This poor dog was shot at point blank by yobs with a crossbow. The dog now called Beau, survived despite having two crossbow bolts embedded in her skull. After a two hour operation they were eventually removed and she is now recovering well.

There have now been two alleged sightings of a Great White Shark off the coast of Cornwall. Whilst coastguards have dismissed the claims as scaremongering scientists have admitted that it is possible the Great White Shark could move into British waters especially as they start to get warmer. There has never been a confirmed sighting of a Great White off the Cornish coast and it is possible that the shark seen was actually a smaller shark such as a mako or a porbeagle.

I found this on Crooked Brains and had to post it. It's so unusal to see so many cats in a tree at the same time. I have managed to get a picture of two of mine sitting in the tree together but this is just great.

Organisers of a Donkey Derby in Llandudno had to replace the donkeys with a blow up sheep and a toy monkey. The event had been deemed to dangerous if live donkeys were used. Safety rules meant that the event needed to be covered by public liability insurance but unfortunately no insurance company would cover it. This is despite the fact that the event has taken place every year for the last 39 years without incident.

Newcastle City Council released the credit card details of around 54,000 people on the internet. The blunder happened when thousands of credit and debit card details were placed on an insecure server and were accessed by overseas computers. The details accessed include payment details for council tax, business rates, parking fines and rent. The Council has said that residents should monitor their bank statements to check for any unusual activity. That’s not very reassuring to the people whose accounts have been compromised.

We went to a party this weekend at Shaz and Chhaya's house, despite the fact that it rained all night we were still nice and dry under the marquee. Chhaya had spent the day cooking and treated us to a great spread of samosas, kebabs, chicken wings and mini pizzas.

Chhaya and me.

Shaz and me.

I just opened a rather nice bottle of Circular Quay Shiraz 2006 Bin 30. From South Eastern Australia it is a rather smooth wine with a slight blackcurrant taste and a hint of cedar wood. For around £6.00 a bottle, I think its quite a good buy.

A pair of peregrine falcon chicks in Inverurie have died after being poisoned. It is not known who killed the birds but police are appealing for information. There are currently only around 1,285 breeding pairs of peregrine falcons in the UK. The species have long been persecuted by game keepers and pigeon fanciers because the falcons eat mainly small birds. The Scottish raptor group estimates that around a quarter of nests in Scotland are subject to interference and killing despite the fact that these birds are still greatly at risk.

I have an intense hatred of garden gnomes, so much so, that not even one is allowed to set foot in my garden. This article represents one of most nightmares, a garden full of the little critters. Jean Balcombe from Willesborough in Kent has 1,500 gnomes in her garden which she has collected over 20 years.

A businessman and 18 friends spent a record £105,805 on drink at a London nightclub. Among the drinks they consumed were £80,000 worth of champagne, 4 bottles of Cristal Rose, 6 magnums of Dom Perignon, 36 bottles of Cristal and 12 bottles of Dom Perignon Rose. I feel better now about splashing out on a bottle of wine with my meal last night.

I found this really interesting quiz. It has 10 websites and challenges you to spot which are the real sites and which are the fakes. I got six out of ten.

A hamster that was left out with the rubbish has been rescued and has now been adopted by council workers. They have named him Brian although it appears he may actually be a she.

There has been a lot of news coverage recently about banks charging their customers unfair overdraft charges on their current accounts. The competition watchdog today launched a case against eight of the UK’s largest current account provides accusing them of unfair bank charges. The banks currently apply large bank charges on customers who have gone into their unauthorised overdraft. The watchdog has challenged these fees, however, saying they should be limited to what it actually costs the account provider when the account goes overdrawn. In some cases banks charge up to £39 for going overdrawn. The eight banks involved in this test case are Abbey, Barclays, Clydesdale Bank, HBOS, HSBC, Lloyds TSB, Royal Bank of Scotland and Nationwide. As someone who has been charges unfair fees in the past I will be watching this case with interest.

Cats and rats have been helping Colombian police sniff out land mines. The rats are trained to sniff out landmines and are taught to freeze when they detect one. The problem is that the rats have not been doing the job effectively because they are frightened of predators. Putting the rat into a cage with a cat helps the rat becomes used to the presence of possible predators so they can concentrate on their job. The cat’s claws are covered so they cannot injure the rat.

