Taking the Biscuit

Years ago, I was asked by a friend (let’s call him Bob) to take a look at a malfunctioning floppy disk. It wasn’t a life-or-death case of lost data, but Bob was nonetheless confused as to why it had suddenly failed. I popped the disk into Bob’s brand new Windows 95 machine and ran chkdsk. It failed, complaining the disk had bad blocks.

“How does that happen?” asked Bob.

“Well,” I replied, “sometimes grit gets inside the disk and causes small scratches on the disk surface as it turns.” I popped the disk out and slid the shutter open with my finger to demonstrate. “Watch carefully as I turn it and we’ll probably see a small scratch in there…”

I twisted the centre hub of the disk, and as the disk slowly turned, we both peered inside looking for the tell-tale circular scratch on the surface of the disk.

At that moment, some biscuit crumbs fell out. From inside the disk.

They appeared to be… digestives.

“Bob,” I asked, “do you keep this disk in the same pocket of your coat as your morning biscuits?”