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The Mole is a character from Czech children's cartoons which were shown occasionally on BBC2 on wet afternoons when I was small. For some reason I remember these beautifully drawn cartoons as sad and frightening, although I don't see much sign of that now – perhaps the fact that the mole has a child's voice and cries realistically made him full of too much pathos. Originally found via Russell Davies.
I picked up this textbook from 1876 by J. Norman Lockyer, designed for schoolchildren and ‘children of a larger growth’, mainly for its beautiful little illustrations and diagrams.
As ever, we hate to disappoint, and I can't help noticing from the list of search terms for this site that some people must be going away unfulfilled. So for the person who wanted 'The most beautiful bird in the world’, here you are:
or no, perhaps:
or:
It's too hard to say.
Whoever was looking for ‘humans without eyes’, I don't like the sound of that much. But here are some eyes without humans:
The person trying to find out ‘how to peacock hair’ – I imagine it would involve something like this:
And whoever came looking for ‘what colour knickers’ - I'm taking that as a request for advice, rather than a strangely vague search for facts - I suggest red, as in Haiti red underwear is thought to keep away ghosts.
Now I hope we're all happy.
Walking by the river near Tower Bridge, I noticed a cluster of these surprising gardens on barges floating on the Thames – complete with fruit trees, shrubs, the works.
They turn out to be yet another London anomaly in need of saving – find out more about the Downings Road Moorings and the campaign to save them from eviction by Southwark council here. One of the council's reasons is apparently that they are 'visually detrimental'. How quince trees and lavender could be considered a blot on the landscape, while most of the Thames is being buried under swathes of repellent 'luxury development', it's hard to say.
