h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It has long been suspected - and this has been borne out by my own studies - that socks are not naturally monogamous. A pair of socks, thrown into a washing machine enough times, will often emerge as a single sock. This is not specific to launderettes, and appears to be an inborn sock characteristic.

To throw the odd socks in the bin is a hard decision, weighed against the faint possibilty of the missing ones returning. Many useful suggestions have been made for using socks, to which I'd like to add one.

When our cat-flap let in freezing draughts during bad weather, I wanted a curtain the cats could push through, and remembered our favourite but single socks, which by then needed a whole drawer for housing. Using drawing-pins (nails might have marred a potential pairing in the future) I made quite a dense strip curtain of socks, arranging the contrasting colours artistically, like a rag-rug. The cats, faced with a wall of socks, were puzzled for a minute; but soon happily pushed through them, and the draughts were virtually eliminated. Socks whose partners returned were simply replaced.