Out drinking one day with my foodie wine guru Will, I had a pint of an obscure lager. "you don't drink lager!" he spluttered at me. I do drink lager, just not the fizzy gnats piss megabranded as "lager" in the same way Guiness extra cold is branded as a "stout".
the line "I'd opened the flood gates by daring to speak out and say that enough was enough" says as much about modern-day casual sexism as anything - how dare you complain etc etc
In 1855 a little book was published in Paris to little notice - a Portuguese?English phrase book. It was nearly 30 years beore it was discovered to contain a rich deposit of pure hilarity. Carolinho, who knew no English, had constructed it by taking a Portugese/French phrasebook written by Da Fonesca and translated the French word for word into English using a dictionary.
A masterpiece of unintended humour
Southampton ban press photographers at their match, local paper gets in a cartoonist to cover the match instead. Great stuff, but the final print was with photographs supplied by the rival team, Plymouth Argylle.
The three annoying train monsters shown in the poster are Nesshii (the sleeping monster), Asshii (the leg-crossing monster), and Shinbunshii (the newspaper-reading monster)
Ray Mears did a brilliant and very touching program in his documentary series Northern Wilderness about Dr John Rae, a Scottish explorer, who discovered the fate of the HMS Investigator but got caught up in shame and controversy after reporting back that a British Naval Crew had resorted to cannabilism, and died forgotten, with most of his incredible and heroic life struck from the history books. Very very worth looking up.
A great thing about the internets is how easy its made specialist nature networks - in this case, the Butterfly Conservation Trust - to enlist public help in nation-wide surveys. The Big Butterfly Count has to be one of the best recent uses of technology, with a simple ID chart, an easy count, instant results, and the ability to see your & neighbouring results on a googlemap. Even 10 years ago this would have been nowhere near as succesful.
Also, you should go out this week and count butterflies!