Townies are renowned for their antisocial behaviour: Smoking in the street, surly bus drivers, binge drinking, spitting out chewing gum et al. So it was rather reassuring this week to learn that one of our bad habits is at least 5,000 years old. A British student has discovered a piece of Neolithic chewing gum on an archaeological dig in western Finland. It appears that a lump of birch bark tar, with unmistakeable tooth marks, was spat out by one of our uncivilised fore-bears. Not that we've improved our habits in that time.
In Britain alone, more than 935 million packs of chewing gum are masticated each year. And it all seems to end up beneath our feet. More than £160 million a year is spent scraping and steaming the sticky patches off the pavement. There are some benefits to chewing gum. Smokers trying to quit may rely on it heavily (even in Singapore they've relaxed their ban on gum for this purpose). Some dentists believe the production of saliva helps battle plaque and bad breath. If you chewed gum for all your waking hours, you'd lose 11lb in a year. But surely in 2007 there's no excuse for Neanderthal behaviour - quit, don't spit.
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Chelsea Flower Show 2025: What else to do in SW3 if you're coming to the world's greatest flower showThere's more to Chelsea than just the Flower Show so we've rounded up some of the best places to eat, stay and shop.
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Uniquely unique? The Yorkshire grain silos transformed into a home that's a symphony in glass, steel and curvesAmid the beautiful countryside of North Yorkshire, on the edge of the Castle Howard Estate, The Silos is a property for which the word 'house' simply doesn't cut it. And that's not the only way in which it's made us throw out the dictionary.
