Gruts

Our friends' teenage son is in a rock band with the absolutely brilliant name of Worried About Dave. They played a battle-of-the-bands-type gig recently, so an artistically inclined friend of theirs made them a banner to hang behind the stage. Unfortunately, his capital Rs looked more like Bs, so the band was introduced as WOBBIED ABOUT DAVE.

Very Spinal.

…and its name is Broooooooooooooce!

Very good. Very good indeed. And very punctual. The chap is a complete pro—even when trying to hang upside down from his mike stand and falling off.

BBC: Gardeners' pet hate for cats [26-May-03]
…Wildlife experts say keeping cats locked up from dusk to dawn will prevent much of the carnage they create, and will also mean they are less likely to be run over.

No, what we really need is a way to prevent cats from creating carnage without diminishing their chances of being run over. The BBC hit on a much better solution earlier this month:

BBC: Cats 'farmed for skins in EU' [08-May-03]
BBC News has seen evidence which suggests that cats are being farmed for their skins in the European Union. It is thought that tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of cat and dog skins are traded in Europe each year.

Fantastic! Now you can wear a fur coat and prevent wildlife carnage at the same time.

BBC: UK act hits Eurovision low [25-May-03]
…Following an off-key rendition of their song Cry Baby, [pop duo Jemini] failed to collect a single point from [Eurovision Song Contest] judges and finished last in the 26-nation competition.

Well, at least the French had a half-decent excuse for giving us nul points this time. But could our European cousins have shot themselves in the foot? It is a little-known fact that the fourth of Gordon Brown's mysterious five tests for Britain's migration to the Euro is linked to our success in the Eurovision Song Contest. You heard it here first.

Sky News: Butler: I Doubt Accident [23-May-03]
…[Royal Butler Paul] Burrell has also dismissed claims that [Princess] Diana was pregnant when she died or that she had taken cocaine. "Her body was an absolute temple, she would not put anything into her body that was foreign," he said.

And as to the cocaine charge…

BBC News: Rich 'must pay to save nature' [23-May-03]

Look, I'm sorry, I'd really love to help—but I honestly don't think I can afford it. And, besides, why are these charity cases always picking on me?

National Geographic: Tall As a Deer, Huge U.K. Bird Staging a Comeback [06-May-03]
…As tall as a deer and weighing up to 45 pounds (20 kilograms)—equivalent to over two wild turkeys—the great bustard is set to return to its old stomping ground.

As tall as a deer, eh? Presumably, its beak is as long as a piece of string.

From Of Moths and Men by Judith Hooper:

…The third of the great population geneticists, John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, was the brilliant, idiosyncratic, polymath son of the prominent Oxford physiologist John Sanderson Haldane. As a teenager he took up the breeding of guinea pigs with his sister Naomi…

Yes, I reckon that counts as fairly idiosyncratic.