You might have cause to be worried if Oscar the cat (not my cat Oscar) curls up next to you. The cat has an uncanny knack for curling up next to patients at a nursing home just before they die. Staff at the nursing home have now started alerting the patients family if Oscar sits next to them.

A giant bustard has laid an egg in Britain for the first time since 1832. The birds are part of a program to reintroduce the great bustard to Britain using chicks from Russia. Although the eggs have not hatched it is still an encouraging sign that the species should be able to breed successfully in Britain.

I went to the hairdresser today to get my yearly hair cut. My hair is very thick so it had got to the stage where it felt like I was wearing a carpet, and the weight of it was causing me to have headaches. Now I have considerably less hair. I must try and go at least twice a year in future.

Farmers in Macedonia have found some cognac which dates back to the First World War. The batches of cognac were buried in trenches used by French soldiers and recently several cases have been found. They are expected to fetch around £3,360 each.

I have noticed over the last month or so that most of the spam I get seems to contain simply a PDF attachment. I was wondering whether this was a new tactic designed to fool people into opening up a dodgy file. I came across this article today that claim spammers have stopped sending pictures in their emails and instead started attaching PDF’s. It appears that they are doing this to try and get around corporate spam filters. So far, it appears to be getting through my spam filter quite effectively with several hundred of these spam mails with PDF attachments arriving each day. Whilst my daily amount of spam mails continues to rise, I suppose one good thing about this latest trend is I don’t have to read about Viagra or penis enlargement unless I actually open the PDF.

A cat was thrown from a car in Cornwall, the frightened cat managed to run across several lanes of traffic to the middle of a roundabout. The cat was left uninjured but very frightened. Hopefully it will soon find a new home with someone who will look after him.

A man found a crispy rodent in his bag of crisps. The mouse had apparently been deep fried but the manufacturers say it could have entered the bag after the crisps left their factory. Either way, finding a crispy mouse is not a pleasant experience.

With the long hot summers we have been seeing in the UK (not this year) English wine seems to be enjoying something of a boom. I read this interesting article which talks about several different vineyards here in England and what type of wine they produce. It’s given me a few ideas about new wines to try and I will certainly be looking for some English wine next time I visit the supermarket.

A glue has been produced that can attach equally well to both to both wet and dry surfaces. It was inspired by sticky geckos that can climb using their sticky feet. The glue is similar in structure to a gecko’s foot and also contains a polymer that mimics the glue a mussel uses. It is likely to be used for adhesive tapes and water resistant adhesives for bandages.

A German zoo has been accused of selling its animals as food. It is alleged that wild pigs, goats, deer and an anteater have been killed and then sold for their meat. The authorities fear that the Erfurt Zoo has been killing for animals for several years to fulfil people’s tastes for unusual meats.

I’m still getting used to my new iPod that my husband brought me for my wedding anniversary and have been looking at iPod software that will make things easier. iPod Audiobook is a new conversion tool for people that own iPod’s. It converts audio files into a a format supported by your iPod. It can deal with MP3 files, Wav files, OGG files, Wma files and CDA files just to name a few. It’s made to integrate seamlessly with Windows so you can convert all of your audio files without even having to launch the program. It can also convert hundreds of files in one batch and you can get a 30 day free trial.

The TV remote could soon be a thing of the past. Scientists in Australia have invented a device that allows viewers to control the TV by using simple hand gestures. The gadget includes a camera that can recognise hand gestures and could be easily incorporated into set top boxes. A clenched fist turns the TV on, a thumbs up sign controls the volume and a sideways sign can change channels.

A Chihuahua called Zoe attacked a rattlesnake that had tried to bite her owners child. The brave dog jumped in between the snake and the child taking several bites from the snake. Following treatment for her wounds Zoe is now recovering.

This article is not about big dicks. It's about an article I read recently suggesting that links such as the words big dick seem to generate more traffic to your blog. The article in question was not linking to a porn site but to a blog entitled Big Dick's Blog. Anyway that's enough big dick links, I will be interested to see if my traffic increases.

