An exotic stick insect has been miraculously reunited with its owner after it escaped from a tower block and crawled away in Camden Town, north London. Bug enthusiast Cathy Shaw had not realised her jungle nymph had disappeared out of her flat window. And to any passer-by it might have been mistaken for a leaf. Fortunately a family found it sitting on a wall near the Agar Children’s Centre in Wrotham Road.
Camden New Journal (Amanda Welles)
X marks the shark
A Devon fisherman has landed the first shark of its kind – one made of Lego lost at sea off a cargo ship 27 years ago. Richard West, 35, found the plastic toy on the top of his fishing nets 20 miles south of Penzance. He contacted the project Lego Lost at Sea, which confirmed the piece to be the first-ever reported shark from the 51,800 Lego sharks lost off the Tokio Express ship in February 1997.
Cornwall Live (Catherine Dyer)
Dialectic errors
A misplaced Yorkshire apostrophe has caused a furore. “Gerrit in’t bin”, said the anti-litter posters. “Tha what?” said the chorus of complaints. North Yorkshire Council last week conceded it had erred. Posters that said “Gerrit in’t bin” should have said “Gerrit in t’bin”. The council said it had corrected the phrase in downloadable signs. “A humble apology would be nice,” said Rod Dimbleby, chair of the Yorkshire Dialect Society.
The Stray Ferret (Lyn Hedges)
[See also: This England: The potamophilous oath]
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This article appears in the 21 Aug 2024 issue of the New Statesman, The Christian Comeback