Rap Club was a secret establishment set up in the year 2000 that ran incognito over a period of several months in the United Kingdom.
Chungo, Whore, Forest and an unnamed fourth were the south-east Londoners responsible for the inception of Rap Club. Rap Club ran on the triangular field where Ash Road meets Redhill Road in New Ash Green, Kent.
The mystery that shrouded Rap Club was partly down to its selective membership requirements – only those who could make a beat were welcome to attend. Since Rap Club was about escapism, being able to make a beat wasn’t always enough: You had to need to make a beat.
Rap Club meetings were sporadic so as not to attract attention or give clues as to when the next meet was. If it was felt a resident of New Ash Green was about to discover Rap Club, club members would abort the session – sometimes even for that entire evening.
The whole Rap Club society was very secretive - a characteristic that led to the creation of two Rap Club rules early on:
1. You don’t talk about Rap Club.
2. If this is your first time at Rap Club, you must rap.
Rap Club meetings would involve three or more members of the troupe gathering in New Ash Green. Once the evening’s Rap Club attendance had settled, a circle would be formed in the field and the beat (usually a group human beatbox) would begin.
Individual members of that evening’s Rap Club would then take turns to rap over the beat, usually freestyle. Rap lyrics would follow anything from social issues to what the rapper had for breakfast to economic issues to instinctual sibling rivalry.
The Rap Club session would flow in a clockwise direction around the circle until the group had said all that it needed to.
Rap Club sessions could consist of one, sometimes two raps. A three-rap Rap Club session was once partaken, but this was the only session of its kind.
Once a session was complete, the group would disband and make their way home to south-east London. There was seldom any talk outside of the raps and raps were never repeated away from Rap Club.
Rap Club disappeared around 2001. At its peak, it is estimated there were around 15 members involved in the society.
Rubber Garden Shoes were the 1967 release from crackpot inventor Yurges Morrison. Shunned at the year’s ‘National Invention Expo’ for being, amongst many things, ‘too rubbery’, the product marked the end of Morrison’s inventing career.
Responsible for many invention greats, such as the ‘Lazy Lucy’ (a small tabletop device that allows diners to easily reach their desired sauce and condiments, by way of a small rotating platform) and the ‘Corkchisel’ (a sharp, handheld device, offering users a truly unique way of removing a cork from a bottle), Morrison was shocked by critics’ opinions of his Rubber Garden Shoes.
Designed with a number of ‘aerating holes’ to alleviate the foot from disgusting sweat, the Rubber Garden Shoes idea was sold on to rival footwear inventor Croc McKenzie for a paltry $10. McKenzie simply waited 40 years and added a spectrum of colour options before re-releasing the item.
It was an immediate hit. Rubber was in.
The medicinal values of fudge have been known since around 313BC. A 2Kg dose has the abilities to wipe out three common colds, taking around five minutes to do so. 1.25Kg of ginger fudge can clear up a skin rash, taking only 35 minutes to miraculously do so. If you down 0.5Kg of chocolate coated fudge, you will find those aching joints go away, in seconds, for life.
The idea of Rescue Fudge came about after Dr. Louis Campbell added some fudge to his first aid kit. While out on a trek that week, he stumbled across a fellow trekker, who had gotten lost, overshot his path, and landed in a pool of cold, slightly acidic water. He had been there for half an hour.
Dr. Campbell offered the traveller some of his fudge, an unknown concoction, which cleared the traveller of the cold he had caught, soothed his aching joints and cleared up the rash caused by the pH of the water.
Nowadays, ambulance staff, coastguards, cliff rescue teams and firefighters all carry a portion of Rescue Fudge, in case of emergency.