A couple of weeks ago my brother, who has been out working in Canada for the past year, came back to visit. To keep him mobile I rustled up some temporary car insurance so he would be covered for the duration of his stay.

Being something of a frugal monkey I kept it to the basics and used only the minimum required by the law. Big mistake.

Sod’s law kicked seamless into effect. Sure enough the young lad had an accident. While stopped at a red light he was hit by an uninsured driver. He was fine, but the car was looking distinctly poorly.

Never mind, I thought, a bit of paper work and Bob would indeed be my uncle. How wrong can one man be? After months of delay they finally came back with this disappointing reply: because I kept costs to the minimum I was not covered in this particular instance.

I’m still fighting my corner, but a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach makes me think they’ve covered themselves somewhere down the line. It looks like I’m going to be in for a hefty repairs bill soon enough.

The moral of the story? Well, that’s obvious. Sometimes the cheapest temporary car insurance isn’t the best.

See, there are loads of ways to handle a breakup: there’s pining for the girl, there’s getting drunk all the time and walking through town at 3am with a bunch of people you don’t know (but who all have really cool hair) and singing ‘The Passenger’ at the top of your voice, there’s fighting her new beau, there’s sleeping with her friends, there’s loads of things. When it came to my friends’ situation though, we decided that we had to get a little meaner than that.

Their place was quite expensive and he doesn’t have the greatest job in the world, and she left in a hurry, leaving a load of her stuff behind. Do you sell everything of hers in a situation like that before she comes back? No, but there’s nothing wrong with making her think that, or, more accurately, think the place was burgled. The day before she came back to the old flat to pick her stuff up, we hired some storage in Ipswich (it’s a flippin’ huge room) and loaded everything into it.

When I say everything, I mean everything. Every. Single. Thing in that flat went into the van (it took three trips) and went into storage in Ipswich. The look on her face when she turned up was priceless; probably as good as my friends’ was when she dumped him for his mate.

The ultimate plan isn’t certain – maybe we’ll take it out of storage; Ipswich has plenty of places we could sell her stuff – or maybe we’ll just gradually post it back to her. The possibilities are endless.

Ultimately, nothing was resolved by this, but it made him feel better and in a situation like this, that’s the most important thing.

It all adds to the impression that you can find a short cut to literally any expertise just by typing a few words into a search engine. It prevails in all walks of life. Even leading MPs have been known to find their information on Wikipedia.

So exhibition stand designers might feel a trifle miffed to hear that companies believe they can simply learn the tricks of the trade on the web and who can blame them? If their clients start to think they can do the work themselves, life will get ever so difficult.

In a world in which we’re all looking to cut costs, it can be tempting to complete the project in-house, but be warned – you do so at your own risk. Make a bad impression now and future business could slip through your fingers.

Professional exhibition stand designers give you that x-factor that could prove vital in clinching a deal. It might cost a bit more but if they do their job correctly your business can reap the rewards.

If you’re not a registered citizen you can’t get anything – or rather your mum and dad cannot get anything for you. Who’s ever been to school without a name? You see, you need a name to get an education.

But don’t worry, if you’re reading this and you don’t have a name, just make one up for yourself. No one will know. There are so many baby names (grown up names?) available you really are spoilt for choice. There are lots of websites that can help you come up with a good name too. You can even change your name if you don’t like the one you’ve been lumbered with.

Family Members; One of the first option is to name your future child as the same as you or your partner or sometimes yours or your partners parents.  This option that used to be one of the baby names preference, now it is decreasing in the recent decades.

Famous People;  another common option is to pick up baby names from one of the famous characters of your favourite movie, TV series or program, or any celebrity that take the attention of the parents.

Historic Names; Sometimes people just prefer to go through history in search of epic and biblical names that could reflect the personality and character of their future son.

Weird Baby Names; In special cases, parents decide to go for the most weird and unusual baby names ever heard. I am talking about baby names taken from brands, expressions and all sort of strange terms that sometimes appear on magazines or TV.

If you are thinking about different baby names just have in mind how your future son will feel when he grows. Don’t let you go by fashion or trendy names of the moment, just have in mind that when your son will be a grownup, many things that were cool and interesting at that moment they will not be anymore.

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.

What are these? These are little loans that are guaranteed by someone else. That other person, as you may have guessed, needs to have an exemplary credit rating. If they do, then they can risk everything for you and your stupid Lego house; in this case, me and my stupid Lego house.

And they did. It was my great uncle Stavros from Istanbul; he’s made his money trading coloured silks, shipping them in from Mesopotamia. Anyway, he said he would be my guarantor, as he really liked Lego.

Turns out I never managed to make any repayments and old Uncle Stavros had to foot the bill. Unfortunately, I had signed an agreement with Stavros saying that if i defaulted I would still have to pay him back over time.

So my Lego house (yeah I did build it, yes it was shit) was repossessed by bailiffs – turned out dismantling a Lego door isn’t breaking and entering.

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.

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.

Now, if I’m not very much mistaken, all the baddies in the Indiana Jones film were nasty Nazis. But what had those Danish weirdos at The Lego Company done? Instead of putting everyone’s favourite facist symbol – the swastika – on the side of the plane, they decided to put CCCP instead. Now, I can understand they don’t really want the symbol of the most evil regime of all time sold to 8 year olds across the world – but what are they suggesting by putting the CCCP on instead?

OK, let’s all take a quick look at the history books (oh, I mean Wikipedia) and yes, we discover that the CCCP was not entirely unconnected to the 2nd biggest act of genocide of all time. Mao Tse-Tung comes first, with the Nazis making third place. In some sets they had the Luftwaffe symbol, while others had just letters. But one definitely had the CCCP.

So in Legoland, Indy battles Nazis, Soviets and random letter empires?

I think Lego should be taking a lead on representing reality to children. You can’t even get more than one Lego man in a saloon car, that’s surely not right?