Cane Rat Cassoullet

It gets worse. I'm 5th on Yahoo if you search for "Cassoullet". Bizarre isn't it...

The person from South Africa who did the search was presumably looking for a recipe to use their Cane Rat meat in. These big rodent fella are farmed for their juicy bush meat all over Africa, and are particularly good in spicy curries (according to the South African guy I used to work with at Entranet - his family are farmers).


Great Britons ?

The BBC are running their search for the Greatest Briton at the moment. Go cast your vote. Like all UK public votes, the results are laughable: tabloid attitudes, lack of historical knowledge and short-term memories combine to produce truly bizarre and embarassing top ten and 100 lists.

Diana is in the top ten, currently in 5th place behind Brunel, Churchill, Darwin and Shakespeare. The Peoples Princess is ahead of Newton and Elizabeth I. That's right, Diana - who did nothing for Britain except a few charity gigs and get our sympathy for a foolish broken marriage - is ahead of Queen Elizabeth the First. It beggars belief. Diana shouldn't even be in the top 50.

But it's the top 100 that really blows:

17 Michael Crawford
29 David Bowie
30 Guy Fawkes (anarchist vote #1)
33 David Beckham (ahead of the late great Bobby Moore at 69th - captain of our 1966 World Cup winners and a supreme gentleman)
40 King Henry VIII (surprisingly low in the ratings)
43 John Peel
46 Boy George
56 Sir Cliff Richard
58 Freddie Mercury (he wasn't even British)
76 The Unknown Soldier (unexpected but I can see where people were coming from)
77 Robbie Williams
83 JK Rowling
87 John Lydon (anarchist vote #2)

Can someone please explain how Michael Crawford weighs in on the chart in 17th place?!


Halloween Lunch Cancelled

Our canteen run theme days at strategic points of the year. Valentines Day will see a special Valentine Menu. So does Burns Night, Chinese New Year, and Gandhi's Birthday. Normally we have a special Halloween Menu, but this year's has been cancelled because our devoutly Seven Day Adventist Facilities Manager thinks it will promote paganism here at work. The place feels like hell, and we already have plenty of witches, so I can't see how serving up Ghoul-Lash and Stake and Kidney Pie is going to make things any worse...