Jenjie

The Gruffalo is the favourite book of children and parents alike, according to a survey. For a book which was first published just 11 years ago, it has won a cherished place on the nation's bookshelves. So why does it strike such a chord? Life can be scary, life can be dangerous. All sorts of threats lie in wait for you, even if you have done nothing wrong. Should you manage to get yourself out of one dangerous spot, another worse one might be in store for you. And that most frightening thing you can possibly think of? It might come true. At first sight this might seem to be unlikely territory for a modern classic for the under-fives, though perhaps better suited to a cautionary tale about veering from the path. But this is no moral warning: Julia Donaldson's mouse, the central character of the Gruffalo, doesn't do anything to attract his increasingly sinister predators. He is what he is - potential dinner. The mouse, for anyone who hasn't had the chance to enter his world of terror, walks through a wood. In turn a fox, then an owl and then a snake, all entreat him to join them for something to eat, rather in the way that Hannibal Lecter might. Dinner guests Nasty, dissembling creatures, who are only dissuaded from using force by the threat of something bigger and nastier than them, in the form of the creature the mouse makes up on the spot as the worst his imagination can muster. The mouse, he says, is about to meet this beast, complete with its poisonous warts, terrible teeth, turned-out toes, orange eyes, black tongue, purple prickles on his back; the dreadful, terrifying and - as far as the mouse is concerned, utterly fictional - Gruffalo. His putative dining companions flee at the thought of something much grimmer than them. Sighing with relief, the mouse figures that the forest isn't so scary after all. But then he stumbles on a real-life actual Gruffalo, as ugly and as hungry as he imagined. Clutching at the only straw left for him, the mouse convinces the Gruffalo that he, the mouse, is the "scariest creature in this wood", and takes him to meet the fox and others. Their subsequent fear is of the Gruffalo, but the mouse convinces the beast that it's he, the rodent, they are scared of. The Gruffalo swallows the notion and concludes that he too has something to fear. He flees, leaving the mouse in the role so familiar to children's stories - the victorious underdog. Second helpings Children find their own aspects of the story to be fascinated by. And adults, faced with nightly demands for repeated readings, have no shortage of ways of seeing the inner depths of the tale. It's about courage and overcoming bullies. Or it's about the nature of fear, where even the most powerful can feel scared. Or it's a story about the power of spin, PR and chutzpah. Or it's a story about the brutal nature of a dog-eat-dog society. Or, even, a radical vegetarian manifesto. And yet most satisfyingly it's a tale of human manners. The key realisation for the mouse is not the existence of threats, but that his wits can save him. Thinking more quickly than the others, reacting to their misunderstandings, he pulls an almighty confidence trick. The Gruffalo falls for it, and believes that he could end up in a crumble, lunch for a mere rodent. In one way, the Gruffalo is not wrong. This little mouse, the smallest and least powerful of all the creatures, but whose wits are sharpening by the minute, is indeed a force to be reckoned with. And it's there that the parent truly meets their child. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11584795

The elegant writing style of novelist Jane Austen may have been the work of her editor, an academic has claimed. Professor Kathryn Sutherland of Oxford University reached her conclusion while studying 1,100 original handwritten pages of Austen's unpublished writings. The manuscripts, she states, feature blots, crossing outs and "a powerful counter-grammatical way of writing". She adds: "The polished punctuation and epigrammatic style we see in Emma and Persuasion is simply not there." Professor Sutherland of the Faculty of English Language and Literature claims her findings refute the notion of Austen as "a perfect stylist". It suggests, she continues, that someone else was "heavily involved" in the editing process. She believes that person to be William Gifford, an editor who worked for Austen's publisher John Murray II. The research formed part of an initiative to create an online archive of all of Austen's handwritten fiction manuscripts. The three-year project - in which King's College London, the Bodleian Library in Oxford and the British Library in London were involved - is due to be launched on 25 October. Professor Sutherland, an Austen authority, said studying her unpublished manuscripts gave her "a more intimate appreciation" of the author's talents. The manuscripts, she went on, "reveal Austen to be an experimental and innovative writer, constantly trying new things." They also show her "to be even better at writing dialogue and conversation than the edited style of her published novels suggest." Jane Austen (1775-1817) completed six novels in her lifetime, two of which were published posthumously. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11610489

no more Primani for me & Sam. will be even cheaper to shop at the Trafford Centre instead, and its indoors so no cold, wet, weather.

