‘Tis cold, crispy and calm yet again at the Castle this
morn, the study is overwhelmed with wonky what knots and his Maj has discovered
the joy of shredding the shower curtain.
I spent an hour or so in the garden trying to move a large “mock
orange” shrub, after digging all the way round the roots and then attacking the
hole with my new axe, shoving a pry bar underneath it and jumping up and down
on the handle, digging even more soil out around the blessed thing it hasn’t
even moved a smidge-think I need a plan “B”.
And a happy 70th birthday to Mohammed Ali-he was
the greatest.
There is a new experience; L'Art Du Fromage, the first
speciality cheese restaurant in Britain. The menu is built around cheese-based
dishes: there are fondues, raclettes, a glorified version of cheese on toast
and even cheese ice cream.
Mr Ledogar and his business partner Jean-Charles
Madenspacher, who are both 24, have left their village outside Strasbourg,
Alsace, to move to the UK. Their mission: to banish the British obsession with
mild cheddar and ignite an altogether fierier relationship with aged milk curd.
Their restaurant, off London's King's Road, near Chelsea,
has just opened for business.
The cheeseboard offers Roquefort (replete with the
Penicillium roqueforti fungus and its "healing properties") and
Langres (bathed in Champagne), and one of the dearest, the Salers de Buron.
Opening day didn’t go too well, the sole couple tucking into
their cheeseboard lunch at L'Art Du Fromage were actually French relatives of
the proprietors.
Good luck with that-I hope Worrall Thompson doesn’t get a
whiff.....
Allegedly four senior BBC executives have been paid hundreds
of thousands of pounds in bonuses despite a pledge by the director-general to
scrap the payouts.
The managers shared around £275,000 in top-up payments last
year, Chris Kane, receiving £155,000 in addition to his £206,000 salary,
according to the flailing sail, Chief technology officer John Linwood received
a bonus of £70,000 last year, making his total pay £358,000 - a total which
included a pay rise of £40,000.
On Demand general manager Daniel Danker, who is responsible
for the "strategy and delivery" of the iPlayer catch-up service and
Red Button interactive services, was awarded £40,000, taking his total pay
package to £213,000.
Human resources director of vision, north and nations Claire
Dyer received an additional payment of £11,000.
Nice to see that our license money is going to good
causes....
Patients at a Bronx
hospital are getting billed for tens of millions of dollars because of a
computer error.
Alexis Rodriguez
says he almost had an asthma attack when he received a bill for $44.8 million
from the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Centre.
Rodriguez told the New York Daily News that
he was hospitalized last spring with pneumonia and was afraid the bill was
legit.
Turns out the
company that prepares the bills had mistakenly put the invoice number in the
space where the invoice amount should go.
The billing company
is telling patients to ignore the multi-million-dollar bills. It is sending out
corrected ones.
There was no
immediate response from the hospital on Monday, which was a holiday.
That’s one way to cut the waiting lists....
Bulgarian artist Plamen Ignatov, has spent the last 16 years
of his life making a detailed matchstick model of the Rila Monastery, from
around 6 million sticky things that come in small boxes.
Rila Monastery is the largest and most famous Orthodox
monasteries in Bulgaria, and is regarded as one of the most important cultural
and historical monuments in Southern Europe. It is also listed as a UNESCO
World Heritage Site.
Never heard of it, and I hope he has fire insurance…
Nearly 30,000 Mini
Coopers are to be recalled in Britain after makers detected an electrical fault
which could lead cars to catch fire.
German car maker
BMW said the recall concerns 235,000 vehicles worldwide.
Safety checks
revealed a problem which can cause the water pump to fail, potentially causing
the car to overheat.
Manufacturers are
investigating one case in Britain where a fire is being linked to the water
pump, a spokesman said.
The recall relates
to two models - the Mini Cooper S and the Mini John Cooper Works.
The company said
owners will be issued with a recall notice in the next few weeks.
But a spokesman
insisted the vehicles remain safe to drive and there is a "very low
incidence" of the fault.
It seems that BMW are getting very close to British Leyland’s
“that’ll do” mantra.
Paris's Musee
D'Orsay is threatening to sue a lingerie company after three models paraded
around the museum in bras and knickers.
Works by artists
such as Van Gough and Renoir had to compete with models from lingerie firm Etam
for the eyes of bewildered spectators.
The models were
filmed for a video intended as a viral marketing campaign. It starts with the
girls waiting outside the art gallery in trench coats.
Once the models are
inside the gallery they shed their overcoats to reveal their scantily-clad
bodies to astonished art lovers.
However, the museum
was not amused by the stunt and has called the incident "a serious
infringement of the Orsay's rights and the rights of others".
The museum's
director has reportedly threatened legal action against Etam if the lingerie
maker does not remove the video from its website.
Now that is art…..
Police in Georgia believe that despite multiple searches
after a traffic violation , a suspect managed to sneak a 10-inch gun into a
prison last Monday by concealing the weapon in his rectum.
One day later, officers confiscated the .38 revolver from
the jail cell of Michael Leon Ward, arrested Jan. 9, a statement from the
Onslow County Sheriff's Office explains.
They'd performed a strip search on Ward and even required
that he "squat and cough" to see if he held any contraband, but
nothing turned up, according to MSNBC.
He was initially arrested because police allegedly found
drugs and related paraphernalia during the traffic stop.
Jailhouse guards discovered the handgun in the toilet after
other inmates reported Ward.
Ye gods! I pity the poor sod that has to clean it.
That’s it: I’m orf to get me face
scanned.
And today’s thought:
Angus
