A chef has created what this article claims is the world’s most expensive kebab. Created by chef Andy Bates it includes some of the finest agreements available. He has used milk-fed lamb from the Pyrenees, seasoned with the best peppers, olive oil, barrel aged feta cheese, purple violet potatoes and Coeur de Boeuf tomatoes. It is wrapped in a saffron infused flatbread and includes a tangy chilli sauce which uses Scotch Bonnet chillies and mint and cucumber yoghurt infused with King Grande Cuvee champagne. The flatbread is also stuffed with a micro-cress and bib lettuce salad and a oregano concasse. As well as including saffron and edible gold leaf the dish is presented on a silver platter. The chef created the £750 kebab after buying a kebab from a typical kebab shop and analysing the ingredient to see how he could improve it.

This is interesting it’s a solar power station that can also generate electricity at night. The Gemasola Power Plant near Seville in Spain consists of a total of 2,650 solar panels on 185 hectares on land. It uses mirrors to focus the sun’s radiation onto a giant receiver at the centre of the plant. Unlike other solar power stations it also has molton salt tanks which create steam to power the stations turbines. These can store heat for up 15 hours overnight or during periods with no sunlight so that the power station can continue to function. The plant should be able to operate for 270 days a year which is three times more than other renewable energies. It is expected it will provide enough power for 25,000 homes in the region.

I’m not really sure why someone would want a £100,000 BBQ but if you do, then there is one available. Made by BeefEater Barbecues it is plated in 24 caret gold with a Signature Series 6 Burner, wok burner, roasting hood and warming rack. Everything except the cooking plates is covered in gold. Apparently it was “purely made to see what we could do in terms of opulence, price and features”.

That’s the claim made by new research from the National Literacy Trust. The survey of 18,141 young people aged between 11 and 13 found that four in every ten boys did not own any books compared to three in every ten girls. According to research children who do not own books are less likely to do well at schools and less likely to have positive experiences of reading. I loved books as a child and could never have enough material to read. I blame this for my ever growing library but it probably did help me a great deal at school, as I would read anything I could my hands on, no matter how boring. I wonder whether something this simple is behind slipping standards in today’s schools.

This impressive looking boat is a recreation of Noah’s Ark. It has been built by Dutch creationist Johan Huibers who hopes it can be used to teach children about the biblical story of Noah. He has spent around £1 million creating the ark after he had a dream about a great flood sweeping through Holland. It measures 450ft and 75ft wide and includes pairs of model animals. The ark is built on twenty five barges held together with a steel frame from the base of the ship. It also includes two conference rooms which when they are not holding animals can host 1,500 people. The ark may soon be coming to London as Mr Huibers has asked permission to bring it to the Olympic Games and moor it in the capital.

According to this article we should buy sunscreen with at least a factor 30, in order to prevent skin cancer. If the article is to be believed current guidelines from NICE (National Institute of Clinical Excellence) which recommend using at least facto 15 sunscreen are flawed. It seems that many people simply do not apply enough sun screen, often enough to be protected when using the lower factor. For factor 15 sun screen to be effective, it needs to be applied at a thickness of at least 2mg per cm2 when in reality most people apply less than than half this amount. it would also need to be reapplied frequently, at least every two hours, meaning for it to be fully effective you would need to use a 200ml bottle every 2 to 3 days. I tend to always buy the highest factor on offer, I’m not taking any chances with my pasty white skin.

This cute little guy is a rare spotty foal which has recently been born in Dartmoor. The foal is the offspring of a normal brown Dartmoor mare and a Appaloosa Stallion. Unlike the other foals in the area, however, he has been born with this rather unique Dalmatian type colouring. Locals have nicknamed him spotty.

