A little Wednesday weirdness

Transferred from MySpace.


Ok... can't claim credit for this one (it comes straight from the BBC website), but it made me laugh so I thought I'd share it...



In a recent survey, the UK's top 10 most ridiculous British laws were voted as follows:


1. It is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament (27%)

2. It is an act of treason to place a postage stamp bearing the British king or queen's image upside-down (7%)

3. It is illegal for a woman to be topless in Liverpool except as a clerk in a tropical fish store (6%)

4. Eating mince pies on Christmas Day is banned (5%)

5. If someone knocks on your door in Scotland and requires the use of your toilet, you are required to let them enter (4%)

6. In the UK a pregnant woman can legally relieve herself anywhere she wants, including in a policeman's helmet (4%)

7. The head of any dead whale found on the British coast automatically becomes the property of the King, and the tail of the Queen (3.5%)

8. It is illegal not to tell the tax man anything you do not want him to know, but legal not to tell him information you do not mind him knowing (3%)

9. It is illegal to enter the Houses of Parliament wearing a suit of armour (3%)

10. It is legal to murder a Scotsman within the ancient city walls of York, but only if he is carrying a bow and arrow (2%)



Bizarre foreign laws voted by those polled included:


1. In Ohio, it is illegal to get a fish drunk (9%)

2. In Indonesia, the penalty for masturbation is decapitation (8%)

3. A male doctor in Bahrain can only examine the genitals of a woman in the reflection of a mirror (7%)

4. In Switzerland, a man may not relieve himself standing up after 10pm (6%)

5. It is illegal to be blindfolded while driving a vehicle in Alabama (6%)

6. In Florida, unmarried women who parachute on a Sunday could be jailed (6%)

7. Women in Vermont must obtain written permission from their husbands to wear false teeth (6%)

8. In Milan, it is a legal requirement to smile at all times, except during funerals or hospital visits (5%)

9. In France, it is illegal to name a pig Napoleon (4%)

Embarrassing confessions

Transferred from MySpace.

One of my online friends - there are about two of them (it shouldn't take you long to work out which one!) has just posted a link to a fantastic song that I had long forgotten about... Mansun, Wide Open Space. It got me to thinking about some of those other lost gems that crop up every now and again... you know the ones that you hear occasionally on the radio that make you stop what you're doing to declare how it's always been your favourite (only to forget about it again seconds after it finishes)...

...and that got me to thinking about some of the bands that I used to listen to (one or two of them a little obscure, most of them long gone... generally a good thing, but there are a couple in there that I wish were still around).

So here it is... my embarassing musical history (starting about aged 7)!


So there were the early days... My first foray into the world of music:

ABBA
I was about 7 at the time, and had the whole back catalogue (taped from friends and family). I also had a Noddy LP - some story about Noddy and Big Ears in Toyland... there was one song on there I loved 'Prettiest Dolly' I think it was called... Hmmm, I wonder if I can find it on the Internet....?

And then there were the teenage years...
I was SO trendy then (or at least I thought I was at the time)!

Bros
I was an aspiring Brosette and saw them in concert. I was convinced I was in love with Matt Goss - REAL love mind you, it wasn't just a slightly creepy obsession. I didn't have the long perm (mother wouldn't let me), but I DID have the ripped jeans (to her deep embarrassment) the Doc. Martins and the Grolsch bottle tops... (except -ironically - I didn't have enough 'bottle' to wear them on my shoes like I was supposed to... I believe I actually carried mine to the concert...)

a-ha
I'm sorry - any girl who watched the Take on Me video was bound to be hooked from the off. Scrub that... any girl who saw Morten was going to be hooked (Damn... at the age of 35 (28 if anyone asks) I'm still salivating at the thought).

Nik Kershaw
Ah... Nik was my discovery. I'd heard and bought 'I wont let the sun go down on me' when it was first released and loved it. Actually, mum bought if for me (I was about 12 so didn't have the cash) for Christmas - I believe she hummed it to the guy on the record counter because she couldn't remember what it was called. One of the main appeals that Nik held was the fact that no-one else knew who he was - which made me trendier than them.

Sadly, after initially disappearing from sight Nik re-released the single and achieved great success... I lost interest. (Although, I did revel in the fact all my (now Nik obsessed) friends coveted the single that I owned - the first release had better cover art than the second and owning it proved you were cool).

Wham
Ah yes... Wham (*sighs wistfully*).

Do you realise that even after watching the 'Wake me up before you go go' video I still argued with my sister that he was straight... go figure...

At the time, you were either a Wham-ie or a Duran-ie. I was in the former category, but being the fickle creature that I was at the time, couldn't actually bring myself to openly spurn Duran Duran totally. Oooh... there were a couple of other categories too (now that I'm thinking of it)... you had the followers of Wet Wet Wet (say no more) and also there were a few (small group this one) Spandau's. Most of us fell into one of these groups except the really strange girls... one such girl openly admitted that she was even into The Jam!!!! (Yes, I know she has less to be embarrassed about NOW, but at the time it was just plain weird!!)

Then there were the slightly older teenage years (think 6th form - age 16/17)
Ha! I really WAS trendy now... I was older for a start - which is important when you're a teenager! I even worked in a record store on Saturdays (so could try out and buy the latest and greatest music before anyone else)...

Um... yes, I did have a dark period which involved buying the Bros Christmas Picture disc for £9.99 before anyone else did - convinced it was going to be a sell out success (only to discover the thing went into the bargain bucked for 99p after Christmas)... but other than that... I WAS COOOOOOOL.

So what did I listen to? (actually I'm not too embarrassed about these ones)...

Then Jerico
Ooooh... a (little) bit political, with a brainy bad boy at the helm. It helped I'm sure that the brainy bad boy had a set of cheekbones that you could slice cheese on, but this wasn't my sole motivation... they made what I considered to be PROPER music. I saw them in concert a couple of times, and after they'd split up (when I was in Uni) I went to see the ex-lead singer (Mark Shaw) play live. Sadly I couldn't find anyone to go with me, so in desperation I answered a dating add in the back of a magazine and dragged my poor victim along instead (probably the last time he ever placed a personals add!)

Mark Shaw...Yum, yum, yum... (salivating again...)

Skin Games
Ah... I was getting trendy again - this was another obscure band that no-one had ever heard off. They supported Then Jerico on tour and were fantastic... and they were Welsh (which made them even better in my eyes because unlike today, there weren't many Welsh bands out there - at least, none that I was aware off anyway). Sadly, after one album (currently in the garage because I don't have a record player anymore) they disappeared from view.

Diesel Park West
I used to do my homework in the dining room whilst listening to the chart show on radio 1. When the chart show would finish the next DJ (Annie Nightingale I think) would start her show off with something slightly obscure (at least it was obscure to me)... enter Diesel Park West (again, now gathering dust in the garage).

The Mission
My really trendy phase (you know you're high on the trend-ometer when everyone pulls a face when you tell them what you're listening to). If you recall them, they were a bit on the mournful side... I remember singing along to them at one point...

Me: "I'm falling into the arms of Nemesis"
Me: "I'm falling into the arms of Nemesis"
Me: "I'm falling into the arms of Nemesis"

(I don't think I knew the rest of the words)

Mother: "For Gods sake, would you just fall and get it over with... I can't take any more of this"


****Mothers are SO un cool.****



Then there were the Uni years
Sadly there are few excuses for these particular artistic choices!

James
Inspiral Carpets
They Might be Giants
The Wonder Stuff (actually, I CAN justify this one!)

Then, at the tail end of Uni - extending until just after my PGCE
I fell in lust for the first time (big style), and most of these were introduced to me by the man in question... (man was an arse as it turned out... who knew...)

Louise Goffin
Lauren Christy
Tori Amos

This was the start of my 'female' phase - in so much as pretty much everything I listened to from this point onwards was sung by women and had major piano accompaniment. No reason, just worked out that way.



And FINALLY, I grew too old and grumpy to care what my taste in music said about me (i.e. now!)

Take That
Well, why the hell not! They're actually quite good and "they're such nice lads". To my husband I say: "Who cares if they don't play their own instruments!" (he doesn't count Gary for some reason...)

Lauren Christy
Amy Studt
Shelly Poole

Pretty much any 80's throw back
Interestingly enough though, not the junk I was listening to at the time - instead, I like the stuff that the slightly older (and therefore trendier) kids were into.

Other, assorted odds and ends
I'm not above a bit of Jazz (Frank is clearly the king) or classical (I saw the 3 tenors perform once - admittedly, I was stood on tip-toes, looking around the corner of a porta-loo from outside of the grounds that they were performing in) - didn't matter that the view was obscured... the important thing was I was there and heard them perform live!

