I’VE always been interested in strange objects. I have a fishing hook which shoots the fish if it gets too stroppy being pulled out of the water.

There’s a German WW11 machine gun called the Krummlauf with a bent barrel it fires round corners. It’s got a mirror so you can see what you’re aiming at.

I understand it only fires round right hand corners, so if you are coming from the left you're safe. I don’t know if it was used against the Russians. A machine gun I’d love to see is James Puckle’s of 1718 thought to be the first machine gun.

What makes it so interesting is it fired round bullets for Christians and square for Turks to cause more severe pain. Like being shot with an Oxo cube. What would health and safety make of that.

I understand the Geneva Convention bans using metal polish on bayonets. It causes blood poisoning. So when stabbed with a bayonet it’s better if it’s not shiny.

One less thing to worry about. So that’s all right then. From 1934 one of these Puckle guns was in the Tower of London. I went to see it.

One of the curators said she’d never heard of it and couldn’t find any trace of it. It was lost.

I contacted the Leeds Royal Armouries and they had heard of it. Apparently it had been on loan to the Tower and had been returned to the owner in1996.

Johnny Ball told me that all this about round bullets for Christians and square for Turks was a load of tosh.

They only used the square bullets if they were near the enemy and the gun was likely to be captured. If it was captured the enemy couldn’t fire at them running away because no one else in the world had square bullets.

So what’s this got to do with the old folk’s treat? Well one year I was invited to entertain the senior citizens. My interest in the Puckle gun’s square bullets prompted me to make a small cannon that fired square, should I say cube, shaped cannon balls.

At the function I loaded my cannon with a normal hard boiled egg, without the shell, lit the fuse and went to the other side of the room where Margaret Metcalf was ready to catch it in a gold fish bowl full of water.

The cannon fired and Margaret caught it with a splash. When I removed the egg from the bowl it was square. To show it was a real square egg I cut it in half to show it had a square yolk and then to prove it was real I ate it.

The audience was unimpressed. I got the impression they thought it was a lot of trouble to fit square egg slices neatly on your square bread.

I was not asked back, until last Saturday. Margaret collared Liz and said “You’re both over 60 you must come to the old folks treat you’ll love it”.

Now it’s called Senior Citizens Grand Tea and Concert. It was a full house at Kirkburton Middle school and we did have a grand tea, a real blow out.

Normal boiled eggs were provided, not square ones, which of course don’t roll off your plate.

They’d solved this problem by simply cutting them in half. The first entertainers were a Lancastrian duo singing World War 1 songs accompanied by a banjo.

One recited a poem about four men carrying a hen hut with the owner inside carrying the perches.

The main act was local singer Loretta Scott who really got the audience going. She told us that her brother when he was 12 fell in love with a 23-year-old woman. A story of being led astray by the older woman, nothing changes. But no, it was Doris Day she was talking about or Clara Kappelhoff as she is known now.

I remember I was in love with her too. Lorretta sang “Que sera sera, what will be will be”. Which is the poetic version of, “I’ve no idea, ask y’dad”.

A good time was had by all.