Back in the mid-80's when I first started working in data systems we had a nationwide five-a-side tournament for the company I worked for, Eurocom Data, held in Birmingham. We won the Final [Hooray, a football team from Southampton wins something] and I got an award for MOTM and Player of the Tournament. And, if I do say so myself, I was decent in those days, cause I was still in my late 20's. Probably more interesting, and ridiculous as it may seem, the company had something like 30+ branches [IIRC] and had every employee at the tournament, whether they played or not, and put everyone in their own good quality hotel room for the weekend. After the tournament we had a huge dinner party with an unlimited free bar, and nightclub entertainment. I think they even paid for our travel too. No wonder the company doesn't exist anymore. Ha.! The 1980's
A client of my brother's is taking eight of us for a freebie in London to celebrate my brother's 70th....all meals, travel, theatre tickets and overnight hotel stay. This is my third weekend away on the trot.
I've been to two awards ceremonies one for work and one for my Sunday league team. These were fun and good team building exercises because we are otherwise under appreciated. This is not true if your name is Tom Hanks, David Beckham etc and I don't think Ceremonies are necessary in this instance.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-41598493 Fisherman accidentally swallows a whole Dover Sole. Bloody lucky to survive, I remember reading about a Brazilian? fisherman dying from a similar incident a few years ago.
Cod, that's incredible. Lucky his mates weren't feeling shellfish and they applied CPR; eel be grateful for that. Of all the things to catch on Boscombe pier, I'd have thought crabs more likely, as it's a rough plaice. The ambulance nearly didn't attend as they couldn't believe what they were herring on the 999 call.
Ah, so award ceremonies should be means tested. That's good. The ones you mention are awful. A bunch of self indulgent, some overweight, talentless people that feel the need to reward themselves with some pathetic award when in fact their absolutely useless and only reached local Sunday football? Tsk - terrible. I'd like to know the survey you undertook to decide you were under appreciated. Sounds like you loved yourselves a bit too much, dishing out awards to each other. Smug bastards.... By the way if you've been to two award ceremonies and liked them both, why are you so anti-award ceremonies?
It’s okay for me to have recognition from my peers, but it’s not okay for them because they earn more than me. Okay.
Reminds me of your F1 thing. I don't really care about award ceremonies, but I feel a strange urge to defend them from rubbish criticism. I'm probably just stubborn.
No, nor do I, and I agree with Velcro that they're boring. The reason they're televised though is that they're popular. If they weren't, they wouldn't be. Hardly the fault of the participants. What bugs me is the concept of treating 'celebrities' as commodities - "Stick to singing, stay out of politics", "You're paid enough already". Thing is, most famous people are actually just like you and me, just in a different job, and one they tend to be talented in. Even 'reality stars' are humans (even if the talent side is slightly harder to get to grips with on that front). Why the hell shouldn't they be allowed to do the same things as other humans, just because they're paid more. It smacks of jealousy.
I just discovered that the whole of the acclaimed 1974 BBC Radio 4 production of Lord of the Rings is on YouTube. If you haven’t heard it it really is worth a listen. Here’s episode 1 as a taster, featuring a very young Bill Nighy as Sam Gamgee:
Before reading this article from the Economist, think whether children are better at delaying gratification, worse, or are just the same as in the past. Well worth a couple of minutes to read... http://tinyurl.com/ydcfzw3z Vin
Interesting, though I wouldn't talk down the young as a whole. What I would talk down is the society in which they are growing up in, especially with social media and technology. I've seen first hand the problems things like Snapchat and Twitter can cause for children as young as 9. Their growing up is now more of a global process than it was even for my generation. Access to the internet is so pervasive that even young kids have an online presence and if you try to resist as a parent, peer pressure and difficulties in that regard just undermine your efforts. In some ways that has benefits, you have access to information, you are perhaps better able to create your own identity, yet there are many negative consequences, especially as kids become teenagers. Cyber-bullying, mental health issues, etc. In some ways, there are certain things about society today that would make me wanna be a kid growing up nowadays, but there are plenty of ways in which I'm glad I didn't grow up in the present. . So in summary. It's not that the kids aren't alright. It's the societies [in which they grow up] aren't alright. Given that, kids aren't getting worse, they're just having a ****tier deal to cope with.
Took Toby to the vet his afternoon . Good news is the ulcer on his eye is nearly healed , the bad news is he has another one
1981 actually, but a nice find anyway. To this day people will insist it was in 13 hourly episodes, but it was first broadcast in 26 half-hour episodes at 12.00pm on a Sunday and repeated at 10.30pm on a Wednesday night [It took 6 months to record.!]. So it could become a problem if I missed the Sunday broadcast and had a game at the Dell on the Wednesday [the proper evening for mid-week matches]. I taped them all and by the time the BBC got around to repeating it a few years later in one hour episodes I was sick to death of it because I'd listened to it about 20 times by then. Bill Nighy was so young he was still being referred to as 'William' in the credits. I thought Peter Woodthorpe was loopily brilliant as Gollum. Andy Serkis's film voice is heavily influenced by PW's vocal performance. Of course, both film and radio versions committed the ultimate sin of not including Tom Bombadil. When I had my own Youtube channel I put all my recordings up, excluding The Hobbit and LOTR, but including a separate episode that included Tom Bombadil. It starred Nigel Planar as Frodo and Ian Hogg as Tom Bombadil. Loads of people copied it and then put it up as their own work, but the original video/audio file is recorded by me, so here it is:
