Grasshopper hell

We get these huge grasshoppers in Crete. From this photo you can't get a true idea of their scale, but they are about the size of a house. Well, it certainly seems that way when they are flying right into your face.

For some reason, rather like cats that can immediately pick out the person in a crowd who doesn't like cats, or geese, who can home in on Claire from a range of 250 metres, whenever we see one it almost instantly leaps onto Claire.

This one landed on our balcony on Saturday, and we had to abandon the gardening and baton down the hatches before it spotted her.

Comments

Hanwell has recently become the home to some 6 legged, shiney black beasts which I'm guessing are young stag beetles. Not quite as scary as the grasshoppers but quite exciting for West London.

On another quite separate matter, can you inform the public just who is being supported by the Lemon Tree editorial team in the World Cup final?

[Martin Belam]

Well Claire loves Thierry "face-clutcher" Henry so she will be France all the way. Although in the semi-final if Portugal had bought Nuno Gomes onto the pitch she would have swapped sides in an instant.

I'm all for Italy myself - I don't want to see France add a second star to their shirt within eight years of adding the first, when we English have taken 40 years not to add a second one.

The ex-Mayor will be here for the final - and it is too close to call with him. All I've got so far was that once we got to the semi-final stage he couldn't bear to support *any* of the 4 remaining teams!