In Doctor Doolittle And The Secret Lake Dr. D goes to a secret lake, there he talks to a giant turtle who is the only living thing who remembers the flood! This giant turtle knows the secrets of the ages (I’ve forgotten what they are exactly), […]

ANTARCTICA AND THE ARCTIC: THE COMPLETE ENCYCLOPEDIA
by David McGonigal and Lynn Woodworth
Sometimes all you need is a good coffee-table picture book — and this one is GREAT. Published just the other year, it might well be the hands-down slamb[…]

THE FT TOP 100 SONGS
84. Pulp – “Babies”
The genius of “Babies” is that the harder you try to make sense of the story the less sense the song seems to make: and the more you think about the song the less the story matter[…]

There is some debate as to which small monkey this actually is:
the pygmy marmoset? (caution very small indeed)
or the tarsier, voted the official world’s cutest animal in 1997 despite brazenly overdoing the big eye ‘thing’ in my ra[…]

or When o When Will Attenborough Topl’d from his Siege Satanic Be?
you watch a DA nature prog and it’s beautifully and daringly filmed of course, and here’s the hypnotic whisperer tellin us that THESE FISH rise to the SEA’S S[…]

INCIDENTALLY WE HAVE A CLUB ON NEXT THURSDAY AT THE POLAR BEAR.
Ahem.
Lion of the North! They’re not actually white you know, more a kind of grubby cream colour. They devour seals and mints in equal measure. Perennial British wildlife TV favour[…]

(NB the #18 animal will appear soon, we have commissioned an expert in the field to write a piece and will publish it out of sequence!)
My work has been on a drive to get everyone to complete their profiles on the Company Intranet. This is 3000 peopl[…]

In the Finnish department store they laid out the CDs as follows:
– Classical and non; then
– Finnish language and non; then
– Mid and full price.
The racking policies of big shops are culturally significant. In Britain HMV’s […]

Only a 4 for I’m Going Slightly Mad??!!
Popular hit its 200th No.1 yesterday, and this morning I find another P-inspired blog, this one with a slightly different focus: reviewing every Queen single! Best of luck. Queen are a good choice for thi[…]

BITIN MY (PYROCLASTIC) FLOW!!
the fictional-prophetic quasi-documentary is something the bbc seems to be doing extremely well, currently: there was a very neat one last year – about a possible “terrorist attack” via the markets (i […]