Weddings

Well this came about because of the wedding I attended over the weekend. It’s not going to be about the wedding, or the people there it’s more about the etiquette involved and the idea came to me, as I was stooped over my plate choking on my food as a fellow guest remarked “I used the wrong fork” followed by her husband wiping his mouth from the profiteroles saying “I’ve done a brown dirty”

Both me and him were getting  a little bit carried away and the table  that I was at was mainly built up of theatre folk laughing and being the loudest. The table plans had been allocated to seat particular people, so we were built up of ten all from the theatre and all friends, there was one of six who were family, and a table of four etc etc. Some one asked who these four people were and without thinking I blurted out “They just came for the Sunday Lunch like they do every week” Luckily no one heard.

So my point is this, I have never been to a wedding really with my parents, and have only just started to attend these excuses to get pissed, the question is how do you learn the rules, and by god there are lots of rules.

These are just some of them.

• When leaving the church or the location of the ceremony, you have to wait for the row in front to file out first, and these people have to wait for the rows in front of them. Under no circumstances should you walk up the aisle before the groom and bride.
• Never speak after the line “does any one here present know of any reason why these people should not be joined….” People who insist on listening to the football on the radio should take note of this rule. Your friend may be no longer if your team scores a goal and you scream ‘Yes’
• You should always clap. Never cheer when the groom kisses the bride for the first time. Nor should you yell “Give her one from me” or  “Get in their my son” especially if you are the father of the groom.
• Stand up when the groom and bride enter the room.
• Shake the grooms hand and congratulate him. Give the Bride a friendly hug, no more than three seconds as any longer may be frowned upon and lead to talk.
• Always take the glass of champagne even if you don’t drink it as there may be some one who needs to get pissed out of their brain and may want more of the fizzy stuff to forgot what he missed out on. But please make sure that they have done the hugging and shaking of hands before there trollied.
• Remember to eat from out to in when it comes to you cutlery (please use the cutlery to eat with, not eat the cutlery). Also remember to pour water as you will look more sophisticated. Little note here if you are to have red wine, then use the smaller wine glass for water, and if you’re drinking white then use the larger glass.
• Always listen to the speeches and clap in the right places. Always cheer when the groom stands and says “My wife and I”
• Get pissed and pull the bridesmaid, or the brides mother
• On the photos, when the photographer tells you that you can chuck your confetti then please make sure it is as cans of beans and pots are not appreciated.
• Always leave the bride and groom on the dance floor, watching them dance by themselves for as long as possible.

 

If you follow these simple rules then as a guest you will have a wonderful day, without upsetting anyone. Before I go I will leave you with a Father of the Brides speech which I found to be quite amusing at a recent wedding I attended in the summer. This is the short version but it gives you an idea of the joke.

A man, his wife and his mother-in-law went on vacation to the Holy Land. While they were there, the mother-in-law passed away.

The undertaker told them, ‘You can have her shipped home for £5,000, or you can bury her here in the Holy Land for £150.’

The man thought about it and told him he would just have her shipped home.

The undertaker asked, ‘Why would you spend £5,000 to ship your mother-in-law home, when it would be wonderful to have her buried here and spend only £150?’

The man replied, ‘a man died here 2,000 years ago, was buried here, and three days later he rose from the dead. I just can’t take that chance.’

 

Planning a holiday!!!!

Short post. No history lesson, or moaning here. No update on the poor attempt at raising £500.00 for a worthwhile cause. Anyone feeling guilty about not donating yet??? No! well in that case I will continue. I decided a while a go that I wanted to leave this place and go somewhere else. My life isn’t really going anywhere, still no house, misses, family, and  still stuck on the same run of the ladder, so I thought what the hell I spent a large portion of my life savings on a car, what could I do next. Well a little place called New Zealand has been calling out my name for some years. I did a while ago want to up sticks and move out there before that I wanted to move out to Belgium after I ‘d toured there and came back to find I really hated the UK and my job.

I am now thinking maybe just a very long holiday is needed as I have not had one for 12 years and even when I’ve had time off, I’ve either sat at home doing nothing because I’ve had no money or when I was working I would take the holiday to work else where. So I am open to advice on any deals, or expertise that people may have on how I go about booking this very expensive trip in a cheap way. I basically want to see as much of New Zealand as possible without doing it in the gap year way. I know it’s a tall order but I don’t do things by halves. At the moment I need to get away, and get away fast and experience something different, see other lands and I need to do it quick, before my head explodes, I have some money put away for it so today I started the hunt for my holiday. No doubt nothing will happen as when ever I get these ideas they always seem to fade away into the darkness or work takes over… But one of my promises to myself was to change the way I live my life, and to make sure I am not in the same place next year. I know deep down that I will be, but that is what dreams are for.

Arent they???

