amusements, ramblings

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.

amusements

Alternative Proverbs

1 Comment

I found the following alternative proverbs on the intertubes. They’re probably very old, but they amused me!

Don’t change horses until they stop running

Strike while the bug is close

It’s always darkest before Daylight Saving Time

Never underestimate the power of termites

You can lead a horse to water but how?

Don’t bite the hand that looks dirty

No news is impossible

A miss is as good as a Mr

You can’t teach an old dog new maths

If you lie down with dogs, you’ll stink in the morning

Love all, trust me

The pen is mightier than the pigs

An idle mind is the best way to relax

Where there’s smoke there’s pollution

Happy the bride who gets all the presents

A penny saved is not much

Two’s company, three’s the Musketeers

Don’t put off till tomorrow what you put on to go to bed

Laugh and the whole world laughs with you, cry and you have to blow your nose

There are none so blind as Stevie Wonder

Children should be seen and not spanked or grounded

If at first you don’t succeed get new batteries

You get out of something only what you see in the picture on the box

When the blind lead the blind get out of the way

A bird in the hand is going to poop on you

Better late than pregnant

As always there is more than a grain of truth in many of them.

food+drink, quotes

Food Quotes

Some more amusements for Low Saturday — that dreary day between Good Friday and Easter Day. These are all taken from Kitchen Wit, Quips and Quotes for Cooks and Food Lovers by Jane Brook, which I was given for Christmas.

Never work before breakfast; if you have to work before breakfast, eat your breakfast first.
Josh Billings

Never trust a man who, when left alone in a room with a tea cosy, doesn’t try it on.
Billy Connolly

How can a nation be great if its bread tastes like Kleenex?
Julia Child

Cooks do meals for people they know and love. Chefs do it anonymously for anyone who has the price.
AA Gill

I have left many things unfinished in my life, but never a bar of chocolate.
Robert Morley

Having a good wife and rich cabbage soup, seek not other things.
Russian proverb

Shipping is a terrible thing to do to vegetables. They probably get jet-lagged, just like people.
Elizabeth Berry

Large, naked, raw carrots are acceptable as food only to those who lie in hutches eagerly awaiting Easter.
Fran Lebowitz

In victory, you deserve champagne, in defeat, you need it.
Napoleon Bonaparte

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.
Carl Sagan

A thriving household depends on the use of seasonal produce and the application or common sense.
Olivier de Serres

Chopsticks are one of the reasons the Chinese never invented custard.
Spike Milligan

amusements, ramblings

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.

links, ramblings

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.

ramblings

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.

quotes

Quotes

Another in our irregular series of quotes encountered which have amused or interested me. In no special order …

I don’t expect much from the Irish — a lot that I know so well that I despise them, everything about them, their posturing, the silly soft accents, their literature, especially Joyce, Synge but not including Yeats who writes like a great anglo — original spare strange — yes Hopkins — and I hate their genius for self-advertisement, their mock-belligerence, their obvious charm.
[Richard Burton, actor; The Richard Burton Diaries]

Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph; a beginning, a struggle and a victory.
[Mahatma Gandhi]

If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.
[Mario Andretti]

In a mad world only the mad are sane.
[Akira Kurosawa]

Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
[Douglas Adams]

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
[Eric Hoffer]

There he goes, one of God’s own prototypes — a high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, too rare to die.
[Hunter S Thompson]

Whether we consider the individual, family, local, national or international level, peace must arise from inner peace. For example, making prayers for peace while continuing to harbor anger is futile. Training the mind and overcoming your anger is much more effective than mere prayer. Anger, hatred and jealousy never solve problems, only affection, concern and respect can do that.
[Dalai Lama]

The cat could very well be man’s best friend but would never stoop to admitting it.
[Doug Larson]