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jamiejahOffline
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Post  Posted: Mar 22, 2005 - 09:01 PM  Reply with quote  Back to top
Post subject: another day in sunny scotland happy happy

EASTER concert organisers want thousands of butterflies to help recreate a famous rock and roll moment.

The hunt is on for 5000 early season butterflies to help make a free concert by the Counterfeit Stones even more authentic.

The show is being held as part of the Edinburgh Easter Festival’s Sunday Funday in Princes Street Gardens this weekend.

The tribute band wants to use the butterflies to recreate the Rolling Stones’ legendary Hyde Park appearance, when they released thousands of the insects.

Lead singer Nick Dagger (Steve Elson) said: "This Easter is on a wing - and a prayer. I am hoping that Edinburgh Zoo can help the gig fly. It might be a little bit early in the season to get hold of so many.

"We want to emulate the Hyde Park appearance when Jagger released thousands above the crowd - or tried to anyway."

The free open-air concert is the climax of this year’s Sunday Funday, which features the world’s biggest free Easter Egg Hunt, food events, maypole dancing and Victorian dancing.
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Post  Posted: Mar 22, 2005 - 09:06 PM  Reply with quote  Back to top

It's back to school for children's health

JENNIFER VEITCH

I MUST have been about six years old when I was prodded sharply in the ribs by a rather menacing dinner lady who then proceeded to force me to eat sponge pudding smothered in thick, lumpy, revolting custard.

I was learning the hard way that school meals could be a traumatic experience, and I haven’t been able to touch custard since.

I didn’t always like the school food, but I do remember that it always seem home-cooked and pretty much wholesome.

The meals might have been stodgy favourites like mince and tatties or beef olives (yuk), but they were usually served with vegetables - and at least kids of my generation weren’t being brought up on nothing but chips and meat which had been processed to the point that you could no longer tell which animal it used to be a part of.

Perhaps the rot set in when Mrs Thatcher snatched away the free milk (nice when ice-cold in winter, but disgusting in summer), but to say that things have changed in the past couple of decades is a gross understatement.

And if you’ve been watching Jamie’s School Dinners over the last few weeks, you may have been shocked by how Jamie Oliver’s efforts to get kids to eat healthy, nutritious meals resulted in children throwing tantrums rather than give up their sugar-laden packed lunches.

In the last programme, one little boy ate one mouthful of the healthy dinner and promptly spewed it back up again.

Some of the health problems, either physical or behavioural, that these children have are absolutely heartbreaking and it shouldn’t have taken the efforts of a celebrity chef to bring them to the attention of the education authorities and the Government. But it has.

So I was dismayed, but not entirely surprised, to read this week that education inspectors are to be tasked with assessing the quality of school dinners as part of a drive by the Executive to improve children’s diets.

It’s been reported that canteen food at a third of primary and secondary schools will be checked for its nutritional value over the next three years.

Excuse me, but hasn’t anyone been monitoring this already? Does this mean that schools have had a free rein to serve up any old slop so long as it has come in on budget and we don’t spend more than a few measly pence a meal?

As Nick Nairn, another celebrity chef who has also campaigned on school meals, commented: "Inspecting school meals is such an obvious thing, I’m surprised it’s not happening already." Well, exactly.

But what is perhaps even more worrying is that some of the new criteria which school canteens will have to meet are frighteningly basic, and have been part of healthy-eating messages churned out by government-funded campaigns for years.

For example, advice on grilling instead of frying, banning fizzy drinks because they rot children’s teeth and including at least two portions of fruit and one of veg a day.

But even once the inspections start, and the standards of school dinners do improve, the scale of the task is enormous - public health experts are already warning that it may not be enough because so many kids head for the local chippy at lunchtime.

This may well be true - the discounts offered by some chip-shops and takeaways for school pupils are going to make the task harder, and, as Jamie’s School Dinners has shown, parents also need to be brought on board if children’s diets and health are to improve.

But that doesn’t change the fact that schools need to take the lead - especially since the poorest children who receive free dinners will be the most likely to eat, and benefit from, school meals.

If the Executive is serious about improving youngsters’ health, ministers are going to have to put a hell of a lot more of our money where children’s mouths are.

Twin beds are twice as nice when visiting land of Nod

SO, researchers have found that women are losing more sleep than men.

Females are more than twice as likely to lie awake worrying while their partners drift off to the land of Nod with a smile on their face.

Scientists at Surrey University also found that nearly double the number of women had their sleep disturbed by their partner than men. If it’s any help to their research, I can certainly vouch for their results.

My other half thinks nothing of waking me up in the middle of the night if he’s been out "for a couple of pints" after a football match which he seems to forget I know ended at 4.45 in the afternoon, or switching on the lights when coming to bed after watching (yes, you’ve guessed it) Match of the Day.

And despite having purchased a bigger-than-average bed, I’m still woken up whenever he suddenly twirls round in his sleep and plants a razor-sharp elbow in the middle of my back.

Such is my desire for a good night’s kip that I was secretly delighted when we went on a weekend break recently and discovered the hotel had made an error in the booking.

His face fell when he saw the twin beds. . . but I had the deepest and most refreshing sleep I’d had for ages.

I should be so lucky

A MALE friend of mine used to muse wistfully about the attractiveness of a certain diminutive Australian songstress. "Mmm, Kylie, she’s a pocket Venus . . ."

But even he might have been surprised to learn that Kylie’s waist measurement has just been reported to be a teensy-weensy 16 inches.

OK, so this figure was achieved with the aid of a corset as she kicked off her world tour at the weekend, but I’m still impressed - particularly by the fact it didn’t cause her to pass out on stage.

And even better, this may be the waist-loss solution I’ve been looking for to shift six inches of flab.

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GC
The Ginger Prince


Joined: Dec 01, 2003
Posts: 21544

Post  Posted: Mar 22, 2005 - 09:12 PM  Reply with quote  Back to top

this is more like it

_________________
You turned on the lights, Fuelled U boats by night, That's how you repay us, It's time to go home.
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jamiejahOffline
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Post  Posted: Mar 22, 2005 - 09:31 PM  Reply with quote  Back to top

these stones bhoys must be stoned oot there nuts

5000 buterflies in edinbra,nae chance
nice idea though

still i suppose some people still have a wee supply of these mushrooms that grow in the farmers field at curry jusy behindormiston house
take a bus 32

oops sorry ranting on there

aye lovely here comes the sun little darling ,here comes the sun
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