It's amazing the ideas you have in that twilight between sleep and wakefulness, especially when your body is full of beer and pizza. I woke up this morning convinced that I had come up with a brilliant new idea for an invention
even more brilliant than shamgel. For some reason I had come up with the idea of a mobile phone that also doubled up as a tiny violin. That's right, it's a fully functioning phone, but it's inside a four inch long fiddle. When it rang the violin would play a beautiful melody, but if you were just bored and quite dexterous you could play the violin anyway. And this is the genius bit, it would be made of wood and be as fragile as a Stradivarius.
I was convinced in my half-dream like state that I had struck on something brilliant, but within minutes I began to see more negatives that positives to this idea (the main ones being that a mobile phone of such fragility might break in your pocket and more importantly that whilst many people have use of a phone, not many people would need a very small violin - with the possible exception of elf king Toe-Knee Brennan, though he doesn't know how to play so it's still not much use). In fact after I'd been awake for about five minutes the tiny wooden violin mobile phone which I'd been convinced would make me my fortune, began to look almost foolish. Think how expensive they would be to manufacture and how difficult it would be to maintain a professional timbre to the instrument if it had to be filled with the electronics that would make it work as a phone.
Many of the world's greatest ideas were invented in someone's sleep - certainly the tune to the song "Yesterday" was made up by a slumbering Paul Mccartney - but I would also conclude that a lot of really stupid ones were created in the same way. But just in case I might attempt to manufacture the item. It will take a few years to perfect and will probably retail at several thousand pounds and will almost certainly break before you have been able to use it. But if anyone wants to order one in advance then send me a cheque for £5000. I guarantee that as soon as the violin-phone is invented I will send you one and the only way you will fail to get a return on your investment is if for some reason the construction of such an item proves impractical.
