It never fails to amaze me the strange places that images of Jesus appear. The latest one has been found on the lid of the jar of Marmite. As you can see from the image it clearly resembles an image of Jesus if you have a vivid imagination. If you don’t then its simply Marmite on a lid. I will let you decide.

This is interesting its a contact lens which can help blind people to see again. The treatment works by using the patients own cells to repair damage to the cornea. It is carried out under local anaesthetic and patients can go home just two hours after surgery. Under the treatment samples of stem cells are taken from a healthy eye. These are then grown on a contact lens for 10 days before the lens in inserted into the eye. After three weeks the stem cells heal damage to the cornea and vision begins to improve. So far three patients have been treated all of whom had poor vision caused by corneal disease, a form of blindness which affects around 10 million people worldwide.

This article is interesting it suggests that rooks are as intelligent as monkeys and that they are able to perform complex puzzles in order to source food. Four birds were given a puzzle with a small basket of worms inside a plastic tube. The worms were out of reach but the birds were also given a piece of straight wire. In each case the rooks bent the wire to make it into a tool and then used it to hook the basket of worms out of the tube. Unlike other animals which can learn how to solve a problem by using trial and error the rooks all solved the problem immediately despite never been shown how to do it. Researchers at Cambridge University believe that these results show that rooks have an intelligence to rival chimpanzees who are also able to craft tools using their hands.

According to this article £300,000 of taxpayers money was spent on research into finding out which kind of water ducks prefer. This hugely important and ground breaking research was carried out by Defra with the aim of making sure that ducks kept on farms are properly treated. During the three year study by Oxford University scientists offered the ducks different types of water including a trough, a pond, a shower and a nipple drinker. It was found that the ducks preferred standing under a shower and that they spent twice as long under the shower as they did in the other water.

According to this article numbers dormice and water voles are starting to recover thanks to some conservation programmes which have been set up to save them. The creatures which used to be common have been threatened by intensive farming techniques, pollution and climate change which have threatened to wipe them out. The decline of the dormouse is mainly due to the loss of hedgerows and meadows which have caused then to halve in numbers in the last 100 years. Water voles are also affected by loss of habitat as well as polluted rivers. These factors have caused a 90 per cent drop in their numbers in a ten year period between 1990 and 2000. As well as working on projects to improve the creatures habitat conservationists have been asking the public to monitor numbers of dormice and provide boxes for them to sleep in. There have also been successful reintroduction programmes of over 600 dormice to 12 counties over the past 16 years. It appears all of these measures combined mean that the furry creatures are starting to make a comeback.

I am used to seeing butterflies in my garden but in the last week have noticed an unusual concentration of painted lady butterflies. The usual butterfly population in my garden tends to consist of a mix of cabbage whites, small and large tortoiseshells, comma and peacock butterflies so I was wondering if there was a reason for this high concentration of painted ladies. This article just might explain it. It suggests that there is a mass migration of the butterflies this year with around 18,000 of them arriving on the north Norfolk coast from North Africa. Apparently the migration began last Thursday when large numbers of the butterflies were found in Dorset but since then they have been spotted pretty much everywhere. If you don’t know what one looks like, there is a picture on the left but chances are you could be seeing quite a lot of them this year.

According to this article a £3 sun lotion from Asda was among the best is a test carried out by Which? The low priced lotion offered a better defence than some other brands which cost three times as much. In the survey 14 products were tested, all of which claimed to offer a protection factor of 15. However, only five of the products actually met this standard. In fact the sun cream from Asda was found to offer a protection level of 24, more than was stated on the bottle. Some the creams which failed to make the standard were sold by Tesco, Marks and Spencer and Wilkinsons. It just goes to show you don’t always have to spend a lot of money to get a good product.

I am always very careful to unplug all the appliances in the kitchen from the wall in case curious paws should accidently turn something on. Until now I thought I was being a little overcautious but if this article is anything to go by, my fears might be justified. Its about a dog who managed to switch the oven on whilst his owners were out causing a fire to start. Luckily the fire was quickly put out and there was only minor damage to the kitchen but it goes to show that unsupervised pets can cause damage.

If there is one thing that Monopoly has taught us its that a bank error in your favour is a good thing. Unfortunately in real life if you find several thousands of pounds in your account then you should tell the bank and give it back or you could be arrested. An Australian couple did just the opposite. On finding that they had received a payment of £4 million from the bank they simply disappeared. The bank has recovered some of the money but the couple still have around £3 million of it. An international search has now been launched for them.