 

 

Top Five Industrial hero’s

This is a weird one, but I write this as I was watching ‘Great Railway Journeys’ and see a images of ‘Iron Bridge’ and as I’m bored I thought why don’t I share my boredom with you lovely people.

Earlier I bought you my top five bridges, well today it’s the turn of historical figures who played a key role in the industrial revolution of England. Many of you may now know that I like my history especially the medieval period. But I also love the agriculture, industrial revolution and transport. So with that love still deep in my heart I now bring you my heroes. As before with the bridges I will be including more than five and they won’t be in any order, apart from the fella who is number one.

So who is first on the list…. Well without this guy the whole factory process might not of happened, as just after half past five John Kay came up with a shuttle that could fly. That’s right 1733 saw

Kays Flying Shuttle

Kay’s Flying Shuttle that speeded up the process of weaving dramatically. John Kay may have come up with a quick way to now weave, but the weavers needed the cotton, and it wasn’t till 1764 that James Hargreaves invented the Spinning Jenny, or should that be his daughter as the clumsily bitch had knocked their spinning wheel over which gave James the idea.

However James didn’t think it was important to copyright the machine until the 1770’s so lost a lot of money has people nicked his idea. Samuel Crompton used the Spinning Jenny as his inspiration for the

Spinning Jenny

Spinning Mule in 1779.  All of these men from Kay who made the old fashion loom twice as productive to Crompton who’s machines were responsible for hundreds of child deaths in the cotton and wool mills owned by Arkwright and Gregg make it into the number five slot.

But while the women were handing over the needle and thread to the men and moving into the factories, and mill owners were popping up left right and centre over the country none of it would be possible without transport. So thank god that James Brindley was born and he met up with the 3rd Duke of Bridgewater who asked James to build him a canal so he could transport all his coal that he was digging up. James was of course only to happy to assist as he knew it would annoy Thomas Telford

Thomas Telford

 

and John Mcadam who had spent several years trying to improve the road network in Britain. I also have a love for Telford as he also built several good canals but also built some very nice bridges, but none as nice as the Bridgewater Canal.

Now all this transport was getting out of hand, and the factory owners and coal-pit managers needed a quicker way to transport their goods. It was very luckily for them that James Watt came along with his steam engine, but at first it was not used to get you to London in under two hours, its first duty was to pump water out of mines. What the miners use to do before James came along I’m not really sure, maybe they used Thomas Newcomen Steam engine instead.

Newcomens Steam Engine

This is the one little thing that annoys me about history, and I am glad I had a proper tweed and leather patches history teacher. A lot of people often think James Watt invented the Steam engine, where he only improved on the original concept by adding a separate condenser.

Richards Machine

While all of this was going on a very clever man in Cornwall hit upon the idea of mounting this steam contraption onto wheels which would run on a track, and once again thank you to Mr Clark for teaching me that Richard Trevithick should be credited as the father of the Railways, but he isn’t. Instead it goes to George Stephenson whose first locomotive was not the best, but manged to win the Rain-hill Trails (by running over and killing an M.P) and therefore he won the contract to build the locomotives for the Manchester to Liverpool Line. That Steam engine was of course the Rocket, but it was the Planet that ran on the Line. This was not the first time he had built engines. Stephenson was responsible for the first Railway line from Stockton to Darlington used to transport coal.

The Planet

However the number one person who is at the top of my list did it all. He standardised time across Britain, with his railway. He built Canals, boats, and bridges and the longest train tunnel at the time. Even now there is only one day of the year, where the sun shines through Box tunnel It is of course Isambard Kingdom Brunel. That is the person who is at number one, not the day of the year where the sun shines through the tunnel.

I will one day speak about all these people’s work in more detail, but in case you can’t wait I have linked their names to their Wiki pages, but I should imagine that most of you should know everything about them already. The only person who didn’t make it on the list and that is only because I could not find a link from his invention to the Factories is Jethro Tull and I don’t mean the band or the Cornish comedian. I’m talking about Jethro Tull as in the one who made the seed drill that allowed the  sowing of seeds in nice little straight lines to happen.

I hope you have enjoyed another look into my geeky nature. I also hope you enjoy reading up on some of these important historical people I will wait for the comments to come flooding in.

Shin Splints

Well this is coming to you as I am not at the gym. Why? Well it’s because I went out for my run the other day. The first time on the road before Christmas, and today I have what they call Shin Splints. Basically it is the muscles and tendons behind the shin that give off a very intense pain. Meaning I am out of training for a while.

So I had to come home after work, and eat instead of letting off steam, which today I desperately needed. I can’t even go for a walk around Manchester in this evening, as after a while it gets really quite painful.

I’m hoping at some point it will die down, and I can once again hit the road, or the mill, or even just go for a cycle.

