And it's

 only October 2024. I'm making great progress with my novel that has nothing whatsoever to do with the photo below that is of the Humber Estuary at Kilnsea in East Yorkshire.

Ullswater

 

 

Study of bacterium on wasted chewing gum wins...

 Ig Nobel Award. 

Despite a learned article published in the journal, Nature there's something cheerful about this scientific endeavour that might verge otherwise on the frivolous.

In keeping with the seriousness of the subject I sought chewing gum images in google and discovered someone in London paints lovely pictures on said flattened pavement gum.

This picture of gobbed out chuddy looks like a Matisse version of Atlas grasping the world but shot from the rear and maybe when he was drunk and bragging, Atlas that is. "Look at me, I can shift this. Heave! Oh, me back's gone." The drifting head doesn't work though, it's too ephemeral, like an afterthought. 

Forensics suggest someone was chewing gum then popped in a new bit which proved too much. Enjoined, both are spat out and lo the chewer passes on with nary a thought to either gum or pavement aesthetics, or pavement sticketics for that matter because that stuff's a bugger if it gets on your shoe. Chewing requires no skill whereas painting requires great skill but as an example of masticatory expellent art this must stand up there among the greats.

On a final note I don't want to denigrate chewing completely as an artistic modus after all do wasps not chew their habitation into existence and is there not art in their mindless geometrics? So let us hear it for chewing as a means to many ends even if some are less obvious than others. 

WW1 message found...

but pigeon lost. Klaus Von Boid, spokes-pigeon seen previously on these pages told a press conference.

"It was a tough life. Messages were generally folded into a canister attached to the leg but as can be seen in this rare photo some were expected to carry packs and a plinth. Many thought the plinth an extravagance but such battlefield objections were dismissed as typical of moaning minnies and those who ducked. It is little wonder so many were lost. However, for the survivors a comfortable future atop a mantlepiece or as a door stop was assured."

Murder hornets...

get bad press, shock.

"The name can be off-putting for sure but, hey, we're just guys. Out to party, where's the harm in that?" Said Jaime 'One-Eye' O'Grady, Press Officer for Savage Sting, the main collective representing insects menacing the public good.

"Before we break for lunch." Jaime told waiting reporters, "I'd like to take this opportunity to mention those who have  fallen and specifically the beloved but eccentric Harriet ‘Snapped Mandible' Perry, pictured, who departed this life impaled on a finger. Finally, there's a free bar so please help yourselves. Thank you."

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower. By Dylan Thomas

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The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

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The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

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The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman’s lime.

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The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather’s wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

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And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

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by Dylan Thomas