A three year old boy from Australia caused his parents to have quite a shock when he purchased an £8,000 digger on an online auction website. The child had woken up early before his parents and used his mothers laptop where he came across the TradeMe action site. He then purchased the full sized digger. His mother later saw an email from the seller saying 'I think you'll love this digger'." At first she assumed it was a toy digger she had been looking at earlier but later realised the purchase for a full sized digger and had cost her 20,000 Australian dollars. Luckily when she called the seller to explain, he was sympathetic and the digger was later relisted. This is a good reason not to leave your small child alone with a computer.

According to this article if you want to save the planet you should stop eating lamb and drinking beer. Apparently 37lbs of carbon dioxide is generated to produce 2.2lbs of lamb. Producing pork and chicken on the other hand produces much less emissions. Alcoholic drinks also contribute to emissions with the growing and processing of hops producing 1.5 per cent of Britain’s greenhouse gases. mmm I was thinking of doing both of these things today.

According to this article around half of people who buy their groceries online receive the wrong items. A questionnaire found that 45% had at least one of their items substituted for another product and 15% received something they had not ordered. I have used the Sainsbury’s Online for about five years now and whilst it did used to be fairly unreliable with missed deliveries and broken down vans over the past couple years it has been quite good. I usually receive the correct items with few substitutes and can only ever remember receiving items I haven't ordered once. On that occasion I received a bag of cigarettes (I don’t smoke) but the situation was quickly resolved when I called the store and upon realising the mistake they collected them and brought my bag of shopping in its place.

It could be bad news for tea drinkers if this article is to believed. It suggests that the price of a a cup of tea could rise by as much as 15%. The price rise comes as a combination of rising demand, crop failures and the weak pound. It could mean that leading brands such as PG Tips will increase their prices as much as 50p on a pack of 160 tea bags. Unilever which makes PG Tips has said that it can no longer absorb the extra cost of making tea bags due to increases in commodity costs and that it will need to pass the rises onto consumers.

This is interesting its about a fitness instructor who decided to embark on an experiment to try and help him understand his obese customers. Paul James decided that the best way to try and understand the problems facing obese people who want to lose weight was to become like them. Once super fit he now weighs in at 20 stones after giving up his healthy lifestyle. Previously he weighed 12.5 stone and lived on a diet of lean meat and grill fish with vegetables. His new diet of chocolate, biscuits and fizzy drinks, however, has definitely taken its toll. He started the experiment on New Years Day and on the 1st of July will start a healthy diet and exercise programme to get back in shape. It will be interesting to revisit this story towards the end of year and see how easy he finds it.

According to this article the British are the angriest people in Europe with the average British person getting angry four times a day. In comparison Italians get angry an average of three and half times a day, the French three times a day and people living in Sweden, Norway and Denmark just once every five days. Apparently the things that annoy British people most are traffic jams, rude service in shops, foreign call centres and ill mannered neighbours. The Italians are most annoyed by bad driving and the French by bad service in restaurants. I don’t think I have felt angry yet today, so I guess I have four more times left.

This strange looking fruit is a Kumato. It’s basically a new variety of tomato which originates from the wild tomato. Unlike normal tomatoes it can be eaten even when it is still green. Apparently when still green it has a mild taste and is good for slicing. As it ripens to a dark brown it is sweeter and slightly spicy and is good in salads. When it finally develops a dark red colour it becomes much sweeter than the conventional tomato. The kumato will go on sale at 50 Marks and Spencer stores from next Monday priced at £2.49 per pack.

I am frequently amazed at my cats climbing ability and the places they manage to end up. My cats, however, have a fair way to go to match this cat who can scale a stone wall. The cat called Charlie manages to climb a sheer 13 foot wall in order to get into his home which is on the second floor. You can see him in action left but to fully appreciate the skill that is spider cat you really need to see the video.

According to this article eating honey can shorten the length of a cold by two days. A trial was conducted on 60 patients who were recruited within 24 hours of them catching a cold. All the patients were given traditional therapies such as decongestants and drugs to lower the temperature but half were also given four tablespoons of honey a day. At the end of the study the researchers found that the patients who had been given the honey had recovered from their colds much more quickly than the others showing a significant difference in the duration of all the symptoms. I will have to remember this, next time I am suffering with a cold.

