My brain has been half asleep this week. Forgot to check email in work this morning and nearly missed out on some free biscuits which someone brought back from holiday. They'd been left in the kitchen and an email was sent out to let people know.

I was like this last night as well when I kept mis-reading prices in the supermarket.

We bought two bags of pears from the supermarket over a week ago (bought one, got one free). They were very hard and under-ripe. We also bought some bananas at the same time so I thought I'd try a bit of an experiment.

I had heard about bananas helping to ripen fruit, due to them giving off small amounts of ethylene gas. I tore a small hole in one of the bags of pears and poked a couple of bananas in, leaving them there for just over a week. I ate one of the pears today and it had ripened 'just right' - soft enough to eat but not too soft or juicy. When I got home I tried a pear from the 'control' group. It was of a very similar ripeness. The bananas seemed to have had a negligible effect