I’m sure that many readers will remember the days when petrol stations had attendants that put the petrol into the tank for you – before the days when “self service” became the modern way of filling up.

Well, perhaps we are going to return to that kind of service. I’ve been fascinated today by a video of a petrol station in the Netherlands, that uses a robot arm to fill up the cars.

The robot knows from the type of car how to open the petrol cap, and presumably whether or not to put diesel in. I wonder how it copes with bio-ethanol?

It looked rather slow at the moment, so I guess the queues at the petrol station near here would just get longer. I also didn’t see anywhere to pay for the petrol – does the robot arm swipe your credit card as well?

As fascinating as it is, I’m still not too sure what to make of it all. It may be nice not to have to get out of your car, but it doesn’t help the unemployment figures!

If the rats didn’t put you off, then you might like to read more about Thailand.

In which case, try the Lonely Planet Guide to Thailand:

It has to be said, that although I haven’t tried these things myself, I’ve read and seen quite a bit about different animals being eaten in other parts of the world.

Being a fan of Bolivia, I’ve heard a lot about cuy, or guinea pigs, even though I never saw them offered for sale during my time there.

I also vividly remember Michael Palin on this 80 days trip travelling through China and eating snake.

But today an article caught my eye, that I just had to write about: eating rats.

It’s the sort of thing that I normally associate with starvation – eating rats as a last resort.  The siege of Stalingrad comes to mind.

So why is a popular tourist destination like Thailand suddenly serving up so many of the things?  The article doesn’t really offer much of an answer to that question – but there must be one.  How else could someone sell 100kg of rat meat in one day?  Come to think of it, that must be a large pile of rats to start off with.

They may say that it tastes better than chicken, but at the moment I’d rather not find out.