If you are looking for a bargain then you might want to check the Penny Bazaar promotion which starts today at M&S to celebrate their 125th birthday. The promotion runs from today for three days and during that time they are offering a range of products at only a penny each. The promotion runs in store only and customers can choose up to five products each. Every penny donated will go to the M&S 125 charity challenge which aims to raise £125 million for charities between May and September.

This is an interesting idea, its a computer that could make it impossible for drivers to exceed the speed limit. It works by pinpointing the vehicles location by satellite and accessing a database detailing the roads speeds limit to determine how fast the vehicle should be travelling. The device then limits the cars speed to prevent it going any faster than the speed limit. If the vehicle should leave a 40pmh zone and drive into a 30mph zone the device is able to compensate for this and will gradually slow the car down until it is within the speed limit. The device will be trialled in the summer by TFL when a fleet of cars, buses and black cabs will be fitted with it. TFL believe that it could potentially cut accidents by around 10 per cent. It will be interesting to see how the trial goes.

This fox cub had to be rescued by the RSPCA after he got his head stuck in a glass jar. The cub had licked the contents from the glass jar but then found he could not get his head out again. He was found in a garden in Ilford and animal officers were called who removed the jar from his head. After being sprayed with water to cool him down, he was released apparently none the worse for his adventure.

According to this article it is a particularly good year for dandelions. The combination of lots of rain followed by sunny days seems to have created the ideal growing conditions for the weed.  My garden definitely backs up the theory. As quickly as I dig the plants out, more seems to take their place. I am starting to wonder whether I should just leave them there and try to use them for something. Apparently they are quite nice in salads.

We all know that the office fridge can house many dubious items which often sit around way past their use by date. One office block in California had a fridge that smelt so bad it caused a chemical alert. Hundreds of staff were evacuated from the office block after foul smells caused many staff to vomit. Emergency staff including 18 fire engines and ambulances were dispatched to deal with the incident. When they got there, however, they found that the fumes were coming from a fridge on the second floor. The door had been opened by a cleaning lady who had started to clean up the left over food. As the smell had spread and mixed with the vapours from cleaning fluids it had gradually moved throughout the building making the workers sick. The lady cleaning the fridge was suffering from a nasal allergy and could smell nothing. In all 325 employees were evacuated with 28 needing medical attention.

This is interesting its the world’s smallest car. It has been constructed by a Perry Watkins who made it out of a car from a Postman Pat children’s ride. The car measures just 39 inches high by 26 inches wide making it the smallest car ever built. It has a 150cc engine and includes mirrors, windscreen wipers, washers, lights and indicators. Surprisingly the car is taxed and is fully legal to drive on the road.

It never fails to amaze me when my husband gets flu how long it take him to get over it, whilst I on the other hand tend to simply work through it. This article might explain why. It suggests that women have more powerful immune systems that men because of their hormones. A study found that the female hormone oestrogen boosts the immune system’s first line of attack against bacteria. It also found that men were more susceptible than women to infection by bacteria, fungi and worms. So perhaps next time my husband thinks he has man flu, he just might be telling the truth.

An enterprising orangutan managed to escape from her enclosure after short circuiting the electric fence. She first built a ladder so that she could climb up to reach the electric wires on the fence. She then used a stick to twist together the two electric wires short circuiting the fence so that she could escape. Once through the fence, however, she was met by keepers with tranquiliser guns and after regarding them for a while she decided to jump back into her enclosure.

If you are considering having laser eye surgery then you might want to have a look at this useful article from The Daily Mail. The article sums up the main types of laser eye surgery with the advantage and disadvantages of each and the cost of each treatment. It also looks at the risks involved and the mistakes that could occur. You might also want to read my account of laser eye surgery detailing my experience of Wavefront treatment which I had back in 2005. The article describes this treatment as as individualised treatment tailored to the patient and personally I have been very satisfied with the results.

If you want to get married but simply don’t have the money then this idea might be for you. Its a scheme being offered by St Hild and St Helen’s church in Dawdon, County Durham. Under the scheme couples are being offered a virtually free wedding including and organist and outfits for the bride, bridesmaid, bridegroom and mother of the bride. The only condition is that couple take four pre-marital lessons prior to the wedding at a cost of £50.

This is slightly odd its a story about a man called Mr Humphreys and his one eyed cat, Midge. Midge, however, is no ordinary cat, he likes to race. Mr Humphreys first realised Midge had a talent for racing when the cat raced him from the shops one day. Since then, Midge waits for Mr Humphreys to race him home. It appears, however, that the cat is much faster than the man as the cat always wins.

