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I had a teacher at school who thought he was a real big shot when he handed out 1000-word punishment essays with titles like 'The Inside of a Ping Pong Ball', or 'The Sex Life of a Carrot', and other banal subjects. Poor old Mr Groome! He really thought he was giving me a hard time when he handed those out just because I dared to talk at the back of this extremely tedious music and English lessons!

The problem for him was that I was just discovering my passion for writing then and 5000 words on anything really didn't represent a major problem. I don't know whether he is still with us or whether he has a got an Internet connection even but this one is for Mr Groome, the man who tried to break our spirit with essays.

What is inside a ping pong ball? Ever since being asked this question in the steamy summer of 1989 I've given the subject much thought. Part of me wonders whether they are in fact a bit like Dr Who's tardis small on the outside but infinitely big on the inside.

I like to think there's a whole other universe going on in there where dullard teachers hand out unimaginative punishment essays like '5000 words on what is outside our ping pong ball universe'. You never know.

If there is another world inside a ping pong ball is it the same world in each one, or is it the same one time and time again but with very small, almost insignificant changes? I wonder as well what they eat, what they wear (if anything) and do they drive cars?

It was while I was giving this some real thought one day that I stumble on the notion of the Ping Pong revolutions. The revolutions were started in the 80th year of the Pong Ping dynasty when a cotton trader from one of the agrarian planets in the Ping Pong solar system decided he was fed up with living in a world dominated by chronic seismic activity and constant stellar rearrangement you see, it's not easy living in ping pong ball that is being actively used in competition.

(At this stage I would like to point out to Mr Groome if he's out there that by providing the words 'ping pong ball' in the essay title you gifted the student three words every time he wanted to mention the aforementioned ping pong ball . . . God I bet you really did hate me as a kid)

Anyway, to continue . . . The cotton trader, a man by the name of Smitherkins decided to get a few of his cotton picking friends together to start a union the Non-Ping Pong Union, or NPPU. Together, this band of troublemakers would petition the king of their planet, a man named Edgar,

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