Two of my favourite things combined: The Natural History Museum and Butterflies

A rather crazed documentary about the incompleteness of London's ring roads. More documentaries should be like this - BBC producers need to snap this guy up!

A chance comment from a man in a pub (a Mahlerman in a pub) made me feel sufficiently guilty enough to galvanise me into kicking this thing back into life!

To begin: Abandoned Wrecks - photos of coastal delapidation (I note that the images are very cheap to purchase too!)

I love words. Weird, strange, odd, obscure words. So I enjoyed finding out that that the Oxford English Dictionary has launched a website aimed at keeping moribund english language words in use. The page uses flash to encourage you to explore new words, which you are then invited to 'adopt'. All very silly, but quite fun. I particularly enjoyed Hymnicide.

Watched a programme featuring Puffins at the weekend. They look so comical and clown like with their markings like napoleanic overcoats and their drunken amble, yet something suddenly struck me - are puffins the ultimate animal? The Puffin has mastery of all three elements -On land, whilst amusing on their little orange feet, they are actually fairly nimble. They can fly prefectly adequately, and they can float on water, and exist submerged for decent lengths of time, flying through the water to great depths to catch their food. Is there another animal that can do better?

Rubbish weather outside, so best to stay in. Although I'm about to set off on a 5 mile odyssey to a country pub.

Here's a pretty little BBC4 film about wild swimming and the writing of Roger Deakin that will warm your cockles. Catch it whilst you can, as it's only online til Sunday night.

http://bbc.co.uk/i/t9r28/

Momentous day, as over at The Dabbler, I make my first post, all about a river that got lost.

Somewhere over northern Germany the large scottish man wearing a t-shirt saying 'nae neck' opened the aeroplane's toilet door, grimaced, and turned back to his group of mates and said

'Jaysus, it stinks of burning plastic in here!'

The stag party laughed. But then the cabin began filling with the smell of cooking electronics. When our pilot spoke through the intercom, we could hear that they were using a respirator. We were told that we had to make an emergency landing. People started making birdlike noises of concern. A quick descent and we bumped into Cologne airport, where an armada of fire engines raced to meet us. Sheparded inside, we sat and waited. Of course, they could find no fault, but we could not fly on. It was a day of two halves. After 5 hours of waiting, we were taken by taxi to Dusseldorf to be put up in a luxurious hotel for the night, with all meals paid for, before finally flying home the next afternoon.

Apologies all for the light, nay moribund bloggery going on around these parts - massive work deluge exacerbated by the fact that I'm off on holiday to Deutschland for 10 days! Catch you on the flip side, homies - and in the mean time, don't forget to check out the most exciting new media project since The 11 O'Clock show:

The Dabbler