The Only Thing To Talk About

At this point in time, when there really has only been one thing on most people's mind, I think the only thing I can do is blog about the Royal Wedding. On Friday, Prince William, married Kate Middleton in a beautiful, ellaborate, but still personal ceremony (Yes, I watched it all, and I enjoyed it). The problem I have is that so many people are so critical of it. I want to make it absolutely clear that I am Pro Royal Family, there will be no anti comments here, so if that's what you're after, I suggest you find another blog. alternatively, if you are open minded enough to want another opinion, feel free to keep reading.

Millions of people flocked to the UK to be there for the wedding, and even in places across the country, nowhere near London, the atmosphere was electric, as we watched our future King, marry the love of his life. And yes, it was an expensive affair, and yes, we did pay for some of it, but we also made back that money and more from the tourism brought in.

People complain about our money being spent on them, but in reality, the question we ought to ask ourselves is "Did Wills and Kate actually choose it?" The answer is "NO!" They would probably have chosen a quiet affair, in a remote church, but they don't have that choice. This is reflected in the small intonations in the service, which were clearly personal choices, such as the prayer they wrote together, and the songs that they chose, and also the way in which they chose to leave Buckingham Palace. The came across as simple, down to earth people, who just love each other and want to be together. The fact of the matter is, that the real money was spent on delegates, politicians and royals from other countries having to be invited, but even this brings in its own revenue. The thing with this is that our economy has boomed over the last few months in preparation for the wedding, and let's face it, in a time of such economic downturn, and general misery, it really was nice just to have something to celebrate.

At the end of the day, this relationship was not one born of a one night stand, and a rash decision to get married, this couple have been courting for 8 years. Just as much of taxpayers money, if not more is spent on celebrity weddings, many of which rest on a quick meeting, and marriage, and will end in a quickie divorce.

People have become caught up with the romance of this wedding. The idea of Kate arriving as a commoner, and leaving as a princess is incredibly romantic. People who are anti royal families, let me ask you, have you ever told a fairy story, or watched a film about a princess or a prince? Does that not make you a hypocrite?

At the end of the day, the Royal Family do a lot for us. They may not have a hand in running the country any more, (not that I think this is a particularly good thing), but every year, they bring billions of tourists to the country to see them. As a British people, we are lucky. We have something that no where else in the world has, and this is why the Royal Family is so important. If people from America and Australia can love our Royal Family, why can't we? This entire wedding was for us as a nation. As I have said earlier, the Royal couple would probably have much preferred a quiet ceremony, but gave that up for protocol and the public, and anyway, after losing his Mum and being reminded of it almost on a daily basis, doesn't he deserve a nice day.

We don't have a Royal Wedding often, and people who complain of the cost, I challenge you to try and justify the billions of pounds spent on fireworks every new year, which really is just a competition with other countries, and brings very little tourist revenue. It's about time the Royal Family get the respect they deserve, and quite frankly, I believe the doubters and haters ought to get over themselves, and appreciate the time of celebration for what it is, a long time couple openly declaring the love they have for each other.

Turn The Other Cheek

Jesus tells us to love other people. He tells us that if someone strikes us on our left cheek, then we should turn and offer them the right cheek too. He is the perfect being. He was able to do this easily, because he knew the path laid out for him.

As Christians, then, how is it that we find it so hard to follow Jesus’ example. We get hurt by someone, and our immediate, gut response is to try and hurt them back. We have to consciously stop and think, before we can make a decision to let a wrong done to us slide.

God made us in his image, and yet we are so different from that image, because we are all so flawed. We all believe ourselves, and our own feelings and needs to be the most important things in the world, often causing us to forget the real, and more important issues.

When a friend only contacts you because they want something, it is easy to get angry and hurt, and to not want to help them. It has happened to me so many times, but God teaches us that we should help them. They are only human too. The fact is, they probably don’t even realise that they’ve hurt you. The best thing to do in that situation, we are told is to calmly tell the person that they have hurt us and explain why, and to help them all the same. The answer, God says, is not to bitch and slander them behind their backs.

Sometimes, in this world, we find it difficult to confront people openly, because we don’t want to upset them, but God wants us all to be better people, and it is only by helping each other that we can truly achieve this, so the next time someone hurts and upsets you, don’t let it fester. Don’t bitch about them behind their backs, but talk to them. Chances are, they didn’t even realise they’d upset you.