Passengers using the Greater Manchester Metrolink network will see their tram fares rise by twice the rate of inflation in the new year. Ticket prices are set to rise by an average of 6% next year, with some fares rising by 7.3%. Metrolink bosses said the extra cash would pay for improving and expanding the tram network. They said fares have been frozen for the past two years while "major improvements" were made for passengers. Councillor Ian Macdonald, Chair of Greater Manchester Integrated Transport Authority (GMITA), said: "For passengers, there is no ideal time to increase fares but any change will always be the least it can be to meet the growing costs of running, improving and expanding the network. "Members of the authority have considered the proposals in detail and we believe that they represent value for money, while also ensuring that the network can continue to compete with other modes in offering popular, good quality services." The price hike means an annual season ticket for an adult, from Altrincham to Manchester, will go up from £875 to £930. In the majority of cases, an adult peak-return fare will increase by 20p and a peak-return for a child by 10p. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-11612792

was only throwing the question into the debate :p coz I'm fairly certain The Hardest Part wasn't a uk single and I had to get an export edition from HMV to complete Ian's collection. and that doesn't have any special listings on coldplay.com I just think we need to be careful about criticism of The Oracle. its a fun thing to have and we wouldn't want to lose it because we took all the fun out of it for the person doing the job.

Coldplay.com has it down as a European Release, could that be why its not technically a single?

I've just picked uo Persuasion by Jane Austen again. I'm a little lost though because I've had a gap of 11 months in between sessions :lol: don't want to start from the beginning because I only have about 50 pages left

i always thought it was a jewish thing. i don't know much about the reasons they would have it done.

if he's managed to get Sam drinking out of a sippy cup I'm definitely off in a sulk :lol:

ok mr, how do you do it? i can rarely get him to sleep during the day

because women are better at talking about woman's stuff than men are about men stuff?

not always, think it depends from woman to woman. a friend of mine is still breastfeeding but her periods cam back when the baby was about 3/4 months old

Final figures for Twitter experiment Figures have been released at the end of Greater Manchester Police's 24 hours of publishing details of every incident on Twitter. Between 5am on Thursday 14 October 2010 and 5am, today, Friday 15 October, the force has dealt with 3205 incidents and posted details of every single one on Twitter. The calls have ranged from those that are not police matters, including someone who called to say there was a rat in the house, and that the cat may be responsible, and a woman reporting a man shouting "you're gorgeous" at her, to serious offences including injuries to a child. Officers have arrested 341 people in the same time period and 126 of those remain in custody. The demonstration has seen Greater Manchester Police's Twitter profile go from having 3,000 followers in the two years since it was set up to more than 17,000 today. Many of the followers have posted comments about the exercise. One said: ⿿What comes across from these tweets is how much the police are involved in the community and how much they are relied upon.⿝ Other comments included ⿿I applaud the decision to open up your world to us ⿿ it was fascinating⿝, and ⿿they did more in the last five minutes than I thought they would in a whole day.⿝ The tweets have also showed how officers need to identify links between the incidents they are currently dealing with and earlier crimes, often in a different area. At about 11.50pm on Thursday 14 October 2010, a post office on Burnley Lane in Chadderton was ram-raided and cash was stolen. Later, at about 2.20am on Friday 15 October 2010, a report was made of a car driving dangerously in Blackley. The back of the car, a Volkswagen Toureg, was badly damaged. The vehicle was abandoned on Brockford Drive. A link with the earlier ram raid is now being investigated. Another significant incident saw officers investigating after a woman was raped in Manchester city centre on Wednesday 13 October. Chief Constable Peter Fahy said: ⿿The reaction we have received proves that the public perception of modern day policing was removed from the reality that my officers face. "We have tried to give a serious message about transparency and how we get that out to the public. "As well as serious crimes, we deal with many social issues and other incidents that the public are quite surprised about. "Through this experience we get a better picture that crime is connected to our social issues such as drug use and relationship breakdowns. "Many of the things we deal with are about the same people: missing people who have been missing 60 or 70 times before or repeat offenders putting demands on public services." TWITTER INFORMATION You can follow the information on Twitter by using the following three account names @gmp24_1 @gmp24_2 @gmp24_3 Due to the restrictions set by Twitter we will be alternating between the three accounts throughout the day so you will have to follow all three to get the full picture. Or you can go directly to Twitter to see them at: http://twitter.com/gmp24_1 http://twitter.com/gmp24_2 http://twitter.com/gmp24_3 These accounts will be backed up by the corporate account (@gmpolice), which will we use to promote each of the accounts so that people know which to follow for the latest updates. You will also be able to see all the Tweets on our website gmp.police.uk http://www.gmp.police.uk/mainsite/pages/68FF568654153DA6802577BD001FD68A

