It's St George's Day today, a day that I feel should be national holiday. After all St Patrick's Day is a public holiday in Ireland and St Andrew's Day is a voluntary public holiday in Scotland so why should England not have a public holiday to celebrate our national day. You can sign the petition here if you agree with me.

In an unusual incident Two men wearing balaclavas robbed a wine shop in Surrey armed with a cheese knife. It is not clear whether the men had opened a particularly nice piece of cheese and had forgotten the wine to accompany it or whether they were simply after the money. They did, however, get away with £377 before fleeing on foot.

This is interesting its a suit made from recycled plastic bottles. It has been made by the Designers at Debenhams and costs £55. It is made entirely out of plastic bottles which were destined for landfill sites. The bottles are cleaned, their labels are removed and then they are ground down into chips which are melted down. The mixture is then refined and woven into a type of polyester. Around 50 bottles are used in each suit. The jacket costs £35 and the trousers £20. In contrast to the peacock feather wedding dress it is hoped that it might appeal to people who are seeking a bargain in the current difficult economic conditions. It is available in sizes 10-22 and can be purchased in Debenhams stores countrywide.

It appears that despite the credit crunch some people are still prepared to pay for luxury items. This wedding dress costs $1.5million and is made from peacock feathers. It took eight workers 40 days to sew together. Its certainly interesting but I think it might be a bit too much as a wedding dress.

I read an article some time ago that suggested one in every 50 pound coins is a fake. This seems a lot but new figures from the Royal Mint suggest the problem is actually much worse and that the figure is more like one in every 20. It appears the current process of finding fake coins is not very accurate and only manages to find between 30 and 40% of the fakes because it errs on the side of caution rather than risk taking real coins out of circulation. Willings a company that tests coins collected from vending machines and car parks found that when they carried out a test on 2000 pounds coins between 3 and 4% were fake. Fake coins can be identified because the lettering on the side if often indistinct or in the wrong typeface.

According to this article honey can be used as a natural cure for hayfever. The article suggests that rather than using anti-histamines you could just have a spoonful of honey each day. People that use honey to combat hay fever usually have one spoonful every day and start taking it well before the pollen season starts. Honey contains small amounts of pollen and helps be desensitising you to the pollen in the air. Apparently it doesn’t work for everyone but it can’t hurt to try it and I do quite like honey on toast.

New research has found that if the population of grey squirrels are controlled red squirrels do return the area. The Red Squirrel Survival Trust (RSST) have found red squirrels in Cumbria, Northumberland and parts of Wales where they have been absent for more than twenty years. The return of the red squirrels in attributed to a grey squirrel control zone, in which the grey squirrels are trapped and killed in order to let the red squirrels re-colonise. Animal rights activists, however, insist that killing grey squirrels is not the answer and that red and squirrels could live side by side if a vaccine is developed against the fatal pox virus that the greys often carry. The results of the grey squirrel control zones do appear to be encouraging Dr Craig Shuttleworth SST adviser says: "Ten years ago there were fewer than 40 red squirrels on the island of Anglesey, and their prospects were bleak. However, through a strong local partnership, grey squirrels have almost completely been removed from the island, and the red squirrel population has increased to 300. Significantly they have spread from the conifer trees to the broadleaf areas – showing that reds are happy in a whole variety of habitats providing they are untroubled by greys. Anglesey has turned the grey tide." It appears from this that grey squirrels do need to be controlled in order to help the red thrive. I have also heard that squirrel tastes a bit like chicken, so perhaps they can be put to good use in local restaurants.

A gardener from Anglesey who has a rather a lot of snails in her garden has started turning them into food. Oriole Parker-Rhodes has been making meals out the snails that she finds in her garden and has now devised several recipes for them. She has developed her own preparation methods which include feeding them lettuce, onion and stale bread to clean out any grit in their guts. The snails are then purged fro 48 hours before being plunged into boiling water to kill them. They can then be boiled in stock or cooked with parsley or butter sauce. Whether this is a sign of the credit crunch setting in or that the creatures are actually quite tasty I’m not sure, I do have rather a lot of snails in my garden, however.

Below is her recipe for snails in wild herbs and you can find other ideas on her blog.

SNAILS IN WILD HERBS
Using a good book, collect seasonal weeds. Wash and chop finely, then Blanch for 5 mins the wild herbs you can lay your hands on. I used the following: Water parsnip, Wild sorrel, Water cress, Nettle tips, A little ribwort plantain. Sieve , pressing out the water. Finely chopped ramsons (if in season, otherwise use onion or garlic with the blanched herbs) Add all these to melted butter. Put a snail in each hollow of a snail plate and add as much paste as possible. Bake for 20 mins. Serve with cubes of bread and salad.

If you have a bit of spare cash then you might be interested in this swimsuit. At £2,000 its not cheap but it is hand embroidered with 5,000 Swarovski crystals in various shades of ruby, sapphire, emerald and gold. If you want one you can get it at Selfridges but they are expecting a lot of interest in the product, so there is likely to be a waiting list.

I read this article with some amazement. It looks at the story of a fifteen year old girl who became addicted to using sunbeds. So much so, that she began using them twice a day spending all her pocket money on topping up her tan. Several years later her skin began flaking off, she has developed scarring caused by too much exposure and she is on chemotherapy to treat a rash triggered by sunbed use. In addition to this her chances of getting skin cancer have soared. A couple of things worry me here, the first is that the girl seemed oblivious to the dangers of sunbed exposure and the second is that the girl’s mother appeared to have no knowledge of what her daughter was doing. Both seemed equally surprised that sunbed exposure could lead to a lasting skin condition but in some ways this girl appears to have got off lightly. The article highlights other cases where sunbed use has resulted in the user developing skin cancer in the form of a malignant melanoma, although once again these girls were lucky that the cancer was caught quickly and had not spread. I have difficulty understanding why someone would want to risk developing a lasting skin condition or possibly even cancer for the sake of a tan. Personally I try to limit my exposure to sun and am quite happy with a pasty white complexion, I would rather that, than the alternative. What do you think is getting a tan worth the risk?

If this article is to be believed then this could be Britain’s first vegetarian cat. According to his owner Dante will only eat fruit and vegetables ignoring plates of meat or fish. It is not clear why he refuses to eat meat and experts are baffled as cats are natural carnivores and so are unlikely to exclude meat from their diet. In fact cats need to eat meat because it is a source of taurine which is essential to their diet. Without it the cats retina will degenerate and it can become blind. Dante’s owner has started to sneak scraps of meat into his food so that he gets a more balanced diet but it appears this cat just loves his veg.

This is interesting its a Tweeting cat door (pictured left) that has been made by a programmer to track his cats. The cats each have a RFID tag attached to their collars. When they go near the cat door the RFID reader reads the tag and if the cat is authorised a servo unlocks the cat door. Each time there is a cat door event a Twitter message is sent as well as a picture of the cat that has activated the flap. You can check out the updates at the following link.