02.12.2003 - 1:16 p.m.

If you were a bear ( and a big bear too ) should you care if it froze or snoo ?

I didn't think so.

Somewhere, deep in the Indian ocean is an hydrothermal vent spewing hot water and all sorts of interesting stuff into the ocean, around this vent some lost scientists found a small snail that had cleverly ( for a snail anyway ) managed to incorporate the metal compounds floating around the vent into it's makeup to give it a shell partially made of iron and just to be safe it's added some iron based plate armour on the bits of a snail that are usually soft and squidgy. You may wonder why a snail would feel so insecure that it needs to armour up, and no doubt the lost scientists wondered too because they found the cause. There's an even smaller snail that also hangs around these vents, but this one although a bit more squidgy and snail-like is armed with poisonous darts and delights in stabbing other, larger snails until they die.

You don't really think of this kind of evolutionary arms race going on day in day out to other species ( unless you're a scientist or something ) glad I'm not a snail living on a vent in the bottom of the ocean, on the other hand it'd be nice just to get away from the human race for a bit. What's needed here is a holiday company offering timeshare in the minds of differing animals, I don't have the slightest ( feasible ) idea of how this could be achieved but it would beat the hell out of two weeks in Majorca eating pie an chips along with the rest of the temporary UK expats.

Contrary to every pub bore you've ever heard, a ducks quack does echo, it's just hard to get the conditions right to hear the echo, and ducks hate visiting touristy caves so they never get the chance to show off their echo.

And now a newsflash :

Giant Craig David seen hiding beneath Planetarium, shoppers are reminded to take care when approaching oversized musicians.

And now, some other weather :

Earth - Some earth, wind and fire with occasional rain and Temptations followed by sunshine, bearable temperatures around the middley bit of the planet getting colder towards the top and bottom.

Moon - Very very quiet, a bit dusty, in need of a spring clean really.

Mars - Two hundred mile an hour winds and huge dust storms covering half the planet for the next five weeks, quite cool though during the day, about as cold as a freezer that's only half full of food.

Sun - Hot, massive radiation, really quite bright, remember your asbestos suit and dark shades, use about factor four million sunblock.

Venus - About as far away from a chick riding a clam as you can get. Hot acid rain, great big volcanos, slightly better than Blackpool off season.

Jupiter & Saturn - Cold on the outside getting progressively hotter towards the middle, lovely sunsets but don't bother to take your radio. Watch out for large black obelisks bearing messages from another race.

Neptune & Uranus - It's winter now so any weather there will be about four meters deep and a bit slushy, probably moving quite fast though.

Pluto - Cold, dark pointless, a stopping point on the way to more interesting places, about the same as Blackpool off season.

Interplanetary Space - Cold and windy, with lots of dust flying about.

Extra Solar Space - pretty boring for about 131,600,000 miles in one direction getting progressively more interesting towards the far side of the galaxy. Nothing any good for four thousand light years in any other direction.