According to this article gardeners are increasingly starting to use wallabies as an alternative to lawnmowers. Apparently private orders for wallabies have jumped recently as landowners choose to use them on their land. Traditionally people with large gardens have used sheep to graze their lawns but it appears that wallabies are a friendlier alternative. Wallabies are not cheap at around £150 for a male and £650 for a female but it appears that demand for them is rising with Waveney Wildlife Britain’s biggest private supplier reporting orders doubling in the last five years. If you are looking to keep a wallaby they need about an acre of land and fences at least 5ft high so they cannot escape.

Some lucky bats in East Sussex have got a nice new luxury heated house to live in. The £20,000 bat house has been built by a property developer who was told he needed to protect the bats habitat. The developer was given permission to demolish two houses in order to build nine flats on the condition that he provided the brown long-eared bats with an alternative home.

According to this article Boots have just introduced a new anti-wrinkle cream that has been proven to actually work. The cream which is part of the same range as the No 7 Protect and Perfect Intense Beauty Serum is aimed at people with more mature skin. The product which is aimed at mature skin is supposed to be twice as good as normal moisturisers and works by plumping up the skin and smoothing away wrinkles. A year long study carried out by Manchester University found that 70% of those who used the cream for a year had fewer and finer lines.

We recently put our house on the market and received an offer after only two weeks. Since then we have been frantically viewing properties in various areas with limited success. We thought we had finally narrowed the search down to just two properties in Egham where we currently live. However, at the last minute a new property was thrown into the mix in a totally different area. Despite our reservations about changing areas as well as moving house, my husband fell in love with it. It now appears that not only are we moving but we are relocating to a completely new area, something that proves to be quite a big decision and is exciting but also quite frightening.

If you are having an affair and want to keep it secret then you might want to check out this article on how not be found out. It’s about a boss and his secretary who were having an affair. Unfortunately for them the woman was performing oral sex on him when their car was struck by a reversing van. The impact caused her to bite off his penis. An ambulance was called by a private detective who had been hired by the mans wife to catch the couple out. I guess there are no excuses for this one.

We ordered some new sofas about a month ago to replace our very old moth eaten ones and the new ones arrived yesterday. We brought our original sofas when we moved into our house about eight years ago and not being the most expensive or well made they had got to the point where the seats has dropped and springs were sticking out of the back. Coupled with the toll of four pairs of claws (the cats) it really was time to replace them. The new sofas were ordered from Furniture Village and made to order hence why they take up to a month to arrive. We were slightly concerned that they were going to make it in tact because our doorway is too narrow for sofas so unfortunately they need to go over the garden wall and through the patio doors at the back of the house. Whilst this manoeuvre is not hugely difficult, in the past we have encountered problems because health and safety rules do not allow delivery drivers to lift items over a certain height. Despite us informing Furniture Village on three occasions the drivers were not aware of the potential problems when they arrived. However, unlike last time when Argos left our sofas on the lawn they quickly agreed that the sofas needed to go over the wall and after about 20 minutes the new sofas were unwrapped and in the living room. As I am typing this I am sitting here enjoying that new sofa smell.

According to this article Sales of beer in the UK have fallen at their fastest rate since the recession of the early 1990s. The British Beer and Pub Association have said that off trade beer sales fell by 11 per cent in the first quarter of 2009 contributing to a total decline of 8.2 per cent in total beer sales. On trade beer sales (those in bars and restaurants) also fell by 6.3 per cent that’s around 753,000 fewer pints every day over the first three months of 2009. The message here is clear, your local pub needs you to drink more beer.

According to this article the average Briton has only three true friends. A poll of 3,000 people founds that whilst most people claim to have 16 friends, 48 per cent admit that most of those people are friends out of habit. The study found that  the typical Briton is actually only left with three close friends and that they lose touch with a average of 36 people over the years. More than half of people polled said that their busy lifestyles was the main reason for failing to keep in touch with friends and four of of ten said they simply drifted apart. Do you agree with the results of the poll?

According to this article a new type of tomato has been produced that won’t make your sandwiches go soggy. It has been produced by Tesco who claim it is the world’s first non leaking tomato. The tomatoes have been grown in Holland under a seed breeding programme that began in 1986. Unlike normal tomatoes which lose 8 per of their weight when sliced the non leaking variety loses less than one per cent of moisture meaning less juice ends up seeping into the bread of the sandwich. At 99p for four they are not cheap but if you are sick of eating soggy sandwiches then this might be the answer.

