a non-fiction book.

Well ... it's sort of non-fiction. I suppose you could more accurately describe it as half non-fiction and half fiction, as my new book is entitled 'True Or False: A Collection Of 100 Light-Hearted Facts And Bluffs'. As the name suggests, it's a collection of 'facts' some of which are true, and others of which are nothing more than devious bluffery.

The book is a change of direction from my previous scifi books, and features a writing style closer to what you would find on this blog. To give you a flavour of what to expect, this is the first true or false 'fact' featured in the book...

1) A crackdown on the seedy side of society.

Until recently it was illegal to bake or sell a loaf of bread in the UK unless it weighed 400 grams or multiples thereof.

True or false?

. . . . . . . .

True

For some bizarre reason, this used to be the law in the UK. It makes you wonder what sort of fools make up the laws that we have to live by if they reckoned random sized loaves of bread were a potential danger to society. You can just imagine the politicians sitting around one day discussing what laws to introduce...

First Politician: “Right, well I think we should definitely make burglary illegal.”
Second Politician: “Agreed, and car theft should definitely be a crime as well.”
Third Politician: “Absolutely, but obviously the really important issue, the thing which we need to crack down on harder than anything else, top of the agenda...

…has got to be the selling of loaves of bread in weights which don’t conform to multiples of 400g.”

To be fair, laws controlling the weight of a loaf of bread date back to 1266 so, we can’t really blame our current politicians for introducing the law. We can blame recent generations of politicians for not scrapping it sooner though, and when Britain went metric in 1977 politicians actually debated whether to amend the law from 14 ounces to 397 grams (the exact equivalent) or to 400 grams (a more practical figure). Surely though, what they should have been debating is, “Why have we got this stupid ****ing law in the first place!?”

To make matters worse, before the recent changes not only was it illegal to sell loaves of bread in sizes other than 400 gram multiples, it was even illegal to bake a loaf which didn’t conform to the 400 gram weight multiple! Because of course if fresh loaves were allowed to be baked in any weight or size well then that would just lead to anarchy!  

Imagine ringing the National Crime Hotline and having the following conversation...

Caller: “Yes, I’d like to report a crime please.”
Hotline: “Okay, and what is it the crime that’s been committed?”
Caller: “My neighbour has just baked a loaf of bread weighing 467 grams, which is in blatant contravention of The Bread Act of 1822.”

A criminal mastermind faces justice after being caught baking
loaves of bread whch didn't conform to multiples of 400g.

Or imagine the following conversation between two parents...

Proud parent: “Ee, I’m so pleased!  Jimmy passed all his GCSEs and he got five A stars!  He’s doing so well!  How’s your Martin doing?”

Concerned parent: “Oh, he’s really gone off the rails recently.” (Looks distressed.) “I don’t know where to turn. He’s been causing all sorts of bother and he’s even been getting in trouble with the law.”

Proud parent: “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. What’s he’s done?”

Concerned parent: “He baked a loaf of bread weighing 451 grams, in blatant contravention of The Bread Act of 1822.”

Absolutely ridiculous!  Fair enough in centuries gone by when people were idiots you can understand them having totally crazy laws, but you’d like to think that in modern times politicians would have had a bit of common sense and scrapped this law a lot sooner than they did.

Another interesting point to note is that The Bread Act of 1963 was 18 pages long! Why do we need 18 pages of laws regulating bread? Fair enough maybe have a brief law saying it’s got to be edible and safe to eat, but other than that the government should just chill out and let bakers get on with doing their jobs.

To be fair, at least the current politicians have finally got around to getting rid of this law, but I mean in times gone by was the selling of bread in non-400g multiples really such a danger to society?

. . . . . . . .

In the actual book, each 'True Or False' answer is revealed on the following page, rather than below the question like in this blog post. This therefore gives readers the chance try to guess the correct answer for themselves ... but it's not a test! It's just intended as a bit of light-hearted fun.

'True Or False: A Light-Hearted Collection Of 100 Facts And Bluffs' is currently available from Amazon for kindle.