Joking aside

I’m not usually into practical jokes. Many of the ‘practical jokers’ I met in my life turned out to be bullies in disguise; or just not funny in that I-feel-forced-to-find-this-funny kind of way.

My favourite April Fools was a letter I received from a bank – my sister worked for them at the time – asking me to repay money I was alleged to have received from a cash machine over and above the amount I had requested. They were asking for around £300.

I wrote them a fierce letter, and then phoned my sister in a strop, asking for her advice. She strung me along for quite a while before I cottoned on to the fact that the letter had come from her.

Awwww ….

I was a student at the time, and had no idea it was 1 April. That was also the year in which it took me 36 hours to realise that summer time had commenced – I was living an hour behind everyone else. Those were the days …

These days, I tend to find the funniest April Fools are news items that look like they ‘ought’ to be pranks, but turn out to be true. Some favourites from today include:

• transparent wood replacing glass in Swedish windows, from Wired;
• Whoopi Goldberg’s plans to launch her own line of medical marijuana products to combat period pains, from USA Today; and
• the emerging trend for denim coloured hair, from the Daily Mail.

These are all true … unlike my earlier post about the closure of Furillen, which I am delighted to say was a joke.

Thanks to all of you who messaged me – and posted comments here – expressing concern. And to those who caught on without letting on.

To be fair, I did leave some clues – the ‘tag’ on the post that simply read ‘April First’, and the doormat on the sim’s landing point.

But to all of you …