they're not using names & addresses. just giving an idea of what the call was about and a location.

I'm very intrigued that Greater Manchester police are spending 24 hrs tweeting all the calls they receive (999 & other). Apparently its to give people an idea of what they have to deal with on a daily basis. twitter accounts @gmp24_1, @gmp24_2, @gmp24_3 and @gmp24_4 Haven't been able to check it out yet today so going to have a look see now.

I'm on the fence! On the one hand bits of it sounded really good but on the other the ooooh's were hideous and the backing track was horrific. but at least they remembered the words unlike Mary's attempt at Fix you in the judge's houses bit.

I forgot to go & buy my ticket :(

no coz I have to go out a qaurter of the way through it on wed/thurs/fri :(

Taking on A-ha classic By Liam Allen Entertainment reporter, BBC News The flickering, comic book-style animation of 1985 video Take On Me, by Norwegian trio A-ha, was a defining moment in the history of music promos. Twenty-five years after the song entered the UK top 40, the combination of quirky video and insanely catchy song - driven by Magne Furuholmen's killer keyboard hook - remains the perfect pop package. It was written after Furuholmen and guitarist Pal Waaktaar - of Norwegian band Bridges - invited dashing acquaintance Morten Harket to go to London to form a new group. They had yet to hear him sing. "I went off with the other two to Pal's parents' house, we were still kids more or less, and in his room there was a shabby keyboard and a really bad acoustic guitar," remembers Harket, now 51. "And I said, 'play me something, just let's start somewhere'. "That riff of Magne's is the first thing I heard and I knew immediately that this was a big song." That riff, coupled with Harket's falsetto plea to take him on, were to ultimately propel the first song they wrote together to number one in the US Billboard singles chart. With a little help from that video. The trio - who are to split after the release of a greatest hits album and a series of live dates - moved from Norway to London in January 1983, signing with Warner Bros in December. But the release of a formative version of the song, complete with an early low-budget video, failed to chart. They returned to the studio, this time with Barbara Dickson and Cliff Richard producer Alan Tarney, "and did Take On Me the way you know it". The rest is history," says Harket. "It was picked up by the Warners people in the US and they then introduced us to the video director, Steve Barron." "Warners said they had these young good-looking guys from Norway with a good pop song and that they really believed in them," says Barron, whose CV included Ant Music, by Adam and the Ants, and Michael Jackson's Billie Jean. He was given a big budget as well as a rare commodity in promo making - time. "They said, 'we'll give you as long as you want and we'll release it when you've finished it'," says Barron, 54. Fleeting style Warner Bros in Los Angeles hooked him up with US animator Mike Patterson whose five-minute student film Commuter had made a big impression with label executives. It was made using the rotoscope technique - drawing over live action frame by frame - and featured the fleeting, black-and-white living comic book style that was to become Take On Me's calling card. "Rotoscoping uses live action motion but my drawing style anyway was very loose and sketchy - no-one had really drawn anything like that style before," says Patterson, 53, now an animation lecturer at the University of Southern California. "Rotoscope was usually done in a dry kind of way, very static or very sterile looking. "But mine is more about just deriving the motion and creating a feeling of energy." 