The Lying Down game on facebook - take a photo of yourself lying face down with your arms by your sides in a totally incongrous place. Love it.

This is pretty amazing! The above photo is of an air gun pellet fired directly at a razor blade and being split in two! More incredible freeze-frame photography HERE

Funny how so many people of my age and younger have a nostalgia for the postwar years, when we were yet to be born until another 30 long years later!

This brief window of time after WW2 as the sun set over Albion was captured in beautiful fashion by the photojournalist John Gay, a German. Born Hans Gohler in 1909, he fled the country in 1933 for a new life in Britain, horrified by the treatment of his Jewish friends at the hands of the Nazi regime, and served in the Pioneer Corps during the Second World War. His favourite subjects were the English countryside, London street scenes and the architecture of the railways, the latter leading to a book collaboration with Sir John Betjeman.

"...His photographs capture people going about their everyday lives and they are special because he was looking at Britain through foreign eyes..."

John Gay - England Observed runs from January 29 - March 29 at Kenwood House, Hampstead. Admission is free

Collection of Photographs

OBITUARY: JOHN GAY

Artist David Mach has used tens of thousands of matchsticks to create this intricate gorilla sculpture.

He used 30,000 matches to complete the 15-inch high gorilla head.

They are crafted by firstly making a clay mould of the head and creating a fibreglass or plastic version from it.

The matchsticks are then stuck on using wood glue.

Pip, Britain's last pit pony, has died aged 35.

He worked at Blackburn Drift, Marley Hill Colliery, near Sunniside, Gateshead, working the narrow seams 150 feet underground until it closed 30 years ago, when he was aged five.

He then moved to Sacriston Colliery, near Durham. He worked there until it ceased production in 1985. Pip was kept on for another year to help with salvage work before being given to the Beamish open air museum.

An artist's impression of catalogued objects in low-Earth orbit. Scientists are keeping a close eye on orbital debris created when two satellites - one American, the other Russian - smashed into each other hundreds of miles above Siberia on Tuesday

Daily Telegraph 12/02/2009

There are 2 excellent books around called:
The Meaning of Tingo: And Other Extraordinary Words from Around the World

and its sequel Toujours Tingo

That are definately worth a read - Tingo is a word from Easter Island that means "to borrow objects from a friend's house one by one until there are none left". here are some more wonderfully weird words:

Gwarlingo: Welsh description of the sound of a grandfather clock before it strikes.

Pisan zapra: Malay for the time needed to eat a banana.

Layogenic: Filipino for someone good-looking from afar but ugly up close.

Mouton enragé : French for someone calm who loses their temper - literally, "an enraged sheep".

Kati-kehari: Hindi meaning to have the waist of an elegant lion.

Yupienalle: Swedish for a mobile phone - literally, "yuppie teddy" like a security blanket.

Ikibari: Japanese, a "lively needle" and describing a man who is willing but under-endowed.

Tantenverführer: German for a young man with suspiciously good manners.

Fensterln: German for climbing through a window to avoid someone's parents so you can have sex without them knowing.

Stroitel: Russian for a man who likes to have sex with two women at the same time.

Okuri-okami: Japanese for a man who feigns thoughtfulness by offering to see a girl home only to try to molest her once he gets in the door - literally, a "see-you-home wolf"

Trennungsagentur: German for someone hired by a woman to tell her boyfriend he has been dumped.

Momma ko ene: Cheyenne for having red eyes from crying over your boyfriend marrying someone else.

Kanjus Makkhichus: Hindi description of someone so tight that if a fly falls into their tea they'll fish it out and suck it dry before throwing it away.

Tlazlimquiztli: Aztec for the smell of adulterers.

Nosom Para Oblake: Serbian for "he is ripping clouds with his nose", describing someone conceited.

Traer la lengua de corbata: Latin American Spanish for to be exhausted - literally, to have your tongue hanging out like a man's tie

Sjostygg: Norwegian for someone so ugly the tide refuses to come in if they stand on the shore.

Lolo: Hawaiian for someone who would gladly give you the time if only they could read a clock.

Lalew: Filipino word meaning to grieve so much you can't eat.

Nito-onna: Japanese for a woman so dedicated to her career that she has no time to iron blouses and so resorts to dressing only in knitted tops.

Buaya darat: Indonesian for a man who fools women into thinking he's a very faithful lover when in fact he goes out with many different women at the same time - literally, a land crocodile

Chantepleurer: French for singing at the same time as crying.

Hira hira: Japanese for the fear you get from walking into a decrepit old house in the middle of the night.

Les avoir a zero: French for "to have one's testicles down to zero", or be frightened.

Du kannst mir gern den buckel runterrutschen und mit der zunge bremsen: Austrian for "go to hell" – literally "You can slide down my hunchback using your tongue as a brake".

taken from

Daily Telegraph 11/02/2009

Designer, Nguyen La Chanh, from Switzerland

It feels soft underfoot and does not smell when it gets damp.

Each piece of moss is cut into a foam frame, which prevents the moss from spreading or growing out of control.

Daily Telegraph 03/02/2009