YOU
As
you consider your New Year's resolutions...
Cheese dreams to you!
We love music more than ever
January – and time to go back to work. What do you
want in your office?
A PARENT'S PRAYER
What will you leave behind?
2006 – a year to look behind you?
They really were the 'good old days'
Do you have a secret guru?
As
you consider your New Year's resolutions...
Philippians
The
road to success is not straight. There is a curve called Failure,
a loop called Confusion, speed bumps called Friends, red lights
called Enemies, caution lights called Family. You will have flats
called Jobs. But, if you have a spare called Determination, an
engine called Perseverance, insurance called Faith, a driver
called Jesus, you will make it to a place called Success.
Cheese
dreams to you!
Editor:
this is a fun story – would a number of your readers be
willing to try the same test locally, and report on what happens
for your church magazine? If you do the survey, the British
Cheese Board may be able to give you some tips on how they did
it, and your local newspaper would most likely run the story.
Eating
cheese before bedtime will help you have a good night's sleep
– and choosing different types of cheese will give you
different kinds of dream, according to a new study.
The
British Cheese Board held a survey in which a large number of
people were given a 20g piece of cheese half an hour before
bedtime for a week. 72% said they slept well, and 67 %
remembered their dreams.
None
recorded having had nightmares, which is what a lot of people
believe cheese will give you. Some nutritionists believe
that this may be because one of the amino acids in cheese –
tryptophan – has been shown to reduce stress and induce
sleep.
Here
are some of the results:
Stilton:
85 per cent of females had some of the most unusual dreams of the
whole study
Cheddar:
65 per cent of all tasters dreamt about celebrities
Red
British
Brie: all female participants had relaxing dreams; most of
the males had cryptic dreams
We
love music more than ever
The
popularity of music is surging. Nowadays nearly half of Britons (48
per cent) listen to music more often than they were a year ago,
according to research from Lloyds TSB.
The
most popular places and times to listen to music are: in
the car (62%); at the weekend (52%); after work at home (41%);
first thing in the morning when getting ready for work (35%); at
work (22%) and on an iPod (8%).
Why
the dramatic increase? Some people believe it may be due to
our love with technology, as nearly one in ten of us now listens
to music on an iPod. TV is losing out to music, as people find
music more relaxing, and they can do other things while they
listen.
More
than a third of us (39%) listen to music for between 30 minutes
and two hours every day, and 22 per cent of us listen for up to
five hours daily. Almost one in ten of us (8 per cent)
listens to music for more than five hours every day.
January
– and time to go back to work. What do you want in
your office?
In
an ideal world, 35% of us would like a sea view from the office
window, 26% countryside, and 10% mountains. Only 4% of us want a
better view of the office and of our team!
Personal
space (39%), climate control (24%) and daylight (21%) top the
list of must-haves for office happiness.
Office
Unhappiness is caused by: IT problems (36%), colleagues'
voices (19%), gossip (15%), cheap furniture (9%), music/radio (7%)
and bad coffee (6%).
Family
photographs are fine (98% approve); celebrity pin-ups are not (64%
disapprove).
The
survey was carried out by architects Gensler.
A
PARENT'S PRAYER
Now
I lay me down to sleep,
I pray my sanity to keep.
For
if some peace I do not find,
I'm pretty sure I'll lose my mind.
I
pray I find a little quiet,
Far from the daily family riot.
May
I lie back and not have to think
About what they're stuffing down the sink,
Or
who they're with, or where they're at
And what they're doing to the cat.
I
pray for time all to myself
(did something just fall off a shelf?)
To
cuddle in my nice, soft bed
(Oh no, another goldfish dead!)
Some
silent moments for goodness sake
(Did I just hear a window break?)
And
that I need not cook or clean
(well heck, I've got the right to dream)
Yes
now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray my wits about me keep,
But
as I look around I know,
I must have lost them long ago!
What
will you leave behind?
Are
you going to meet lots of people this month? What will you
leave behind you?
Every
time we go somewhere, meet someone, or say something, we make an
impression. Most people leave good feelings behind,
although there are notable exceptions!
Such
as the man who said to his wife at the end of a difficult party:
"I like lights – I like street lights, I like fairy
lights...and best of all, I like tail-lights!"
A
good influence can be so different. Sir James Galway was
speaking in a church in
You
can be a good influence on others this coming year, if what is
inside of you is good.
2006
– a year to look behind you?
A
joke is told of a snobbish English aristocrat who wants to put a
chirpy American 'in his place' at a dinner party. So she
details at great length how her family can be traced back to
Elizabethan times, and then condescends to ask how far back the
man could go with his ancestors... The little man thinks for a
moment and smiles: "Well, before Abraham it gets a bit hazy..."
Not
many of us can go back to biblical times, or even Elizabethan
times in tracing our family tree, but have you ever wondered what
even your more recent ancestors did with their lives?
Discovering
your family tree can be great fun – and sometimes a bit of a
revelation! Here are some tips to help you get started:
1.
Start by talking to the older members of your present family
about their memories. This may give you interesting stories
about your ancestors and provide facts that you would never
discover from records. However, memory is not always
reliable, and even close relatives can give wrong or misleading
information. Family Bibles or other documents may contain
useful dates or information.
2.
Birth, marriage and death certificates. These cover the
years of civil registration from 1837 onwards. Consult the
General Register Office index for births, marriages, and deaths,
available at some country buildings, some large libraries, the
Church of the Latter Day Saints' Family History Centres and the
Family Records Centre in London.
3.
Parish registers: these record baptisms, marriages and burials
before 1837, as well as after.
4.
Censuses 1841 – 1891: these provide useful information about
households. The 1881 census has been indexed nationally
– available from some libraries and register offices.
5.
Local family history societies. These can often provide practical
help and advice.
6.
The internet – there is a wealth of information available
and many family names have their own websites.
They
really were the 'good old days'
Most
grandparents believe that financial stress, looser family ties
and materialistic children make it more difficult to raise a
family now than it was 30 years ago.
And
their rosy view of the past, dubbed a 'Tupperware time warp' is
shared by the majority of today's parents. One in four
parents today admits that they do not give their children the
attention and discipline they had as children because they are
too busy working.
These
are some of the results of a recent survey held for Saga magazine.
It seems that despite today's labour-saving devices, such as
dishwashers and microwave ovens, and the replacement of towelling
nappies with disposables, grandparents believes that it was still
easier to raise children back in the 1960s. Two thirds of
parents agreed.
The
children themselves have changed, it seems: they are far
more materialistic today, and have much higher expectations
– driving their parents to spend huge amounts of money on
them.
Do
you have a secret guru?
Do
you have a guru? Come on, be honest: you probably do.
They are everywhere these days: the life coaches, the super-nannies,
the makeover experts, the super-gardeners, the celebrity chefs,
the fashion police.
These
people come into our houses via our televisions (mostly) and tell
us how to run our lives: where to live, what car to drive,
what colour to paint our houses, what to eat, what to wear, what
to do and not do with our children, what to do with our gardens....
In
fact, a leading academic believes that the nation is now in
'thrall to a new priesthood of gurus'. Professor Frank
Furedi, professor of sociology at the
Professor
Furedi says: "It is so sad when you see grown-up people on
TV needing someone to take them shopping for clothes. There
is this myth that we live at the end of an age of deference, but
we are entirely subservient to unacknowledged forms of authority."