Category Archives: Good
Toys – Get Educated
What constitutes educational toys? When you’re young it seems parents and relatives and governments are all very eager to ensure that kids get plenty of stimulating toys. But when you’re a nipper, it is surely true to say that everything is an educational toy. Every little thing that happens is a learning experience; from being able to touch your toes to learning that if you cry you’ll be fed.
But it has to be admitted that some toys develop these skills more rapidly – special awareness can be improved by giving your child a square-peg round-hole style toy, for example. Books can of course help develop reading skills – one of the most important skills of all. Equally, mathematics skills essential for being fully equipped for the future adult life – and there are plenty of electronic devices that can help with this.
But the truth is, any kind of stimulation will help a child learn the educational and social skills they need to progress.
Booze is Good for You
For anyone who’d been there, there is nothing more dull than the north of France. It’s all flat and only serves to remind us how suitable flat land is for mass trench warfare. But with this in mind, it is surprising perhaps to remind ourselves that the north of France gave us Champagne.
Champagne got a name for itself because of its association with French royalty. Ever since then people have associated the drink with wealth – and so Champagne remains one of the most expensive drinks you can buy. Another reason why it so expensive is that it is generally only made in the Champagne region of France.
But how does it get all fizzy? Surely they couldn’t have carbonated wine way back in the reign of Louis XIV? Right? Wrong! They could! How? They used a process of secondary fermentation that I’m not too familiar with. Anyway, the important point is that they did it, a few hundred years before Mr. Coca J. Cola did it.
So there we are – northern France ain’t so bad after all. Du Pan, Du Vin and of course some unnamed brand of cheese.
Champagne is great, but if you want to combine getting smashed with healthiness – then you would be better advised to go for the red version. Good red wine can help scour your cheese-lined arteries. But if you don’t have any handy, just use Champagne instead.
No Osteopathy for Old Pops
My dad, eh, been out and about chopping trees down all his life. He’s an active sort of guy, likes using saws and hammers and stuff – and so when he was presented with opportunity to remove the (very heavy) cover of his well (he lived up in the hills at this point) he jumped at the chance. Much to his surprise, he did his back in. He really needed to see an osteopath.
I found this out when I went to visit him in Whitley Bay (he was visiting his parents – my grandparents – and so was I, that’s why I was there) and he got out of his old green Rover (it’s not green anymore – red) and he was bent double – such was the incident involving the well cover.
As he explained his error around the plates of boiled chicken that his mum had prepared, I suggested he needed to go and see an osteopath. He thought this was a shit idea, being the man of the hills that he was.
Nowadays he’s modified his thoughts on osteopathy, living as he does away from the windy hills and nasty well covers. Now he lives in a nice semi in Edinburgh, with central heating and TV and a nice nearby corner shop selling discount tins of food (because they’re largely out of date). He hasn’t encountered anymore wells and stands straight as a rod.
Why Would I Get My Web Design Done In Essex?
Web design has become big business, and while there are many places around the world where you can get cheap web design, most British based companies still choose to go with a home grown web service. Some companies believe that only companies based in London are able to provide the level of service required, but a middle ground might be getting more provincial web design. Essex is a good example of this.
The middle ground, in this case, is as good if not better than the London, which is jam packed with web design and SEO services. The beauty, some say, of choosing somewhere like Essex for your web design needs is that it is much cheaper than somewhere like London. Additionally, if you live in Essex, which 1.7 million people do, then you would benefit from being more closely located to your web design provider than might otherwise be the case. There is also the argument that you get a more down to Earth service from businesses outside London – something that only experience can confirm.
Even in terms of companies in London itself choosing firms in Essex to do their web design, when you understand that it only takes one hour to get from London to Colchester by train – it becomes less of a problem.
The Time When I Tried To Buy Holiday Home Insurance
I went to the holiday home insurance company and tried to get insured. “What kind of property do you want to insure, sir?” the girl behind the holiday home insurance counter asked politely.
“well I said, I it’s quite modest, not too big at all.”
“Is it a cottage sir?” she asked.
“No, it’s not, it’s a bit smaller than that actually. “
“And what items do you want to cover inside the tent sir?” she asked.
“Well, I’ve got a wind-up radio and torch, and er let me think, well, I’ve got a stove” I said.
“Is that all sir? Are you sure you need to get all that ensured?” she enquired.
“Yes, yes definitely I said”
She continued quizzing me: “Well, ok, going back to the property itself. Is it situated in a bad area, is there much crime around?”
“No, no there’s very little crime around, I said – in fact there isn’t anyone around at all. I don’t think there’s much crime around. You only get cows where I am.”
The girl laughed politely, but looked a little confused.
“How much would you value the property for sir?”
“Well I think it cost around 65 when I bought it.”
She looked a little surprised “65 thousand, sir, that must have been a few years ago?”
“No, I mean it was £65.” I stated.
“Sir, you live in a tent, don’t you?”
“Why yes, what did you think I lived in?”
Underfloor Cooling
I’m not sure if my bedroom has underfloor heating. Unless I’m very much mistaken, it has the exact opposite of this superb Roman invention. It is above a car port, which in simple terms means that it is above nothing.
I have underfloor cooling. This would be good if I lived in downtown Sahara Desert, but it isn’t so good in the rolling flatness that is Essexshire. Gently undulating at between 10m and 10.2m above sea level, Essex is an ideal place to catch a chill. Although it is pretty dry, which means one is confronted with lots of nothing-happening-here cloud, not rain, nuffin.
