Friday 25 May 2007

As the weekend has already started at my daughter's school due to a teacher training day, I thought I’d share some really huge news from the last few days as reported in the UK. For those of you reading this overseas somewhere, the UK is situated in northern Europe, just below Iceland (fill in your own jokes related to maternal confusion about this geographic reference) and, thanks to global warming, has a sub-tropical climate, this week actually featuring sunshine... and some rain.

The REALLY HUGE NEWS this week is:

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Trafalgar Square has gone all green, having been covered with turf. Meanwhile a beach has been constructed in Kew Gardens. It's amazing what a few days of sunshine does to London. The dudes are already gathered by the Thames Barrier waiting for surf up.

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A swarm of bees terrorised local residents on Bournemouth Pier after the traditional 1960s hairstyle competition was opened by surprise guest Amy Winehouse.

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Happy Birthday to Star Wars which is 30 years old today. If you can remember it clearly first time round, you can also remember days before Princess Leia, The Force and movie merchandising. Yes, a galaxy far, far away.

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Rod Baber made a mobile phone call from the top of Everest. Living in the countryside, I can appreciate the challenge getting a good signal but think of the roaming charges.

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Fireman were bravely pointing their hoses at the Cutty Sark at the same time as a news item came out reporting that tea is better than water. Not when you're trying to douse the flames on the last remaining tea clipper but most acceptable with some biscuits and a nice sit down after a hard day fire fighting.

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Children's author Ted Dewan offered his head by way of replacement if Oxford University's Pitt Rivers Museum repatriates its Amazon shrunken heads collection. Noting Mr Dewan's success as an author, Jeff Bezos's spokesperson declined any further comment.

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The British civil service is issuing iPods as a developmental tool for top civil servants. In a related development, the BBC announced the return of "Yes Minister", now retitled "Sorry Minister, didn't catch a word of of what you were saying".

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McDonalds has launched a petition against the Oxford English Dictionary's definition of the word McJob saying that it should clearly be replaced with "The by-product of a low-nutrition, low-prestige, low-dignity, low benefit, no-future food". Meanwhile National Vegetarian Week started a campaign against the use of the phrase "vegetative state".

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Brazil footballing legend Romario celebrated scoring his 1000th goal. All Sheffield United need to do is score at the same rate as they did in the 2006-7 season for the next 31 years and they'd be only 8 goals short of matching Romario's incredible feet.

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An obese tourist had to be airlifted from a cruise ship when he fell ill. How else do you get up if you weigh 450 pounds? Apparently he was suffering from gastric problems (go figure) and is doing fine now.

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Viagra can be used to help recovery from jetlag. Yet to be discovered is whether this is due to the drug successfully resetting the body clock or the trial participants not caring which time zone they were in or a simple typo.

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Tony Wright has established a new world record by not sleeping for over 11 days. Curiously he couldn't get to sleep when he finally went to bed. He shouldn't have watched all those episodes of Doctor Who to keep awake.

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