News Round Up
by Patrick O'Connor
WHEN motorist Kenneth Lambourn got upset with a traffic warden, he found an unusual way of making his point, says the Daily Star.
Kenneth claimed that he had paid £1.50 for a ticket but it had blown off the dashboard when he opened his door, prompting the traffic warden to issue him with a £25 fine.
When he tried to argue his case, showing his ticket as proof he hadn't tried to park without paying, his claim fell on deaf ears and the fine was kept in place.
So fed-up Kenneth went to the bank and drew out the £25 fine in one pennies which weighed in at 13 lbs. He then visited Wiltshire Council to pay the fine in 2,500 coins!
“I did it to make a point,” he said.
Vikings have a pretty fearsome image with Brits but a Daily Mail story reports that a genetic study has revealed that around one million Britons alive today are of Viking descent.
The research compared the Y chromosome markers - DNA inherited from father to son - of more than 3,500 men to six DNA patterns that are rarely found outside of Scandinavia and are associated with the Norse Vikings.
It is estimated that the first Viking long ships landed in Britain in 793AD and that the Vikings went on to rule parts of England until the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066.
Dr Jim Wilson, chief scientist at BritainsDNA, said: “The research suggests that the concentration of Norse blood is quite variable, but as the Y chromosome only relates to the nation’s male population and only to one ancestral lineage for each man, there is a very real chance that many more of us are related to the Vikings.”
If you suffer from arachnophobia, it might be better not to read on...
The Daily Telegraph tells us that a family was forced to flee their home in Hednesford, Staffordshire and have it fumigated after hundreds of potentially deadly spiders were found in a bunch of bananas bought at the local shop.
Thirty one year old Jamie Roberts spotted white patches of what he thought was mould covering the fruit. However to his horror, on closer inspection, he saw tiny legs and realised the bananas were hiding a nest of spiders and that they had spread to other parts of his home.
He said: “I knew something was wrong because then I noticed the white patches were all over the window sill and the curtains and I could see tiny legs and realised they were spiders.
“At that point, I wasn't too concerned because I thought they looked dead. I was freaked out but I started to sweep the patches into the bin but then they all started moving.
“It was like something out of a horror film because suddenly the window sill was moving with hundreds of these spiders.”
Pest controllers were called and Mr Roberts, his wife and two young children were told to immediately leave the house while it was fumigated.
The paper says that although the spiders have not been officially identified, family believe they could have been the world's most poisonous spider, the Brazilian wandering spider.
The village of Gotham in Nottinghamshire is close to where I live so this Daily Star story caught my eye.
It seems that a real 'joker' may have stolen a road sign at the entrance to the village because it has the same name as Batman's legendary city.
A police spokesman said: “It is of little scrap metal value, so it may be more to do with a prank, particularly given the name on it.”
'The cat's whiskers' is a popular idiom which means to be better than everyone else and it certainly applies to a two year old pussy featured in a Daily Mail story.
Whiskers, who is being cared for by a Cats Protection charity worker at her home in Frome, Somerset because her previous owner could no longer look after her, has 12 inch whiskers, believed to be the longest in Britain.
Gill Canning said: “It was quite hard to measure her whiskers because she is so friendly, she thinks you are playing. They are certainly the longest whiskers I have ever seen and they make her look very pretty indeed. She is a lovely friendly cat - very much a lap cat - and she is very playful.”
The charity is now looking to re-home Whiskers.
Reference lists:
Daily Mail (www.dailymail.co.uk)
Daily Star (www.daily star.co.uk)
Daily Telegraph (www.telegraph co.uk)