While I'm waiting for you to send me some 'greatest hits' – see last week – I'll natter on about one of my favourite subjects: research.

Sure, research can be tedious. But it can also be fun. Just think: you, too, can turn your leisure hours to profit. Just make notes and use your natural curiosity.

What do I mean by that? Well, some nincompoop or other on the 'net says, 'As everybody knows, blah blah…' And you think, 'Wait. Is conventional wisdom actually right?' And off you go, trying to nail down that elusive factoid to keep Joe KnowItAll from polluting your personal database with inaccuracies. Now, if you're like me, you end up spending an illegal amount of your downtime reading some old, musty, forgotten book or treatise and learning the most fascinating, but useless trivia…

Why not sock it away? You could turn it into an article, a Guide Entry, or background for your next short story or novel. Fiction writers, take note: people will pay more attention to your hero or heroine if they're doing something interesting. Let me give you an example.

I was just trying to find out more about shoemaking. (See this week's quiz.) And I stumbled across an old magazine. It's called Mechanics' Magazine, and the volume I found contained issues from 1858. What a treasure trove! All sorts of weird inventions and ideas. Take this one:

SIR, – Having read lately, in the Times, three letters signed respectively 'Revolver', 'Pistol', and 'Man-trap', stating that attempts had been made by robbers to enter houses in the vicinity of Notting-hill, I beg to submit for consideration a reference to my frictional grenade, as exhibited at the Crystal Palace and the Royal Polytechnic Institution, which can be effectually used without exposure of the person. I have already (without beseeching any 'Circumlocution Office') explained the nature and manner of preparing this very simple and efficient grenade to the sergeant of police at the Notting-hill Police-station. The Times of yesterday gives a startling account of the insecure condition of that vicinity.

I am, Sir, yours, &c.,

J. Norton

Rosherville, Sept. 30th

Now, if you can't get a short story out of this, I miss my guess. Here we are, in 1858. In London. I can see the fog rolling in. There are Burglars. With bowler hats and bags marked 'Swag', no doubt. And here's the intrepid Inventor with his home hand grenade…

Is this a comedy, a tragedy? A steampunk science fiction novel? A cautionary tale about the limits of human ingenuity? A script involving Keira Knightley? You decide.

But oh, boy, are the people of the past fun. Who knows what hilariously awful human behaviour lurks in the internet archive? Only the dedicated Researcher knows. And gets a daily laugh out of the foibles of mankind.

I have done further research on this J. Norton and his 'home hand grenade'. He was not considered a nut – at least, not by the Royal United Service Institution, which appears to be a serious bunch of warmongers. According to one of them, Norton 'had the misfortune to be born some fifty years before his time. Had it not been so he would have been a very great man.' And probably worked for a major arms dealer, say I.

Norton dedicated his invention of this home hand grenade to General Sir Hugh Rose, G.C.B., Commander of the British forces in Ireland. No comment. Elsewhere, he even says ladies can safely throw them. This man took his mayhem seriously.

According to Norton, the percussion grenade is more useful against a burglar because, since it doesn't have a fuse, the burglar can't throw it back at you. How clever.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

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