This article highlights the importance of microchipping your pets. Its about a cat called Kofi who went missing from its home in Nottingham four years ago. When his owners moved away they thought that was the last they would see of their pet. Luckily, however, they had decided to have him microchipped. When a black and white cat was found in Ipswich this year he was scanned by the RSPCA and was identified as Kofi. He was later reunited with his owners and doesn’t appear to have been traumatised by his ordeal.

It is very rare to see normal sized women in the media these days. By normal sized I mean anything from a UK sized 12 to a size 18. Most models or celebrities seems to be an average of a UK size 6 or 8 which is my option makes them underweight and also tends to make me wonder if they are hungry. This latest picture, however, of a contestant in the Australian Miss Universe contest appears to take the trend to the extreme. At 5ft 10 the model weighs just 7st 7lb. She maintains that she is a healthy weight but personally I think she needs feeding up a bit.

A couple in Windsor chose a slightly unusual place to have sex when they decided to get frisky on the lawn outside Windsor Castle. The couple ignored the Please Keep Off the Grass signs and proceeded to strip off before having sex. Despite being in full view of local pubs and shops it was 15 minutes before police arrived to stop the couple. They were arrested and cautioned for outraging public decency.

I’m not usually one to read articles about miracle face creams that instantly make you look younger but I must admit this article caught my eye due to the claims it works in two weeks. The product in question is called the 2 Week Miracle and it costs £69. The article highlights one woman who tested the miracle cream out to see whether or not it worked. The regime appears to be that you cleanse your face as normal before adding the Miracle Solution to tone the complexion. Then you use the Miracle Serum to regenerate new cells. Next the Miracle Cream which fills in lines and finally the Miracle Eye Contour which reduces puffiness and dark circles. It all sounds quite easy although a bit of the expensive side.

What I was more interested in, than the product itself was seeing the results afterwards. The lady who tried the product seemed to think it had worked and was quite pleased with the results. Personally, however, when I looked at the before and after pictures I found myself wondering what the difference is. As far as I can see, the after picture is shot in a much better light, presumably to make the skin appear healthier. The before picture on the other hand looks like it has been subjected to a little blurring, perhaps the Vaseline effect on the camera lens. I’m not saying the product doesn’t work, but I really think a better attempt could have made to shoot the two pictures in similar conditions in order to give a better comparison. As for the miracle cream it all seems it a bit too good to true and if I were spending that much money, I think I would expect better results.

If this article is correct then a cure for blindness could be developed within the next six years. According to the article a simple 45 minute operation which involves injecting new cells into the back of the eye could be the answer. The surgery is being developed by researchers at the Moorfields Eye Hospital in London to tackle the most common cause of blindness age related macular degeneration (AMD) which affects around 500,000 in the UK. The treatment involves growing human embryonic stem cells in a lab. These cells are able to turn into different types of cells and so can be used to create small patches identical to the damaged cells in the eyes of AMD sufferers. The cells are injected into the back of the eye where they replace these damaged cells are restore sight. The treatment has already been tested successfully on rats and pigs and human trials are due to begin within two years.

According to this article being fat is bad for the environment and can actually contribute towards global warming. Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that overweight people are more responsible for carbon emissions than their thinner counterparts because they consume more food and fuel. The study identified an increase demand for livestock production and a higher dependency upon cars  as the main causes of global warming. This led them to the assumption that overweight people are more likely to consume more meat and as they find it harder to move around easily also more likely to use cars rather than walk, thus contributing to global warming more than a thinner person. The researchers also estimated that a lean population of one billion would emit 1,000million tonnes less carbon dioxide per year than a ‘fat’ nation of the same size. What do you think, is being fat a cause of global warming?

Since I heard that the government was introducing a scrappage scheme to encourage people to trade in their old cars for a newer model I have watching with interest. My car has now reached the 20 year old mark and its a miracle every year when it gets through the MOT. I would happily trade my car in a for a newer one, the only thing that is really stopping me is that I simply cannot afford to get a new car. I was hoping that the government scheme might give me an extra little bit of help to be able to purchase something a little newer, perhaps a car that is only five years old rather than twenty. It appears, however, that the scheme only allows you purchase a car that is less than a year old. I have been looking around at the prices of new cars and even if I were to purchase one with finance it is simply too expensive. I don’t want a particularly big car perhaps a Ford Fiesta or similar but prices of these start at around £12,295. It looks as though my car will be on the road for some time yet whilst I continue saving for a newer one.