According to this article gardeners are being urged to create “hedgehog highways” in order to help save the creatures. Hedgehogs are increasingly disappearing due to modern farming practices, manicured gardens and road deaths. In the 1950’s it it thought there were around 30 million hedgehogs whereas today the number is less than a million. It it thought they could vanish from some parts of the UK altogether by 2050 unless action is taken now. The good news is that gardeners can make simple changes to make their garden more hedgehog friendly. These include removing a single brick from the bottom of a fence or cutting a small hole to create a hedgehog highway allowing the creatures to pass through on their nocturnal forages. Leaving patches of long grass, providing exit ramps from garden ponds and leaving out food and water can also help the creatures out.

I have read a few stories about spineless hedgehogs in the past but in those cases they appeared to recover from the problem. The hedgehog at the center of this latest story does not appear to be so lucky. Named Betty she has been in cavity since August last year when she was handed in to Foxy Lodge Wildlife Rescue in Great Yarmouth. She was and still is spineless which means she can never be released back into the wild as she would be unable to defend herself. She has even become frightened of other hedgehogs who don’t appear to like her because of her unusual appearance. Unfortunately if nothing changes she faces a rather lonely existence of the wildlife centre.

If you have trouble finding the perfect pair of jeans then this new gadget might help. It uses a 3D scanner to scan your body and then picks out the jeans which best fit your shape. The £35,000 scanner which was previously only available at exclusive stores is now coming to the high street and is on trial at the Manchester Arndale shopping centre and at Peacock’s. It uses 16 cameras to record 29 different measurements so that store staff can pick out the jeans that provide the best possible fit. It certainly sounds interesting. As someone who has problems finding jeans that fir properly jeans due to my smaller waist and large bottom I would certainly give it go.

This is interesting its a new treatment which gives you an instant boob lift by using Botox. Costing £700 the treatment is not cheap but it does claim to have no side effects and no recovery time. The technique which is being used at the Wimpole Skin Care Centre in London’s Harley Street injects Botox in specific areas around the breasts to tone and lift the skin. It is supposed to give the breasts volume and iron out wrinkles caused by sun damage. The results last around six months before you need to have further treatment. It gets a fairly good write up, but it’s not something I would be considering.

A group of fashion students have made these unusual dresses out of cheese. The dresses which took 1,000 hours to make have been made out of one tonne of British cheese. The outfits have been heat moulded and were sculpted into dresses out of blocks of Pilgrims Choice Vintage, Extra mature and Red Leicester cheeses. They have been designed by fashion students at Bath Spa University and were inspired by the meat dress that Lady Gaga wore for the MTV Music Video awards last year.

If you fancy visiting some UK based vineyards this summer, this article highlights ten which might be worth a look. On  the list are Biddenden Vineyards in Kent and Tenterden Vineyard, both of which I remember visiting some years ago. A few others are within easy reach such as Bookers Vineyard in Sussex and Denbies Wine Estate near Dorking, so they will be on my list for future day trips.

I was unaware until recently that divorce was illegal in Malta. The country which has recently voted to change the legalisation did not allow divorce making it the last European country to do so. People could, however, obtain a divorce from overseas and it would be recognised within Malta or they could seek a church annulment, a process that takes up to eight years to complete. This will now all change, due to a recent referendum in which over half of voters voted to allow couples to divorce after four years of separation. The issue has been under debate for a number of years but in a country where 95% of the population claim to be Catholic it will be interesting to see what the outcome means for the inhabitants.

This is rather strange it’s a diet being followed by some celebrities which centres around eating baby food to stay slim. The idea is that baby food contains very little calories and also very little added salt and sugar. The diet has become so popular that it has apparently been responsible for a surge in the sales of wet baby food with sales up 59% according to Ocado. Fans of the diet suggest that it is possible to lose as much as 20lb in six weeks on the diet when it is combined with workouts. It seems it works by replacing most of your meals with jars of baby food, eating as many as 14 small pots a day and one regular main meal of fish and steamed vegetables. It does seem a little bit strange and I don’t think I would fancy it, I suppose it depends how desperate you are to stay slim.