It is well known that lichens are an indicator of good air quality. Ergo, my F-registered Escort, bless her, is a positive boon to the environment, as she has lichen growing all over the window seals. And algae in the inaccessible bits of the bonnet grille and bumper, too. She provides a home for spiders in her wing mirror surrounds, and a handy perch for birds as I can often tell in the morning.

So, all you smug people driving round in your Toyota Prions, think on!

Seriously, new cars are not as green as they are cracked up to be. Few calculations take the energy and resource (steel, petrochemicals, copper etc.) cost of fabrication - and scrapping - into account when working out the environmental benefit of a new model. Not to mention the extra fuel used by catalytic converters, or to drag heavy batteries around in hybrid cars.

Old bangers are not nearly as black as the greens would paint them, in my opinion. And mine is silver(ish), anyway.

In airy fairy contrast to the worthy chemistry that has gone before, I could not help being struck by the most fantastic colours appearing in the hedgerows and verges: in fact I was so struck, I verbalised my wonder, which was fairly pointless as I was alone in the car at the time. Astonishing red shrubs of many shades seem to be growing everywhere along my route to work. Sadly too, I encounter far too many battered badgers, foxes and rabbits along that same route and I fear I have also witnessed two owls which appear to have come to a messy but I suppose thankfully swift end.

Does anyone remember having a nature table at school? I do remember that someone brought to the biology lab at senior school a relatively un-damaged badger corpse for dissection and stuff but it really was a bit smelly and copious quantities of air freshener were used in an attempt to mask it. The resulting aroma was truly nauseating and you won't catch me deploying air freshener (nor indeed, Shake 'n' Vac) to this day, not that it's an activity to which I have ever been prone in the first place, mind.

I'll see if I can't come up with an amazing fact next time, but it isn't likely to be chemistry-orientated and it won't be during this next week either as I'm away from work for a week, enjoying being absent from the office and thus unlikely to have access to reliable internet stuff. I might amaze you all and report back saying I've produced a cake which is heavier than Jacksonium, although I guess it would probably fall through the bottom of the oven. I'll have to carry out a full risk assessment first.

Have a risk-free week one and all

Back from a short trip to southern Germany (and very pretty it is too), I come bearing new morsels of info.

Many of our older readers will be familiar with the phrase borrowed from hipsters "Solid, Jackson" to denote a hefty pudding, an awkward-to-shift household appliance, or a large baulk of wood for instance.
The eponymous Jackson is not, as some would suppose, a boxer or jazz trombonist, but in fact a rather obscure nuclear chemist who worked in the USA from the late 1940s. His search for an elusive and previously-unsuspected third series of rare earth elements finally bore fruit in 1953, when he synthesised tiny quantities of a new element with the atomic number 119. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he called it "Jacksonium", having got fed up with the silly names ( * see below) of some other rare earths, and going for personal glory instead.

His methods were rather unorthodox, both then and now. He placed piles of heavy metal dust (including osmium and mercury) in a crucible together with a sprinkling of heavy water (deuterium oxide), and crushed it with a hydraulic press. Modern practice is to create it in a cyclotron, of course.

Because of its great density and relative inertness, Jacksonium has a few specialised uses. For example, tiny, tiny amounts are added in powdered form to the rubber used for deep-sea divers' boots, to prevent unexpected somersaulting. In the 1980s, it was a common constituent of the shells of "mobile" phones, when extreme solidity was seen as a positive virtue; this use has, obviously, disappeared in this brave new miniaturised century. However, it is estimated# that some 15% of items in the Unnovations catalogue employ Jacksonium to give their flimsier products an ersatz heftiness. (# Source: Dorkus and Wibble consumer survey, Jan 2005)

Younger readers will probably have come across element 119 in the form of brightly-coloured but strangely heavy anklets, on sale at pop festivals and used for traditional leg-pulling games.

* Ytterbium, Terbium, Erbium and Yttrium are all named after the Swedish town of Ytterby, about which most travel guides seem to have nothing to say. Hafnium, most oddly of all, was named for an obscure brand of Scandinavian tinned ham substitute, popular with mineralogists working in the tundra.

I've just received a txt msg from my sis four days after she sent it asking me to look after the SPOG BLOG while she's in Germany (she's dead cosmopolitan). Eeek, I can't think of much to say except Wendover's quite pleasant but the signposting in the place is not particularly helpful, Goring is delightful but I can imagine it's dead expensive, and in these days of global warming and rising tides and all that, it's perhaps a little too closely adjacent the River Thames for comfort.

I've been in Nottingham this past week-end and didn't see one shooting or stabbing incident - the square in the city centre is really delightful and with the sun shining, it was almost continental. Apparently they do a really FAB xmas display with lights and stuff too, which is nice.

I also supped ale in a pub the name of which I'm bound to get wrong - something like Ye Ancient Trippe to Jerusalem - part built into rock under Nottingham Castle which is more like a stately home, but as you had to pay an entrance fee, we didn't go in - to the castle that is, couldn't pass a fab old pub without sampling their ale, and jolly good it was too. Legend has it that the knights in armour supped there before heading off to the crusades, but I guess they must at least have removed their helmets whilst imbibing.