Sleep

It’s easy to take it for granted isn’t it? How many hours did you get last night? How many hours do you need each night? Sometimes we think we can get by on so little sleep that we struggle to function in a day. Sometimes, it’s ok if you choose to stay up all night, but what happens when you physically can’t sleep? When you lay in bed at night, awake, tossing and turning, your mind whirring so fast you can’t possibly shut it off. Whay do you do then? The usual stuff doesn’t work. Hot drink, read a book, count sheep…. hmm, well, I don’t need the extra calories, if I read a book I’ll be up all night reading it, and counting sheep, puhlease! Every sheep runs in a different direction, I mean, come on, who in their right minds thought up the notion of counting sheep? As if they would line up neatly and stay still to be counted! So where does that leave the dreamlandically challenged?? Only way I see is medication. Why is it that when things get tough and you feel more tired than ever, that your body seems to decide to withhold the one thing that you need the most? I certainly don’t get it.

Fad Diets

Have you ever stopped to try and count how many fad diets there are out there? There are far too many to count. The blood group diet, the atkins diet, the gi diet, slim fast, weight watchers, rosemary connely diet. There are even companies that will pre prepare food and deliver it to you, for a hefty price. But how many of these diets really work, and work with lasting effects? The truth, very few. If things worked, then there would be far few of these diets around. The truth is, the key to losing weight is a numbers game. Calories in, calories out, and people on these fad diets are just too lazy to crunch the numbers, do a bit of exercise and lose the weight they want to lose. I’ve done it with counting calories and exercise. It takes at most an hour a day. I get to have my treats as long as the numbers add up, and I’m losing weight. No ridiculous detox, no extortionate prices, just simple counting. When are we going to stop these companies from taking our money and our control away. You and only you have control over the weight that you lose and gain! It’s about time that we all take responsibility for our own bodies and choices and stopped relying on random companies who, lets face it, are generally only interested in earning money.

Take Responsibility

It’s a word we hear often. Responsibility. Not one we use that often though. People are quite happy to shirk responsibility if it gets them an easy ride. There aren’t many who will actually stand up and be counted. Imagine if we had national service nowadays. How many people would actually volunteer. It  seems that in this day and age, people have decided that it is better to take the easy option. and in doing so are making the world a worse place. It is time that we all stood up and took responsibility for things in this life, before this world becomes one full of lazy cowards who are unable to even remember what the word responsibility means!

In the style of…

I was set a writing task last week, to write a piece in the style of a famous writer. It was not something I’d ever thought of doing, and have no where near finished it, but found it surprising, how difficult it was, firstly, to decide on a style, and secondly, to actually focus on writing in that style.

I circled through several different options, ranging from Sylvia Plath, to Sue Mayfield, to John Marsden, to Emily Bronte, before finally deciding on Jane Austen. I chose her style, because it is a completely different style to my normal style of writing. It is a classical style, which shows major preoccupation with decorum, etiquette, and behaving in a proper way. Austen uses these conventions, and then presents challenges to them, generally through the voice of her main character. Austen is very socially conscious, and her characters, although central, are almost secondary to the plot. She is not a hysterical writer, and does not focus on the innermost workings of her character’s minds. The idea of experimenting with this style appealed to me for just this reason. I always focus on the internal worlds of my characters, and tend to neglect the external. It will be interesting for me to develop this story, and see if I can change my style or not. Watch this space…

Bank Cock Up

Sometimes I wonder with banks, whether one hand knows what the other is doing. Earlier this week, my mother bought something on ebay. When she tried to pay for it, through paypal, she found that she couldn’t. She tried with my dad’s account, then mine and my best friend’s. All were refused. Turned out that they had taken it upon themselves to decide that it was fraudulent, and block all four cards! It wasn’t until over twenty four hours later, when my card was refused as I was paying for petrol, that I found out they’d blocked it.

Now, I understand safeguards, but to block someone’s card for making an ebay purchase, and then not tell them about it, I think is ridiculous and irresponsible. It was only after forty minutes on the phone that I was able to resolve this. It made me ask whether this would happen every time I made an online purchase for a larger sum of money. It made me question my banking choice. How dare someone decide that a purchase of mine was fraudulent, without even informing me.

While I appreciate vigilance, this purchase was not for a huge sum of money, and was to be shipped to the same address as the account. Surely it wasn’t likely to be that much of a fraud risk when considering this.