Let us know if any of you have had the horrid splints and how you have coped and recovered from them. I’m hoping it will be good old rest for a couple of days, as I have probably been over doing it. But I know it will be worth it in the end

 

Weighing Scales

With dread we stand on them, and with bated breath we wait.

Yes today is about the humble bathroom scales. What we expect to see from them never appears. We stand on them and as the numbers swing back and forth we hold our breath until a number decides to line up under the red line. Of course it is never the number we wish to see. Maybe its our Jumper, or our slippers and so begins the routine of slowly stripping down to your birthday suit, but yet the red line hovers over the incorrect number. Then you have an idea of what it may be. Yes of course the scales are not set properly. The Red line is not exactly over the Zero. And so it begins. You bend down and move the dial a little to the left then back to the right and then to the left until you are satisfied that the line is now over the zero. Once again you stand on the blue area upon the scales and look up nervously. You can hear the disc spinning from right to left and once it has settled you look down to see that the adjustment of the disc only helped you to gain three pounds.

The type of scales at the gym

Right… Boots it is, I will pay a pound and use an electronic machine you think, and with that you get dressed in a little black number feeling depressed and fat and head for work. There you begrudgingly refuse any chocolates or crisps and ask for skimmed milk in your coffee. You are counting down the hours till you can have your Boots Meal Deal Shape Sandwich and pay that pound at the machine which will tell you your BMI is too high.

You approach the scales dreading the stepping on and hearing the words ‘One at a time please’ you wait for the bit of paper which informs you that you are over weight to be printed, and so begins the three-day ritual of eating rabbit food, until you get bored and cave in to the chips or the Chinese on a saturday night.

The reason for this tale is that I weigh different amounts. My Bathroom scales like the picture above tell me I’m 14 stone, The ones in the gym which are a balancing acts of knobs and maybe I’m not using them correctly inform me that I’m 93 or  94Kg  and if you do the maths that turns into 15 Stone. So Which one is correct??? Should I pay my pound to go to Boots and be told that my BMI is too much, or should I not care. After all the weight is built up of muscle and fat. I’m not for minute suggesting I am over 90Kg’s of pure muscle, but I am saying that I am not 90Kg’s of fat.

I have always been fascinated with my weight, as there are people who are larger than me that claim to weigh only elven or twelve stone, I know I am tall, but the only bit of fat that I own is around the belly. It is all beer. But yet I feel that I should have lost some weight with all the gym work I am doing, and I am not exactly over eating. I still it my chocolate and I am getting thinner. My new selection of clothes is evidence of that. So what is weight, is it really a scale of how heavy or healthy we are. A Rugby player can have a BMI of over 30, most of it will be muscle and he would be able to out run skinny Jim with a BMI of twenty odd. I know BMI is not weight, but weight helps calculates your BMI and therefore is an important factor.

But yet I will still step on the scales to see what the outcome is, and whatever the number my mood and approach to life for that day will change. So should be take it at face value. After all our weight can change several times through the day and even if i tell myself it is only a number I know deep down I will always want to know those digits.

When to go outside?

Well the old weather is warming up in Blighty now, and not before time. But with the warm comes the rain.

I need to get out and hit the streets. If I’m going to complete the Bupa 10K Manchester run in one piece I need to start training on the streets, but the warmth of the gym is to nice at the moment. So my question is when do I go out and pound the streets of Manchester? Do I do it today, or do I retire to the comfort of the gym? Should I do it next month, or should I mix it up?

The trouble with street running is you don’t know what you are doing! not in the sense of knowing whether you’re running, skiing, biking like it’s obvious you’re running I mean in terms of distance. I could run round my park for 30 minutes and at the end I could have barely ran a mile. This of course leads to more equipment. A nice watch that tells you your heart rate, my steps per minute, the distance you’ve covered. I could get apps for my phone that map my run in case I can’t remember the route I took. Running on the street seems to be a serious hobby and I don’t know if I am ready for this yet, I know I don’t need all this stuff – but I think I need it and therefore I want it.

Anyway… unless it starts to rain I am out for a jog on the streets without all the James Bond gadgets. I also need to do another post about raising money. I think my grand sum at the moment is £30.00, so I have a long way to go till I reach my £500,00. If you would like to donate and it does not matter how big or how small then you can do so online at http://www.justgiving.com/thomas-Scott0 If you would like to know more about chosen charity then I have written a page. But in short it’s for the Big C. Cancer. I am sure we have all known some one who has been affected, I know I have, and for that reason as well as a personal one I am supporting Christies Hospital in Manchester.

Right I’m off to do some stretches and go for that run and no doubt I will be back here in a couple of hours doing a nice short blog of the events through my run.

I’m Posting every day in 2011!

Well at least every week… Maybe.

I got into blogging, and am getting quite carried away with it, so to keep it up I will be trying to add a new post every week. So please do enjoy the random talkings of me.