Tiny people, rule the world, and ocean waves

'Little people' is a tiny street art project by slinchaku. He creates tiny, little hand-painted people and leaves them on the streets of London, with photographs. I think this is ace, not alone because the images are very cute but it makes me think of seeing the city in a whole new way. The little people have an added vulnerability, or minute-ness - the city becomes massive, something huge to behold and negotiate with.

Slinchaku leaves the little people where he has placed them, to 'fend for themselves'. In his most recent photoset, I recognised the pub in the background. "That's the Perseverance on Lamb's Conduit Street!", I thought. So I trotted off to check it out. A long phonecall ("now go right, straight ahead, do you see the poles?") later to verify the location, and I had found the figurine. I took this photo, which does not do any justice to slinchaku's great work. The little person had fallen over, so I set her right and left her in situ.

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Steele & Clairwil have a blog called The Postcard Manifestos. They ask people to send postcards with a mainfesto, their reasons why they should rule the world. I sent a postcard recently. I wrote what I would change if I ruled the world. So if I ruled the world...

1. House prices would be abolished.
2. Exercise would be fun and mandatory.
3. People would dance more.
4. People would draw more.
5. Everything would work correctly.

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I love 'message in a bottle' stories. The idea of a bottle being thrown to sea and randomly ending up elsewhere is just ace. Artist Layla Curtis took this idea 2 years ago, throwing 50 bottles into the sea at Ramsgate. She hoped they would reach the south Pacific Ocean, but the bottles seem to have floundered, seeming to go only as far as the Netherlands.

So the news today that a bottle thrown into the North Sea by a young girl in Scotland has reached New Zealand is pretty amazing. Keely Reid threw a bottle into the waters of the Moray Firth, hoping that it would maybe reach Norway. She was completely surprised when a boy in New Zealand wrote to her saying he had found it. It reached there in 47 days, an astounding rate. "It is brilliant, this bottle travelled farther than I ever have," said Keely, which is rather poignant really.

Sadly, for Keely, experts say it's just not possible the bottle made it to New Zealand in such a short time because of global weather systems and ocean currents. "I don't like to shatter the poor girl's imaginings but there is no way it could happen," says an expert, pretty much does shattering such a wonderful idea.