British Fashion Award Winners

Stella McCartney was rewarded for her fashion designs last night at the British Fashion Awards. Stella previously raised her designer profile when she designed Team GB’s Olympic kit. She took awayawards for Designer of the year and Best Designer Brand.

Other award winners included; Best British Style – Alexa Chung, Outstanding Achievement – Manolo Blahnik, Emerging Talent – JW Anderson, Sophie Hulme and Johnathan Saunders, Special Recognition went to Harold Tillman, Red Carpet Award – Roksanda Ilincic, Accessory Designer – Nicholas Kirkwood, Isabella Blow award for Fashion Creator – Louise Wilson, New establishment – Erdem, Best Model – Cara Delevingne and Best Menswear Designer Kim Jones for Louis Vuitton.

BBC Sports Personality 2012

Nominees for the BBC Sports Personality 2012 have been announced. The 12 finalists are; Bradley Wiggins, Nicola Adams (Boxer), Ben Ainslie, Jessica Ennis, Mo Farah, Kath Grainger (Rower),Sir Chris Hoy, Rory McIlroy, Andy Murray and Paralympians; Sara Storey, Ellie Simmonds and David Weir. The awards take place on the 16th December.

Good Luck everyone.

James Bond, Lord Coe and the Queen

Lord Coe’s book “Running My Life” has extracts published this week in the Times newspaper. I read a report by Andrew Hough of the Daily Telegraph on the matter. Particularly an extract about the Queen’s involvement in the opening ceremony of the Olympic games.

Millions around the world watched a four-and-a-half minutes film which began in Her Majesty’s private study in Buckingham Palace. She briefed 007 (Daniel Craig) on a secret Olympic mission. The Queen was then seen to leave the Palace with Bond and board a helicopter. The helicopter appeared above the Olympic park and we saw the “Queen” parachute out, on cue with her arrival at the stadium moments later. The real parachutists landed nearby. However it was such a closely kept secret that even Prince Charles and Princes William and Harry did not know about it. Prince Charles was seen to laugh rather nervously during the film and the Princes were heard shouting “Go Granny!”

The actual film was shot back in March 2012, when the Queen was preparing for her Diamond Jubilee and Skyfall the latest Bond film was nearing completion.

Bananagrams

Read a great article in the Daily Telegraph Weekend section. Harry Wallop reviewed the game Bananagram which sounded intriguing. The game has even been proclaimed the “Official word game to the London 2012 Olympics” although I’m not sure when the athletes would have had time to play it! The game is similar to Scrabble but without a board and players each take tiles and make up their own free-form Scrabble boards around the table using 15-20 tiles. The first person to use up all their tiles shouts “Peel” and everyone has to grab another tile. This may help out another player. At any stage during the game a player can rearrange letters to form new words. The winner is the first to use up all his tiles. There is no scoring, speed and accuracy beat large difficult words. The game is available in Argos, WHSmith, John Lewis and Tesco. It costs £11.70 in John Lewis. 

Read “Thrift” by Phil Church yesturday. A funny tale set in a term at an English secondary school. Failing kids and teachers, will they survive an OFSTED inspection and pull through for the end of term play? A good book.

Paralympics

Sat here watching the opening ceremony of the 2012 Paralympics. The show is once again spectacular. I hope it does much to promote and inspire disabled athletes from across the world.

Had our own mini olympics today; there was the marathon monopoly game, weight-lifting 5 baskets loads of washing! The sprint – to get the washing off the line when it started to rain and the decathlon of household activities that we have undertaken.

Downloaded another flurry of free books to my kindle, I never believed I would be a convert as I love holding a real book, but I’m becoming an addict!

Going to get back to the opening ceremony now.

Rosie

TGiFriday!

TGiFriday! We are rolling in to the last Bank holiday weekend for the summer. Football has started and the other members of the household are avidly discussing their fantasy football teams! Plus the performance of the real teams who they all support. Cricket season still remains and they lament the performance of their fantasy cricket men! But Hampshire are through to the T20 final in Cardiff this Saturday. And the Paraolympics is not far away.

This week has been full of all the last-minute pre-school bits and pieces like hair cuts, eye appointments, dentist, name label sewing, new school shoes and final bits of missing uniform. Phew!

GCSE results were down for the first time in several years as questions are asked as to whether examining boards felt under pressure about comments that marking was getting too leniant.

Gone a bit mad in the kindle store downloading books, don’t have time to read them all! Still wading through the classic “Water babies” by Charles Kingsley. I’ll be honest, some of it is like chewing on cardboard! But it’s a classic!! I must be missing something?

There’s a e-mail floating around warning of a mobile phone hoax, where you get a call from an “engineer” who claims to be testing your phone and he asks you to press #90 or#09. DO NOT do this as it gives then access to your sim card and they can use your account to make calls. END the call immediately.

Olympics Still Here

Spent the afternoon playing the Olympic Games Edition of Monopoly. The properties are the Olympic Venues such as the velodrome, Eton Dorney and the Olympic Stadium. The “Chance” and “Community Chest” are “Heats” and “Finals” cards. Examples of  playing tokens are a London taxi, Wenlock and a train. “Houses and Hotels” are “Seating Stands and Stadiums”. There is even an extra speed dice to make the game quicker if you choose. A fantastic keepsake and a reminder about the fantastic Games once it’s all over.

Don’t forget playing Monopoly is a great way to help the kids with maths!