My blogging has got a little bit out of control and what started out as a personal blog, now appears to be more of a mini news feed. With this in mind I have started a couple of new blogs to try and split the content up a little bit. This blog will remain a personal blog, and contain all the usual stuff I blog about. However, I am going to post most of the shopping related content at ineedashop and most of the news related content at atheniaglobe which will both be live soon. In addition to these you can already read my design related blog and my travel related blog.

My cats have been hunting frogs for several months now with no success. So little success in fact that I had become secure in the knowledge that the frogs were too smart to be caught. Yesterday Oscar (pictured) came running into the house with a large frog firmly between his teeth. At first I assumed he had caught a bird but upon further inspection I found it was a frog and was still very much alive. After a bit of persuasion I managed to get Oscar to drop his frog and returned it to the pond. Oscar was left with a very bad taste in his mouth, but is still hunting frogs.

A man pulled over by police on suspicion of driving whilst drunk was found to be completely naked. The man was wearing only his shoes and socks and had four friends in the car with him. They were so drunk they did not appear to notice that their friend was naked.

With all the bad weather yesterday it was hard to do anything much outside. I was lucky that I didn’t have to use public transport otherwise I would have been stuck. I did, however, have to take some urgent parcels to the post office which is ten minutes away from my house. The trip there and back was interesting in that all the roads and footpaths around here were flooded with water. Not only did I get rained on, I also had to avoid the splashes from passing cars. I got back rather wet, my waterproof jacket had protected the top part of my body but as you can see from the pictures my trousers were a little wet.

It seems to me that it’s becoming much more economical to have a smaller car these days. Not only do you pay less tax and less insurance, some council’s are bringing in further measures to force people with larger vehicles to pay more. Richmond council already charges people with the most polluting cars more for a perking permit. They are now also thinking about charging higher fees for parking meters and council car parks for so called gas guzzlers. Having worked in Richmond and seen that most people have large or high performance cars I can see this is likely to prove unpopular with residents, still it might make them think about using their cars slightly less or maybe getting a smaller car.

I found a bottle of Fetzer Barrel Select Merlot 2005 in Tesco. I must admit I brought it because it was on offer at Tesco for £3.99 and I thought at that price it was worth a try. The bottle blurb boasts of a range of tastes including plums, vanilla, raspberries, cherries and chocolates. When I tried it the taste of plums was evident and it was a really fruity wine. It did however lack body, although to be honest at £3.99 I was not surprised. In all, it was a nice enough wine that went down fairly well, but about what I would expect from a £3.99 offering, ok, but not great. Not a wine I would buy again.

A new moon has been discovered orbiting Saturn. This means there are now 60 known moons orbiting the planet. It was spotted by cameras on the Cassini spacecraft. It has not yet been officially named but is currently nicknamed Frank.

A man in Ventura has been arrested for torturing a tortoise. He had tried to cut the endangered tortoise out of its shell before throwing it against a wall. The tortoise is recovering at the Turtle Dreams rehabilitation center. He is currently being fed though a tube in his neck but there are hopes he will make a full recovery.

Fishermen in Zanzibar have caught a creature called a Coelacanth. The fish has many fins and a three lobed tail and was thought to be extinct until one was caught in 1938. Since then two other Coelacanth have been caught by fishermen but its still not known how many of the fish still exist.

A Coelacanth.

A seagull in Aberdeen has developed a taste for cheese Doritos. The seagull has been nicknamed Sam. He walks into the newsagents when the door is open and steals the crisps but only seems to like the cheese flavoured Doritos. Once he is outside he rips the bag open and is joined by other birds that help him eat them.

Facebook can now claim to have created its first boy band. A group of four musicians met on Facebook after discovering they had similar interests. They later tracked down Daniel Glatman, former boss of the band Blue and asked him if he would become their manager. They have now signed a £1 million album deal with Universal. The group called Blake have already recorded their first album which includes classic tracks such as Moon River and Jerusalem.

An owl shaped maze has been created into a farmer’s field to mark the lance of the latest Harry Potter book. The maze is 600ft/ 193m long. Amazing.

Armed police called to a crime scene in Wuppertal in Germany were surprised to find a large stuffed toy. A woman had reported seeing a masked criminal through the window of a parked van. It turned out the suspect was actually a large toy beaver in the passenger seat of a car.

A man in West Sussex is celebrating after placing a £2 bet on a series of horse races and winning and amazing £427.000. He placed what is called a Scoop 6 bet with William Hill. He is now planning to move to Spain.

Firefighters taking part in a training exercise were meant to cut holes in the roof and walls of an empty house. Unfortunately they managed to cut holes in another house which was two blocks away from the empty one. The owner of the house is now claiming compensation for the damage.

Blogging dosh.com is a blog about making money by blogging. The blog is sponsored by Dosh Talk. The first article I looked at was about making money from selling invites, not really an avenue I have considered so far and to be honest I would probably just give them away rather than try selling them. Still, it’s interesting that some people are cashing on this idea.

Another article that I found interesting was regarding people who remove comments from their blogs. For me comments are always appreciated and let me know firstly that people actually read my blog rather but more importantly that they found a particular subject of interest. As this article says comments are a vital part of blogging.

Another really useful article is a review on websites where you can Make Money Blogging. It talks about the main sites including PayPerPost, ReviewMe and Blogvertise as well as some lesser know paid review sites. I have already come across most of these paid blogging sites but this is certainly a useful overview for anyone who is looking to make money from their blog.

Not only does this blog have useful articles about making money it also has interesting stuff about optimising your blog. Simple things such as including simple to use navigation might not seem like rocket science but making things easy to find for your readers is obviously important. Other tips include how to create a brand for your blog, in other words creating a professional design, using consistent colours, designing a logo and making sure that any advertising you use fits with the style of your blog. Its all really useful stuff and as I am new to blogging I have a feeling I will be visiting this blog on a regular basis for some more useful tips.

A father and son have unearthed a hoard of Viking treasure. It contained 617 silver coins and 65 other objects including a gold arm ring and a silver vessel. It’s thought to be worth around £750,000. The proceeds of the find will be split between the finders and the landowners.

I read this interesting article about how Britain became an island. The evidence shows that Britain was split from France hundreds of thousand years ago by a huge flood. The evidence is based upon high resolution sonar images of the English Channel that show a deep scar in the limestone rock caused by a huge torrent of water. Its an interesting read and makes me wonder hoe different Britain would be today if it were still joined to France

A tractor and trailer carrying blocks of cheese caught light in West Sacramento. The result was that hundreds of pounds of cheese erupted in flames causing a huge fondue effect.

I read this really interesting article about how London is slowly sinking. A combination of subsidence and rising water levels mean that every year London is around 3mm lower. This is according to the Environment Agency who has been monitoring the situation. With these findings they hope to be able to adapt London’s current flood defences to make use of a better natural floodplain as well as get a clear timeline of how much time they have to carry out existing improvements before the situation gets too critical.

Last time we moved we did it ourselves hiring a van which my Dad drove. Since then we have gained a lot more stuff and next time we move we will certainly be using a moving company.  I found this useful directory of moving companies. You can search by area and by the type of service you need. They also include services for moving internationally as well as storage rentals.

I came across these great Simpsons quotes. Among some of the good ones are “Your questions have become more redundant and annoying than the last three “Highlander movies” from Comic Book Guy and “I’m normally not a praying man, but if you’re up there, please save me, Superman” from Homer.

I have been caught out in the past when my account has gone overdrawn by a few pounds and the bank has charged a lot of fees on the top increasing the debt dramatically. This article, however, highlights what I hope is an extreme case of unfair charges. The article talks about an HSBC account that went £5.60 overdrawn. In the first month £184 of charges were added to the account. In subsequent months amounts of £152 and £176 were also added, making the total debt more than £500. The bank said it wrote to the customer informing them of the problem but no letters were received until nearly four months later when the debt had mounted up. In this instance the bank did apologize although the article does not state whether the customer still had to pay the charges. It makes me wonder how many other people have been caught out by this tactic.

Have you ever wondered what you would do if you have the luck to get a bank error in your favour. It’s usually the kind of event that we only see on a chance card when playing Monopoly. Obviously in the game you are allowed to spend it but in real life you know you should really give it back. One lady finding £135,000 in her bank account decided to take a chance (literally) and spend the cash. She managed to work her way through £33,000 of the money before being arrested for theft. She will also have to pay back the money.

Retailers are now starting to offer