Is Prince Philip an island god?

Legend had it that there was a clutch of villages on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu (South Pacific nation) which - as bizarre as it may seem - worshipped Prince Philip as a god...

Nick Squires of From Our Own Correspondent (BBC) heads out to see if this is true. And lo and behold it is. There is a story of the son of a mountain spirit (with pale skin) who goes across the water to marry a powerful woman... You can't make this stuff up!!

That's a fuzzy me in our garden pretending I'm at a festival... Somehow I don't think I'm going to quite make it to any this year, which is a rather depressing thought as I love festivals of any description. What's there not to like: freedom to wander around and be guaranteed to see interesting things and meet fascinating people, stepping barefoot through the wet morning grass, eating festival food and drinking lots of chai, bracing yourself to visit the little smelly toilet cubicles, finding hippy clothing, listening to lots of good music that you've discovered by accident on your way to a different part of the festival... I bought those poi at Glastonbury in the vain hope I'd actually learn some cool tricks. At least they got a little bit of an airing that sunny day.

Now that I've been told off for reading behind the bar (it was only the cookery section of a magazine some customer had left behind because I was that bored - although I refuse to be bored enough to read the Sun), I have to find other ways of keeping myself occupied when it's slow. I even asked if I could do any cleaning, only to be told 'no' because I needed to stand behind the bar just incase anyone came in. However, I have managed to come up with a comon denominator between the two places that I've lived the longest in the UK. Both places I am/have been twenty minutes away from a Wetland Centre... That's a lot of boredom to come up with a fact like that!

A little gem...

This is from The Onion ("America's finest news source"):

Study: 38 Percent Of People Not Actually Entitled To Their Opinion

Aah...I agree. Although perhaps 38% is a little low? :)

[my button for creating a link has vanished so I'm afraid it's back to copy and paste for the article itself...sorry! http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/
study_38_percent_of_people]

Twickenham early in the morning

I've started a job now as a part-time manager of the Twickenham Farmers' Market (and have a badge to prove it) and after doing a training on the job day last Saturday get the responsibility all to myself this coming Saturday. The farmers' market is located in a carpark just off the central street and had roughly 13 stalls of local producers (all within a hundred mile radius of Twickenham). This market is part of the network of London Farmers' Market and seemed extremely popular with the public.

Apart from a flurry of putting signs up and taking them down on either end of my 7am-2pm day my job consists of standing around talking to people and eating lots of good food. I had a fabulous time last week and even met the guy who invented the wind-up radio! One of the producers lives on Eel Pie Island which is on the Thames and does her chocolate cooking in a little shed named 'The Saffron Lounge'. She gave me some of her elderflower cordial she had made herself from elderflower on the island (2 min away from the market) and is thus easily the most local of the local producers present... I'm enjoying being part of this - even if it does mean leaving the house at 6:15am.

Eh?

This is from the staff newletter/update from the London Wetland Centre:

"Australia is now finished and I have planted some red hot pokers in Africa and they are doing really well. Thanks Penny for the donation. I have also laid turf in South America and have taken away the giant lily pads as they where falling apart... We have placed 3 of our sheep in Iceland for mowing reasons. We have had a problem between the swans and sheep, so there is a divide between them."

[It took me awhile to realise what it was on about: There is a section of ponds that have plants and birds representative of various parts of the world!]