A friend is re-doing her kitchen and wants to incorporate an interesting splashback to replace the simple square, coloured tiles she has. So I did a bit of hunting around for some off-piste ideas...

Barbecues and beach trips will be off the agenda this Bank Holiday as sub-zero temperatures and even some snow are set to keep people at home.

It is always easy to blame the weather. While most stocks on the Footsie were heating up yesterday, Kingfisher ended up looking rather soggy amid warnings that the recent downpours may result in the retailer's trading update at the end of the month turning out to be a bit of a damp squib.

Emily Jenkinson picks up some top tips for DIY-ers at the new decorating course for Homebase staff

When buying motor insurance, you need to look at all the fees and charges, not just the quote price.

Back before the folk revival of the Sixties, John Jacob Niles was the repository of an American folk tradition rooted not in the topical-song movement of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, but an older, stranger world traceable to the ballads of the British Isles brought over by early settlers.

For the first time in 35 years, the Pulitzer Prize board has announced there's no fiction prize for 2012. US publishers are in uproar: the prize money is nugatory ($10,000) but the boost to sales incalculable. It's as if the board announced there's no Christmas this year.

Just past the halfway mark in Timothy Mo's seventh novel, his heroine – a strapping Bangkok ladyboy who has joined a company of bloodthirsty Islamist warriors – wanders through a serene orchard on an island close to Singapore. Snooky's jihadi platoon (sanook = fun in Thai) has halted for a brief rest en route to help the insurgent Moros of the Philippines as fellow holy warriors. She (and for all the unwanted testosterone that jungle warfare brings, Snooky's chosen pronoun never wavers) samples the fruit of the ebony tree. It is not dark and dense like the wood, but pale, delicate and enigmatic: "tart and sweet in the same mouthful, soft but crunchy... If marzipan dormice grew on trees... they would taste like this". If this moment smacks of Eden, and forbidden fruit, it also helps initiate Snooky into the mysteries of the jihadi pursuit, where darkness yields to light, stark contradictions resolve themselves, and chaste perfection grows from the crooked timber of humanity.

"When I tell people I crotchet animals they immediately lose interest," says Leicestershire-based artist Shauna Richardson. But in her hands, the quaint and grannyish technique of crochet is in no way dull. She calls her craft "crochetdermy", a mashing of words that neatly describes the knitting of life-size animal heads that can be mounted on walls.

Helmet-mounted HD cameras are capable of recording riders'face-on thrills, which is why extreme sports fans love them. Will Coldwell gets a heads up

They're capable of recording your every move. Will Coldwell gets a high-def heads-up.

Rant

B&Q owner Kingfisher hailed the success of its four-year turnaround today after seeing profits more than double to £807 million over the period.

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