Landlocked Mermaid

Final Friday Top Five! Shark B-Movies 5. Sharktopus Vs Pteracuda (2014) Photo from Wikipedia First of all, this film stars Robert Carradine , aka Lizzie McGuire 's dad. So, immediately, this film was in my good books. I grew up watching the Disney Channel. I have also watched the original Sharktopus and thought this was a fun direction to take the franchise in. It was silly, it was stupid; but it was everything I was expecting it to be, plus Lizzie McGuire's dad.  4. Frenzy (2018) Photo from IMDb This film was diabolically dumb. Literally, every choice these characters make is dumb. But it was fun dumb. I enjoyed calling all the "twists" and we even got one wrong! As the film is about adventure-shy Lindsey finding her inner badass, I felt like I could almost relate to her. But then she'd do something very dumb and that feeling would go. Still, it had a glorious back drop and more than one shark. Though, I have to ask. Does...

With the days getting longer and (hopefully) warmer, my feet are starting to itch for adventures. We have some diving trips coming up as part of our Sport Diver course, but there are other outdoor adventures my partner and I like to take. Over our relationship we have been on many, often pushing me well outside of my comfort zone. For some context, my comfort zone is: On the sofa, bowl of crisps, playing Final Fantasy IX.  Regardless, I am grateful for a new found appreciation of the great outdoors and look forward to getting my boots muddy this year. Adventures with the family. Photo by Charis, whilst on a bike! In my immediate area, and I mean literally out my back door, I can walk through the countryside. Being in Shropshire, we have lots of public footpaths which pass through our town. Some are down the canal, some are through fields, some are down by the river. We take advantage of all of them. The River Tern is just a stone's throw away from our house, which is...

Back in the summer, we had a chat with a friend of mine, Niamh, about her EPQ . She planned to make a sculpture highlighting the plastic pollution issue . The exhibition for her artwork was at the beginning of last month, so I thought it was high time we caught up and had a chat about it. Last time, we met in the picturesque village of Norton-in-Hales and went for a stroll in the summer sunshine. It was a bit grey and drizzly this time, so we met in the local cafe, The Hideout , for coffee and a catch up. Her final sculpture was a shark; frame shaped by chicken wire and filled with plastic bottles collected from the college campus. I bet you can guess my immediate response was 😍. She chose this design because it was the most striking of the ideas she'd put to paper. The shark is an iconic image and familiar to the public and she, quite rightly, argued that "scary attracts more attention". She wanted something recognisable and, taking inspiration from the famous ...

I love a good cookie. Millie's Cookies were always a treat, anyone remember when Iceland used to sell Millie's Cookie Dough? My absolute favourite cookie is white chocolate and raspberry. But as a "pretending to be vaguely healthy lunchbox snack", they aren't my best option. A cookie which is firmly in my top five, however, is the oatmeal and raisin cookie. Now that does fall into "pretending to be vaguely healthy lunchbox snack" category. Well, more so than white chocolate cookies anyway. I got the recipe from Live Well, Bake Often .  INGREDIENTS 125g Plain flour 1/2 tsp Ground cinnamon 1/2 tsp Bicarb of soda 1/4 tsp Salt 115g Butter 100g Brown sugar 50g Granulated sugar (I used caster sugar) 1 Large egg 1 tsp Vanilla extract 150g Rolled oats 150g Raisins METHOD Pre-heat your oven to 175C/350F and line your baking trays with baking sheets.* Mix the flour, cinnamon, bicarb, and salt into a bowl and set aside. In a n...

Ancient Seas Pteraspis Photo from Encyclopeadia Britannica Kingdom: Animalia  Class: Pteraspidomorphi Conservation Status: Extinct (EX) Era: Pragian epoch of Devonian Era, 398 - 416 million years ago WHAT WAS IT? The pteraspis was a heterostracan fish. This means it was a jawless vertebrate. It was a common during this era for fish to be jawless. The pteraspis was also a placoderm, which meant it was armoured. To summarise, this fish has a spine but no jaw, and is half armoured. Fish were weird 400 million years ago! However, it was one of the last species of both heterostracan and placoderm fish suggesting there was no longer a need for these evolutionary advantages. Both types of fish were extinct by the end of the Devonian Era. WHAT DID IT LOOK LIKE? Well, it wasn't the prettiest fish. Its front half was armour plated, which would have been used for protection against predation. It was streamlined and finless, but did have protrusions fro...

I am not very good at sewing. When doing one of those "easy" make your own bear kits, I managed to miss a section of the spine and give the poor thing spina bifida. I want to change this. As part of living better for the planet, I want to be able to make and fix rather than buy and throw. I so need to know how to sew. I already have a few projects in mind which demand more skill than I possess, so I thought I would start on something easy yet useful. Napkins. I have finally stopped threatening to make napkins and actually made some! I can sew a button back on and I can gracelessly sew up holes; but neither of these things use a sewing machine which is where my skill is sorely lacking. I hated textiles during school. Between The Grinch and the health and safety worksheets, I was terrified of sewing my hands into the machine. And our projects were nothing useful - a pencil case, a cube, and I don't think I ever finished my last project because I cert...

Marine Creature of the Month Nautilus Photo from Wikipedia Kingdom: Animalia Class: Cephalopoda Conservation Status: Vulnverable (VU) WHAT ARE THEY? Other than a great crochet project ? They are a type of cephalopod, the same class as octopuses and squids. Unlike octopuses which are known for their intelligence, Nautiluses have particularly poor memories. There are six species of nautilus and they have been around since the Triassic period, as in when there were dinosaurs about. Because of this, they are regarded as living fossils.  These creatures are shelled and have chambers within their shells. When born, they have four chambers but can end up with as many as thirty as an adult. These chambers contain a mixture of gas and sea water, and the nautilus uses these to control their bouyancy. When they want to be less bouyant, they create a chemical mixture in their chambers which pulls more water in, via osmosis. Ultimately this makes them denser than b...

So yesterday was my Birthday. I am a whole 28 years old. I had a lovely day, chilling out and not doing very much. Eating all the cakes - pancakes, vanilla cake, and shark cake. You read that right, shark cake! As decided last time on Sharks @ 7 & 3/4, the kids were going to make me a birthday cake. And make it shark themed. Because, well, just look at who they are making it for. This crazy old shark lady. So I gave them my flip about a week ago and let them loose in my mother's kitchen. With her permission and supervision, of course. Here is how they got on! The cake was delicious. This mermaid enjoyed it very much. (Also, Mumma said my fringe looks like a wave in the last photo!) Listening to: The sweet sounds of video editing. Urrrhhh--Krrrkk!

Bruce and Chum's Shark Spotlight Silky Sharks Shark Family: Requim sharks Shark Brothers: Spinner sharks, Galapogos sharks, Silvertip sharks Conservation Status: Vulnerable (VU) Photo from IUCN Red List Life Style Silky sharks are bold and inquisitive sharks which live in shallower waters, only going as deep as 200m (656ft).  They live in tropical waters, such as the Carribean, and are found in warm waters across the world. There, they eat squid, octopus, and crab. They hunt using their keen hearing and by diving into schools of fish with their mouths open. These sharks grow on average to 3m (9ft) long. Silky sharks are ovoviviparous, meaning they give birth to live pups in numbers between 15-20. As pups, they will stay on the reefs until they are big enough to fare in the open ocean. Photo from Project AWARE Facts Silky sharks are so called for their denticles are tightly packed and overlay, giving them a smoother texture...