Good summry of the current unseemlinesses from cartoonist Matt in today’s Daily Telegraph:
Category Archives: amusements
Something for a (Public Holiday) Weekend
Monday is a Public Holiday in the UK, so I thought this week we’d have something amusing but also worth thinking about to do with Mondays.
Something for the Weekend
Another Glasbergen cartoon this week. I can think of a number of friends to whom this should be dedicated …
Something for the Weekend
Click the image for a larger version
Something for the Weekend
For all those of you who wondered why you even bothered with Maths at school …
5th Annual Tweed Run, London
This Saturday, 13 April, sees the 5th Annual Tweed Run through London.
It is a celebration of old fashioned values as up to 400 ladies and gentlemen cycle through central London in high fashion and on a range of antique velocipedes.
You need permission to cycle along with them – and all the tickets have been allocated. Although the exact route is not published in advance (why?) the following viewing points are suggested (times are approximate):
12:00 Marylebone High Street
12:30 Regent Street / Savile Row
13:00 Piccadilly Circus
13:30 Houses of Parliament
14:00 Trafalgar Square
More information on the Tweed Run website at http://tweedrun.com/.
Something for the Weekend
International Pillow Fight Day
Contrary to my previous post about Tartan Day Scotland, International Pillow Fight Day, which is also on 6 April, seems to be purely about having a bit of fun.
Yes, that’s right, on Saturday 6 April, there will be massive pillow fights in cities around the world! There may be one near you there are happenings in cities across the globe from Amsterdam to Zaragoza!
All over the world, groups like [the Urban Playground Movement] organize free, fun, all ages, non-commercial public events. From a massive Mobile Clubbing event in a London train station to a giant pillow fight near the Eiffel Tower in Paris to a subway party beneath the streets of Toronto, it is clear that the urban playground is growing around the world, leaving more public and more social cities in its wake. This is the urban playground movement, a playful part of the larger public space movement.
One of our goals is to make these unique happenings in public space become a significant part of popular culture, partially replacing passive, non-social, branded consumption experiences like watching television, and consciously rejecting the blight on our cities caused by the endless creep of advertising into public space. The result, we hope, will be a global community of participants, not consumers, in a world where people are constantly organizing and attending these happenings in every major city in the world.
On Saturday April 6th we will once again celebrate World Pillow Fight Day with a massive pillow fight on [London’s] Trafalgar Square. It’s the most fun you can have on a city square and on this day, it happens in hundreds of cities around the world.
Because this is supposed to be fun the rules are kept to a minimum; there are just two: Don’t hit anyone with a camera and don’t hit anyone without a pillow.
What a shame that at the time of writing the only UK event listed is the one in London, but as usual there is up to date information on their website at .
Morpeth Northumbrian Gathering
Being Eastertide here is a lot on this week and Friday 5 to Sunday 7 April sees the Morpeth Northumbrian Gathering. As their website says:
In September 1966 a modest concert of Northumbrian music and song was held to raise funds for Morpeth Antiquarian Society. It was the inspiration for a one-day Northumbrian festival in March 1968 which evolved into the Morpeth Gathering.
The festival includes a vast array of competitions including crafts, performance and writing. Events of local interest have been added to the programme of concerts, singarounds, barn dance, storytelling, theatre and street performance which includes a young people’s pageant as part of the Border Cavalcade.
The emphasis of the Gathering is firmly upon the native traditions of Northumberland and, whilst there is plenty of scope for traditional music from all over the British Isles within the festival, the wealth of local culture is well to the fore.
For the curious the guy on the left, playing the pipes, is my godfather!
More information at www.northumbriana.org.uk/gathering/index.htm.
International Carrot Day
Yes, I kid you not; this isn’t an April Fool! Thursday 4 April is International Carrot Day.
Indeed you may well ask, “Why?” I did.
Well as it says here …
Carrot Day was founded 2003 to spread knowledge about the carrot and its good attributes around the world. [It] is celebrated every year on April 4th and is the pinnacle for carrot lovers all around the world. It is the day when the carrot is celebrated through carrot parties and other carrot related festivities.
More information at http://www.carrotday.com/.
There’s even a list of Carrot festivals and a link to the Carrot Museum.