In 1991, just out of college, I bought a copy of Francis Ponge's 'Le Parti Pris des Choses'. Ponge, one of the signatories of the 'Surrealist Manifesto', is usually described as a "poet" – yet the label doesn't quite fit. For a start, he wrote in prose. Strange prose, it must be said: short paragraphs so rich with metaphor and all the tricks of rhetoric (apostrophe, the interrogative, declamatory exhortations such as "Let us consider...") that, as with the best poems, we're disoriented from the start by being immersed in language and nothing but language, with all its quicksand-like shiftiness, its sleights of hand, its endless self-adjustments and self-contradictions. Ponge even made a term up for his hybrid form, naming one of his collections 'Proêmes'.

With its circular jaw armed with an array of fearsome teeth, it cruised the prehistoric seas as one of the top marine predators of its day.

AN EXTINCT species of mayfly has achieved a form of immortality by becoming trapped for 25 million years in amber.

If you want to order an oyster cracker you can get one at a special price for IoS readers of pounds 8.99 (p&p included), from Rossmore Oysters, Carrigtwohill, County Cork, tel: 00 353 2188 3248. You can order oysters by mail from Loch Fyne Smokehouse, Clachan Ardkinglas, Cairndow, Argyllshire PA26 BBH, tel: 01499 600217. Johnny Noble, who grows them, trains his oysters to survive many days out of water, thus guaranteeing freshness when they arrive in their attractive wooden punnets.