So there you go... a warts 'n' all breakdown of my varying musical obsessions through the years...

...brave enough to admit yours? C'mon, 'fess-up...

Catching up... the wedding

Transferred from MySpace.

Yep, I'm terrible and haven't posted for yonks. Anyhoo... thought I'd better put together a few posts in order to fill in some of the blanks...

...starting with the wedding...

The wedding took place in Cyprus - although actually it would be more accurate to say that the wedding*s* (plural) took place in Cyprus since we had to have a civil ceremony as well as the church one. The civil ceremony took place early in the morning, but we deliberately chose not to invite anyone (beyond the witnesses and best man) since - in our eyes at least - the 'real' wedding (i.e. the one with the posh frock) was taking place in a church later that day.

Anyway, by around 9:30 that morning we were already married - we stood on the steps of Paphos town hall, took off our wedding rings and handed them back to the best man (for re-use at the church wedding).

...as you might imagine, that got us some funny looks...


Anyhow, despite being married we went our separate ways (Stuart back to our hotel, and me back to my sisters villa) where we both went back to bed until it was time to do it all over again.

Pretty strange - getting married and then leaving without your spouse (or wedding ring)!



The 'proper' wedding was wonderful - obviously I'm rather biased, but I swear it was the best wedding I've ever been to! The church was tiny (holding a max of 25) and (oddly considering it's size) was beautifully decorated (lots of high colour and Greek style iconography).

(See?? ...Pretty aint it!)

We had about 20 0f our close friends and family there and I guess that one of the best things about getting married abroad is that everyone was in 'holiday mode' by the time the wedding came around, and that meant that there was no stress or worry, just lots of happy, relaxed people - just what a wedding should be about as far as I'm concerned! Organising it was pretty easy too - you simply don't have the same level of choice as you might have at home - once you've accepted that, there's really no point in getting stressed about the small stuff!

The wedding reception was held in the hotel that we had been staying in over the previous week, and we were welcomed at the door with a red carpet, the wedding march and (because Paphos is clearly a holiday resort), lots of holiday makers in shorts and bikinis applauding us!! Slightly bizarre I suppose, but very memorable!

Equally memorable was our 'first dance' - we hadn't booked any entertainment - we were just going to play it by ear and relax by the bar after the meal, however as you might expect, the hotel put on it's own entertainment for it's guests each night. As it happened, the day we got married was the day they had a Robbie Williams tribute act (which my new brother-in-law hijacked by getting 'Robbie' to invite the happy couple up for a dance). Given that neither Stuart or I had particularly wanted to do a first dance, it was rather unfortunate that we ended up dancing in front of about 400 boozy holiday makers!

Let's just say that we now feature on lots of their holiday videos and photos! To be honest, I was mortified at the time (so much so that our guests quickly joined us on the stage), but looking back on it now it was pretty cool - I guess not many people can say they had Robbie Williams sing at their wedding!

Anyway... it could have been worse... if we'd married a day later we'd have had a stage hypnotist!!!!


(*shudder*)


So that was it... the wedding. There's only one other thing to mention I guess, and that was my hen night - the ONLY stressful part of the wedding...

My 75 year old mother invited herself along and was 'drunk on life' way before she'd had a whiff of the strong stuff (or any stuff at all to be frank). At one point she had her head inside a waiters T-shirt, whilst on another occasion she had to be restrained from dancing in a circle of fire (created on a pedestrianised area by the club owners using lighter fluid) - I'm quite sure that should she have been left to her own devices we'd have ended up having the wedding in A&E! Suffice to say, it's jolly difficult to let your hair down when you're trying to look after your elderly (in years, not in behaviour) mother, and to prevent her from booing the stripper booked by another hen party. To cut a long story short, we ended up cutting the evening short and dragging her back to dad before she could do any real harm to herself, a waiter or a stripper.

...The legend that is my mother, is now known far and wide - even people that weren't at the wedding (and have never met her) have since commented on her 'joie de vivre'!!

(My husband on the other hand is fervently hoping that I don't turn into my mother any time soon!)

Pointless, but funny

If you fancy a giggle, try loading your photo into My Heritage to find out what their face recognition software makes of you...

Depending on the photo I upload, I'm getting:

Or...

Ha! Yeah... I wish!!

Maybe I'll do Stuart next... Between me and you I'm rather hoping he'll turn out to be a George Clooney/Brad Pitt look alike...!