Well sometimes it rains like Bangkok in monsoon season, rivers of er water cascading the Hill of the North, filling the town’s rivers to their brim.
Would like some underfloor heating now, I can tell you. The winter time is a season to spend indoors, away from the darkness and the cold.
Norwich For Churches and Large Multi Nationals
I visited Norwich recently, a place I’d once been to for an interview with a large multi-national. The interview was by and large a colossal failure, but it interested me, on my recreational return, to note that there was an underlying dislike of all things Norwich.
It is so easy to have one’s impression of a place be coloured by one event; everyone in Norwich is a patronising corporate ass wipe, right? Wrong, of course, as my visit demonstrated. It is actually one of the prettiest cities in England, I would say, although it was slightly let down by the fact that my reasonably priced, modern, cosy hotel room was directly above a Metallica tribute band in the pub below.
It has a lot of churches, does Norwich, and a lot of shops. I was accosted, in Norwich Cathedral, by a man who gave me the hard sell on how much it costs to keep the place running. He said it cost £3725 per day to keep it open. Personally, the 12 million pound visitor centre next door was something to do with the huge running costs. It was pretty nice inside however, with loads of old stuff, tombstones and the like. I appreciated the place a lot, and my thoughts were with those hard core fundraisers as I dropped 20p into the donations box.
Superb Pieces of Product Design That Make Life Easier
Chairs. Without chairs, life would be literally like sitting on the floor. We’d all be in our little air-conditioned offices sitting on bean bags, trying to reach our PCs on the table. In basic terms, it’s a good thing we have chairs. Wicked product design.
Cups. Imagine trying to have a cup of coffee without a cup? You’d literally be pouring boiling coffee into your cupped hands, which means rather than a pleasant caffeine rush each time you made coffee – you’d have to immediately go to Accident and Emergency and get bandaged up. See? Cups are really great, aren’t they?
People. Imagine trying to have a conversation with someone when there literally aren’t any people. The situation would only be exacerbated by the fact that you yourself wouldn’t exist, so you would have the first building block of a conversation because you wouldn’t be there. Yeah?
The BBC. Imagine going home after a long day at the office and attempting to watch Eastenders without the invention of the BBC? It just wouldn’t happen. You’d have 17.5 million soap addicts just staring at the corners of their living rooms, making half-hearted comments about what inclement weather we’re having. The BBC is a remarkable piece of product design.
Land. If no one had gone to the trouble of making land, we’d all be literally floating around in a rather unimpressive dead way. Just imagine trying to drive cars around and avoid bailiffs without good old land propping your little legs up. Chairs, cups, people, BBC, Land – thank goodness, eh?
Juche Girl: Possibly The Funniest Blog In The World?
Tell me I’m not allowed to know something, and I want to know it NOW, which is perhaps why I’ve long been fascinated (borderline obsessed) with North Korea and its Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il.
Shrouded in secrecy, the platform-shoe-wearing bouffant-haired old alcoholic would have you believe that a double rainbow and bright star graced the sky to mark his birth.
Oh, and he’s credited with writing fantastic operas and basically being the best person in the world at everything.
But funnier than any propaganda spun from Pyongyang is the brilliant blog by ‘Juche Girl’ which, devastatingly, I’ve only just discovered (http://juchegirl.blogspot.com).
At first, I assumed the blog was a parody of the kind of mind control that goes on in the secretive state. It’s hard to figure out if this is the case, or if the mystery ‘Juche Girl’ is some attempt by the DPRK to incite hate against the West.
Whatever it is, it’s brilliant for its sheer uncouth unsophistication.
Posts are mostly structured around Juche Girl’s somewhat incestuous interactions with her brother, and between gushings about Kim Jong Il’s good looks, (‘The Dear Leader is so handsome!’) she comes out with some brilliant comedy posts…
The devastatingly handsome Kim Jong Il
“My brother who is very smart show me picture of Bush who pick up handicap people in wheelchair and toss them on the ground for laughing like maniac with the vampire Cheney,” Juche Girl advises earnestly.
And…
“My brother who is very smart praised me with a hug but he made warning to me that in US people are so poor that they can’t have children of their own and they drown all the new babies all the time.”
And my personal succinct-and-to-the-point favourite: “Bush is criminal ugly monster who eat little cats and world children eardrums.”
I’m sorry, world children eardrums?
Now, I’m sure that the West’s insistence that the Dear Leader is involved in all manner of atrocities, from kidnap to international terrorism, have some kind of founding.
I’m even surer that Bush in his time has also done his fair share of wrong to ignite hate from the rest of the world… but surely not even a war mongering right-wing fantasist eats eardrums?
A New Route To Work
Routine makes the world go round. Without routine, we probably wouldn’t enjoy the kind of safe, organised life we enjoy in this country. But the problem is that routine is boring. But boredom is the price we pay for safety.
Of course, there are ways around this sense of routine. Even if you have to be in a job from 9 to 5, there are ways to spice things up. Many people find the UK a fairly boring place to be, but I think you have to embrace the low down grittiness of the place, and avoiding routine wherever possible.
You might start by taking a new route to work. I know myself I see the same people walking the same route – but today I decided to go a different way. I cut through the park instead of the usual route, and as a result didn’t have to constantly breath in fumes from cars, buses and motorcycles.
A good idea is to try and find as many different routes to work as possible; my walk is 35 minutes, so there must a great deal of different variations to the walk. And for the return journey, why not try a different pub each night on the way back?
