This weekend behemoth produce will be rolled out at the UK National Giant Vegetables Championships. I'm not sure anything from my garden could be a contender. But if they ever hold a National Mini Veg Competition I could put my carrots forward.

Why people choose to grow giant veg is a bit of a mystery to me, but I guess that's how supermarket worshippers feel about those of us putting in months of effort to grow a tenner's worth of veggies for ourselves.

This programme about the pursuit to be crowned Giant Veg King (you'll notice a distinct lack of women growers, who are obviously too busy running the world) gives a brilliant insight into the awesome lengths these gardeners will go to. I can't decide which of them is my favourite, they're all so fantastic.

There's nowt so queer as folk.

I had a good giggle reading through research by the Chewing Gum Action Group (yes, they really do exist) into the different personalities of gum droppers. They split them into four groups and it reads a bit like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

There are: The Show Offs (who make a game out of kicking their gum way), The Careless (who don't care about littering), The Guilty (who know littering is wrong but find ways to justify it) and The Revolted (who want to get rid of old gum as quickly as they can).

If you recognise yourself amongst these categories you might want to change your ways. If you're caught littering with gum in Coventry you'll be fined £80 - and will probably die of embarrassment (unless you're one of The Careless). We'll be checking back with them to find out whether the chewing gum clamp-down has the desired effect or if Coventry is destined to be clad in gum forever more.

London's first roadside bicycle repair scheme was launched today and I'd like to think it's a little something like this...

SE1-based Druid Cycles has a new team of trained mechanics with bike maintenance kits making their way round the capital - on bikes, naturally - repairing punctures and fixing skewiff brakes.

I can already hear the sneers from seasoned cyclists asking, "why can't people fix their own punctures?" But bike maintenance was one of the few dark clouds that hung over cycling for me before I got my bike and while I'm just about confident enough to fix a puncture at home now, I'm still more likely to just walk my bike home if I get lumbered with a problem while out and about. So if these guys encourage more people to give cycling a go, I think they're doing a top job.

"Wherever bicycles are broken or menaced by international communism, bicycle repairman is ready!"

A new campaign is urging Coventry to go meat-free on Mondays. And there's plenty of evidence telling us it would make us both greener and healthier.

The idea has been taken up city-wide in Ghent, while Belgium and Manchester have made school dinners meat-free on Mondays.

But by the looks of some of the comments from readers, Coventry might take a little more persuading.

But I love vegetables too and I can't stand them being sidelined and made to play a 'bit part' in every meal. Sometimes they deserve to be cast in the starring role.

So Meat-Free Monday makes sense to me. But I'm intrigued to find that for a lot of people not only does it not make sense, it actually upsets or offends them.

None of us get shirty when health professionals are pushing us to eat 5-a-day, so what is it about meat that makes us feel so defensive?

TO the raft of risks that stop children cycling independently (heavy traffic, stranger danger, etc.) we can now add the threat of a visit from social services.

That's what faces a couple who have encouraged their nippers, aged five and eight, to cycle one mile to school along the pavements of Dulwich.

Having weighed up the potential pros and cons of their kiddies journeying to school alone, Gillian and Oliver Schonrock decided the benefits were so great they outweighed the potential risks.

The ten-minute journey consists of cycling on wide pavements through the leafy suburb and, half-way there, crossing a road with the help of a lollipop lady.

But when the school got wind of the Schonrocks' travel plan, the head teacher called them in to explain that under current protocol the school has a duty of care for children on their way to and from the building and that the parents must either supervise the journey or be reported to social services.

This isn't the first time schools have frowned on cycling children.

Those of us with any sense of perspective know there isn't a paedophile lurking in every bush, nor a child catcher on every corner.

The major danger on the journey to school is the school-run traffic itself. So surely schools should be tackling congestion rather than berating people who are cutting it.

Al Jazeera explain how it happened...

BBC explain the extent of the slick...

CBS explain why the oil was set on fire...

And the typically dramatic MSNBC reckons a series of simple switches could have prevented the spill but Bush/Cheney blocked a bill that would have made the switches a requirement...