OK, duty done, am heading off home now (broadband at work so much better).

I'm sure my sis will have all manner of Germanic tales to tell upon her return. Auf wiedersehen (long, long time since I was forced to do German at school, so apols to all linguists if I've got that horribly and embarrassingly wrong )

Drove through gorgeous misty lanes and past watercress beds shimmering in misty sunshine this morning on way to work which, in sharp contrast, has nothing gorgeous about it - nasty soulless fluorescent lit box. During the hours of nine to five I see any nice weather obliquely from the wrong side of the glass

Anyhow, what I want to know is, who decides which horse gets to wear a coat at this time of year? I passed several in a field this morning, not all of which were wearing coats. Can you tell if a horse has goose pimples?

Teasels are brilliant, by the way

CLOVE BALLS! Does anybody remember clove balls - swirly red and white as I recall. Bit of a choking hazard I suppose, and it looks like those with more time on their hands to research these things than I (not really, they just know where to look) have established that Spangles are defunct, which is a real shame. Should we start a No. 10 petition demanding their return?

In fact, I now recall bouncing on my bed one day when probably about 8 or 9 (an activity not encouraged by the parents) whilst sucking what may well have been a Spangle when I inhaled it and encountered the strange effect of suddenly not being able to take in air. I ran downstairs unable to speak or breathe, pointing at my windpipe and Dad whisked me upside down by my ankles, a swift slap to the back was administered, and out came the blockage.

Tee hee, funny what sweetie-related subjects evoke

Can you get packets of those square multicoloured and individually wrapped boiled sweets known as 'Spangles' any more? They were excellent but now I wonder how many dreadful artificial colours were added, although as far as I know me, my sis and two younger brothers didn't go hyperactive having consumed same. In fact I suspect during our teenage years most of us were hyper-slothful. Maybe food engineering hadn't achieved the dizzying heights attained today and they were naturally coloured.

Speaking of colours, in what a ghastly shade of pink this blog is swathed - I am not responsible, for I am the spog blog idiot sister where such matters are concerned. The colour brings to mind that gelatinous goo served up in battered aluminium jugs to accompany school dinner puddings. Just imagine the negative nutritional value of that, added to the health hazards which we are lead to believe are posed by aluminium. Amazing we're all still relatively healthy and alive really, all things considered.

Although what's the latest health statistic just released to confuse us simpering women (being a leathery old bat it doesn't concern me directly) - taking the contraceptive pill CAN protect you against cancer, but only if you take it for a little while. I mean, just what? Then I heard it could help one in two thousand women and I wanted to throw my toast at the radio. One could go stark staring nuts if one took all these medical pronouncements seriously. Another fine example: first it was proclaimed that you should exercise sufficiently to work up a sweat three times a week, then as long as you exercise gently and regularly that's just as good, then housework will do the trick, but not if you include dusting apparently, but now we're back to getting the old heart pumping and working up a sweat as the only way forward. I work up a sweat in frustrated rage most mornings at some article on the clock radio and that's guaranteed to eject me rapidly from my bed. Oh, and Thought for the Day really does make me want to spit bile and venom, while we're on the subject of throwing toast at the radio.

I'm not really Mrs Angry most of the time and I know I do go on, so now, I'll get my coat (which isn't pink).

This cry can now be legitimately heard from market sweet-stalls all across the UK, you will be pleased to hear.

Following attempts to ban Imperial measures altogether, the EU Commission has decided that actually, it's up to our Government to decide how to sell spogs, mark road signs, etc.

http://www.eubusiness.com/Consumer/imperial-measures.83/

So - good news for this rather nice web site selling sweets of all kinds - including our favourites of course! They won't have to change their name to "Approximately 113.398 grams of", just to satisfy some Brussels bureaucrat.

http://www.aquarterof.co.uk/spogs-jelly-buttons-p-449.html

Huzzah for England, I say.

Mr Spog, all his seraphim, cherubim and archangels have seen to it today that I have been so busy that I've not had time for an inaugural posting which was to have been wry, incisive and fearfully witty. I only post at work as that's the only place currently available to me with ready access to [free] broadband, and now I can't think of anything to post except for this sad piece.

Will try harder tomorrow folks.

I always promised myself that I'd never write a trivia blog - there are so many about that we hardly need another. However, in a moment of weakness (fuelled, it has to be said, by budget wine) at a family dinner, my sister and I agreed to collude in this.

Why spog?

Over a fine repast of roast pork and veg, followed by blackberry and apple crumble with custard, we were trying to remember the name for the aniseed-flavoured jellies coated in hundreds and thousands that you get in liquorice allsorts.

I am ashamed to say that someone dear to my heart (who I shall not name) actually resorted to googling at the dinner table to find the answer. And it is spogs!

Also known as horse cakes - which my sis knew and I didn't.