Sing along...

...if you can keep up.

Happy Easter

Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" played on a wooden staircase

A dog with three tails

Ridley's Believe It Or Not



Sample: Yellowman

Herbert Ridley presents: A dog with three tails was Spotted in Roundwood Park, London

Turn again Capt. Whittington

 

The sky mocks us with square cornered coffin clouds and ledger grid contrails, as the end nears.

What we were thinking just before the end

And finally...

Cheerio ducky: "Attempts to breed a rare species of duck to avoid extinction in the UK have backfired after the only two remaining males fell for each other." (Telegraph)

Children banned from snow-covered parks

Ridley's Believe it or Not (No. 7)

Children banned from snow-covered parks by health and safety brigade - Telegraph: "Camden Council in North London decided to lock all of its gated parks because the snow has made paths slippery."

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Herbert Ridley

"Give me time to realise my crime" - 15 months enough?

"Boy George was today sentenced to 15 months for falsely imprisoning a male escort by handcuffing him to a wall... In an apparently accidental allusion to Culture Club's 1982 No 1 hit [...] the prosecution [...] asked the jury during the trial: 'Did he really have to hurt him?' " (Guardian)

The perils of cocaine-induced paranoia. But fifteen months for this when thugs walk free every day for worse? For example, if you were one of the Leeds footballers who kicked an Asian youth almost to death outside a nightclub, you might walk free to continue your lucrative career in the beautiful disgusting, spit-soaked game.

Jacintha Pukka for Newsmusic Desk

Stealth fries and pigs' ears

 

Costco, Watford. 11 January 2009. Sphagnum

UFO claim over wind farm damage

BBC NEWS | England | Lincolnshire (video)

Something heavy hit and broke a huge wind turbine, but nobody knows what. The Telegraph has more details, including links to sightings by locals.

William Burroughs shot my book

Ridley's Believe it or Not (No. 6)

Finbow on Burroughs, Lit Up magazine

"Another of my prize possessions is a copy of Dear Allen: Letters to Allen Ginsberg by William S. Burroughs 1953-57, Full Court Press, New York City, 1982, signed by both Bill and Allen with the addition of a muzzle-fire graze on the front cover - Bill shot it for me." (Steve Finbow)

Brilliant memoir writing

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Herbert Ridley

One for Ridley's Believe it or Not?

Letters

Is it me, or has anybody else noticed that Brent East MP Sarah Teather looks exactly like a character from a James Thurber cartoon?

Niall D., Edgware

Well spotted. We will consider that for a future Believe it or Not. We prefer rocks that look like Geronimo, but if we get really desperate... (Ridley)

Very funny, air traffic controllers...

Now stop playing noughts and crosses in the sky.

Ridley's Believe it or Not (No. 4)

By a fantastic coincidence two readers photographed exactly the same phenomenon at almost exactly the same time on Friday (December 7th.)



The sky over Harlesden Road at 4 p.m. this evening [Friday]. (Picture: Patsy, Willesden)



The same spectacle seen over Northolt at the same time. (Picture: A. Mullane)

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Herbert Ridley

Black gold in NW10

Cruiser Reports Drilling Success at Willesden Green

"The Willesden Green 06-35 well was drilled to approximately 2530 m depth. The well encountered two commercial zones which have been tested individually. The total of the last recorded rates for both zones is approximately 645 mcfd and 130 bpd of liquids or approximately 237 boepd gross (178 boepd net to the Company)."

So they packed up their bags and they moved to Beverly.
Hills that is. Swimming pools, movie stars...

It's only a matter of time before Ganache comes in from the courtyard of Herald House covered in black gunge, after dibbling into a gusher.

Business Desk

Adverts by Gombeen™

• Willesden Eye Specialists private treatment
  "Your strabismus is our business"

Fox on the roof / Call of the wild

Picture of the week*

A week's supply of vegetarian rissoles goes to night watchman, Nelson Poultice, for this snap of a fox on the roof of his garden shed, enacting the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet with Nelson's small terrier, Woolly.

* Sponsored by Stiff Carbuncle Faherty (Estate Agents)

Visiting Mars?

Ridley's "Believe it or not" (No. 1)



There are 30 hotels listed too.

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Herbert Ridley

Worst case rugby scrum injury

Fan Hacks Off Testicles

"Geoff Huish was so convinced England would beat the Welsh he told mates: 'If Wales win I'll cut my balls off.'"

As a serious publication, we don't usually cover the stories in the general category 'Bizarre' but this poor guy must've felt really hacked off over his defeatist prediction.

Squeegees on Mars

LONDON (Reuters)

"An unexplained phenomenon akin to a space-borne car wash has boosted the performance of one of the two U.S. rovers probing the surface of Mars, New Scientist magazine says...It said something -- or someone -- had regularly cleaned layers of dust from the solar panels of the Mars Opportunity vehicle while it was closed down during the Martian night."

Oxygen for Mars Proposal

by Salvador Oria

Mars (and/or any other planet) should be contaminated.
Contaminated with life.
Our planet has extreme situations as regards soil, climate, light, weather, amounts of water, temperature, pressure, etc.
But it was not born like that.
Life changed the hell that Earth was into what we know nowadays.
It started from very simple organisms some of which still roam in the fieriest conditions our planet can produce.

I hold that we have to contaminate Mars spreading millions of
millions of lichen sporae thrown all over Martian thin atmosphere.
Lichens are a symbiotic (or reciprocal commensalism) community of algae cells in fungi substrates and some can even produce their own water. Useful bacteriae should also be tried.
How? Capsules containing the sporae have to enter Mars atmosphere jettisoned by a bigger capsule at the smallest possible angle to allow them the longest possible trip close to its surface in a criss-cross fashion, vents have to open to allow thin air to come in and blow the sporae out through a "tail" opening. Mars atmosphere currents at say a mile high, would disperse the sporae appropriately.
Some will land in bad places but some will not. The latter may start reproducing and mutating for better performance.

You know how lichens work.
Lichens (or other lower organisms) should be taken to the red planet to start using the CO2 and releasing O2. Which types?
We should take there the more sturdy varieties. If any start reproducing, half of the battle is won. Other organisms such as safe bacteriae, unicellulars and protozoa should also be tried in the Martian atmosphere as it is now. I am aware that changes in the atmosphere from these sources might take millennia. But we will have to do this for a start. Because one day we will have to start.
Think of the advantages if any Earth useful organism adapts and settles in.
Perhaps certain other low-requirements desertic-type cryptogams (or even phanerogams) can be sown/dispersed thereafter.
A wild dream perhaps?
NASA's space saga has not been a dream since the first day?

Salvador Oria, Buenos Aires