Category Archives: ramblings

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 .

Scotland's Tartan Day

Saturday 6 April marks Tartan Day Scotland and the start of the eponymous 10 day Festival. It is not so much a celebration of tartan but more a celebration of all things Scottish:

Tartan Day is a celebration of Scotland. Our vision is to see Scotland at the heart of a global Tartan Day celebration, bringing to the world’s attention our creativity, our innovation, our heritage, our business success — and our people.

Tartan Day marks the signing of the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320 at Arbroath Abbey. This historical occasion sowed the seeds of modern day democracy and was used as a basis for the American Declaration of Independence. Tartan Day was inspired by this historical occasion to celebrate all that is good about Scotland — its people, its heritage, its history, its culture and its amazing legacy to the world.

The Tartan Day Scotland Festival takes place at the beginning of April each year. The Festival is a 10 day programme of very special events which commemorate all that is best about Scotland and the Scots, home and away. Find out more about why we celebrate Tartan Day, read about famous Scots and keep up-to-date on news stories from around the world.


Tartan Day is also celebrated in the USA, Canada and I suspect many other places where there are people with Scottish roots.

There’s a lot more information at www.tartandayscotland.com.

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.

World Coal Carrying Championships

Easter Monday, which this year is on All Fools’ Day, 1 April, is the date of the World Coal Carrying Championships at Ossett, near Dewsbury, West Yorkshire.

Each year men and women race the streets of Ossett carrying big sacks of coal. There is a women’s race, two men’s races (all over a course of just under a mile) and also much shorter events for children. The races start at 12 noon at the Royal Oak Pub, Owl Lane, Ossett.


The Coal Carrying Championships are recognised by The Guinness Book of Records.

More details at www.gawthorpemaypole.org.uk.

National Pet Month

As promised this is the first of, I hope, many posts featuring “National Awareness Days”. Well this is a whole month! So with the promised a few days warning I give you…

National Pet Month, which runs from 1 April to 6 May — so an extended month.

The aim is to help

  • promote responsible pet ownership across the UK
  • highlight the important work of pet care professionals
  • highlight the importance of working companion animals
  • help raise money for the nation’s pet care charities

As their website says:

Pets give us so much love and companionship, now it’s time to repay that kindness […] Pets make fantastic companions and so when it came to choosing our theme for this year companionship had to be top of the list. Increasingly studies show that pets really are good for our physical and mental health.

You can find National Pet Month online at http://www.nationalpetmonth.org.uk, on Facebook and on Twitter.

Personally as part of this I shall be supporting one of my favourite charities The Cinnamon Trust, who work to help the elderly & terminally ill keep their pets (for example by walking dogs for those who can’t) and caring for the pets themselves when the owners are no longer able to look after them.

New Series: Awareness Days

Just to add a little something more here I’m going to try running a series of posts highlighting some of those less than usual “awareness days” which seem to be all too common. You know things like “Take Your Pet Gerbil to Work Day” and “Crocodile Wrestling Week”. (I bet somewhere both those exist!)

There’s an awareness day for pretty much every day, week and month of the year, so there is no chance I’m going to try to cover them all — even if there were somewhere where you could find them all easily. So what I’m going to do is, in the spirit of this blog, try to bring you some of the less usual and wackier days as well as a few more mainstream ones. Not just charitable ones, but anything which is going to provide a bit of fun.


For instance I’m sure we’ll feature British Sausage Week
when it comes round later in the year

What I am not, in general, going to cover is anything which is not UK-specific or worldwide; nor anything medical (there are just too many) or religious; nor anything too overtly big corporate or hugely well known. Hence you’ll not find Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Autism Awareness Day or Christian Aid Week — worthy those these may be. I will also mostly not be covering (children’s) book and literacy days as these are already being covered by my friend Katy over at Making Them Readers.

Many of the days I feature, plus lots of others, can be found at www.national-awareness-days.com. But I hope to include others as I learn of them — so if you know of any please leave a note in the comments or drop me an email.

I will also try, though I won’t promise, to mention the day/week/month a few days before it occurs, so you have a little time in which to find out more and see if there are events etc. near you. Wherever possible I will include a link to the awareness day’s website.

Well that’s what I’m going to do. It is an experiment, so it may or may not work; but if we don’t try, we won’t know.

The first of the posts for April coming up soon.

Thoughts on my Cat

Harry the CatThoughts on my Cat

He shares my space, though he imagines it his
He sleeps with me – a warm plush purring pillow
He sleeps on my desk, to stop me working
He shares my meals, but not I his
He consoles me when I’m ill,
And helps me in the garden
He gets high on his catnip toys
He is self-cleaning and autonomous
He forgives me when I rebuke him
Returning only unconditional love
He invites me out hunting with him
And brings me back presents
Could one desire more?

Will Save Lives

I’m getting really totally fed up with the rubric that

Doing A will save X lives

Just this morning the Daily Telegraph has given us

Minimum alcohol pricing would save lives, says Tory MP

FFS, once and for all … NO IT WILL NOT!


Let’s get this one straight — for better or worse, none of us is immortal, hence lives cannot be saved.

What you mean is: Doing A may postpone X deaths. Which is rather different, innit.