3,000 drawings A concept was devised by Steve Barron, based on a comic book he read as a young child featuring "guys racing against each other on motorbikes and sidecars". A girl reading a comic book in a greasy spoon cafe - played by Bunty Bailey of dance troupe Hot Gossip - is attracted to a sketched version of Harket before she finds herself sucked into the animated world. The pair are pursued by violent motorcyclists before the singer breaks out of the animation and the pair are finally reunited in the real world. The band and actors were shot on film before the tapes were handed to Mike Patterson who, over 16 weeks, sketched some 3,000 drawings over individual frames. "I knew that it was going to look good but I had no idea it was going to be in heavy rotation on MTV for a year," says Patterson, who worked on the video with wife Candace Reckinger. US hit The most memorable scenes feature Harket and the girl looking in and out of the real and animated worlds through a mirror. Patterson, who was 28 when he worked on Take On Me, says the video was "partly responsible for the revival of experimentation in animation" while Barron says it was one of his proudest achievements. "Often in videos, you didn't really get to work an idea through properly and I knew with this one, because we were given full time, that we would really be able to do it," adds Barron. Harket says the video was "unlike anything else and it gave the song the type of exposure that it needed". "The video bought us time because the song was not an easy, immediate pop hit." As Harket says, the song itself - with its simplistic chorus, synthesized drums and mock slap bass line - "has never been off American radios". "I think it's quirky enough to be lasting because your other types of hit songs, in a way, fit so well," says Harket whose band are playing classic album Hunting High and Low in its entirety at London's Royal Albert Hall on Friday night. "You get too used to them and you don't hear them anymore so they fade away." Despite the success of the video and sales of more than 500,000 copies in the UK, Take On Me sat at number two for three weeks behind The Power Of Love, by Jennifer Rush. That the song only reached number one in the UK when it was covered by long-forgotten boy band A1, in 2000, is sacrilege. So needless to say, it's the original video which remains a regular fixture of music video channels. "What's crazy for me is that I have students who were born after the video and they say it was their favourite video," says Patterson, now 53. "I can go anywhere on the earth, I've been in so many different continents, and wherever I go, everybody goes, 'I love that video'." A-ha's greatest hits album, 25, is out now. The band are playing a series of live dates in Europe throughout the rest of the year. WHAT HAPPENED NEXT? A-ha's next video, The Sun Always Shines On TV, begins with a continuation of Take On Me Morten Harket and model Bunty Bailey's love story comes to an end as he turns back into his animated self A-ha won eight MTV VMAs in 1986 - six of them for Take On Me. The haul was matched by Lady Gaga this year The Museum of Modern Art, in New York, has put the Take On Me video into its permanent collection Animators Mike Patterson and Candace Reckinger went on to direct Suzanne Vega's Luka and Paula Abdul's Opposites Attract Number two UK album, Hunting High and Low, featured hits Take On Me, The Sun Always Shines On TV, Train of Thought and the title track Steve Barron, who helmed films including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, has directed A-ha's new song, Butterfly Butterfly - his first pop video for 14 years. He made "about 120" in the 80s http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11485702

British scientist Robert Edwards, the man who devised the fertility treatment IVF, has been awarded this year's Nobel prize for medicine. His efforts in the 1950s, 60s and 70s led to the birth of the world's first "test tube baby" in July 1978. Since then more than four million babies have been born following IVF. The prize committee said his achievements had made it possible to treat infertility, a medical condition affecting 10% of all couples worldwide. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11465715

sounds like you had a fab night, Pete & Anna :D as for McFly they were in a film with Lindsey Lohan. forget what its called but she's dead lucky, meets some guy, somehow loses her luck & it ends up with the guy, she ends up with his job in a bolwing alley where McFly perform, and somehow along the way she gets them a recording deal.

who is she? who IS she? think Ian may now be glad he's not going. but McFly are playing? meh!

is even more jealous :(

I wanna gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo :( enjoy yourselves :D and have at least 1 bottle of champagne for me :lol:

yup, they swallow the amniotic fluid so I guess thats how it happens.