Category Archives: Family and Life

Its not all work and play there are matters personal too. In these posts I note those events in my family and life that invite comment.

Carrick Lowland Gathering 2012

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It is June now and that means time for the annual Carrick Lowland Gathering which takes place around the same weekend each year at the Victory Park in the middle of Girvan.  The Gathering as it is known has been a fixture of life in Girvan for a long time and it encompasses a lot of fun and festivity.  This year was no different on that score but it was an improvement on last year.

Throwing the Hammer at the Lowland Gathering!

A sunny Sunday lunchtime saw the Syme clan arrive and while I trotted about and had a few chats my good lady took some photos, the best two are in this posting.  The Gathering has a highland games event that includes hammer throwing, Highland Dancing and it has a Pipe Band championship too.  Alongside this are other smaller events and charities and a number of fairground rides and many stalls selling everything from traditional sweets and clothing to local wares like tartans and curling stones.  There are also workshops on how to dance and play the drums and pipes.

The Poet enjoying the Trampoline! (He is jumping, it just looks like he is tied up in the ropes)

Unlike last year it was dry and sunny which I think increased the turnout to more than two thousand all in and it meant more traders turned up too; there were no spare pitches left.  The pricing of everything was reasonable too and as always it was great to see the town busy and the children having fun.

Good Times!

GBS

Prometheus Movie 2012 – Review

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Space Jockey Alien from the back

I went to see Prometheus last night at the new Odeon cinema in Kilmarnock.  Due to work commitments I do not have a lot of time to spend just now on writing my normal longer posts but I will just say that the film was brilliant!

I knew nothing of the plot and nothing of the film beyond rumours and trailers so I went with an open mind to a late evening showing.  The film really is a forerunner to Alien and is very much set in the same universe with many nods to similar characters, technology, species and dialogue as well in the other films.  It helped that I re-watched Alien the night before and it was the ‘space jockey’ that I went to see the film as I have always wanted to know who the ‘big dude in the chair’ was.  Without spoiling it for those of you yet too see it I will say that it left my head battered and bruised as a viewing experience.  It was visceral, it was emotional and it went at a hellish fast pace too.  Many new questions are raised but you get to see the ‘origin’ of the ‘Alien’ and also to see something of the Jockey’s culture and abilities.  Visual effects are terrific but it is down to the director to deliver a first rate movie where plot and characterisation mean way more than CGI ‘bugs and ships’ and Ridley Scott did just that.

The movie also shot and featured Scotland and the landscape of Skye among other places.  Lovely to see it on the big screen.

Prometheus is a great movie which I highly recommend.  I do not agree with the 15 age certificate though, it should have been an 18 rating.  Go see it!

Oh and as always why do supposedly smart people not take care and precautions and insist on trying to touch everything with acid for blood… 🙂

GBS

Goodbye Grandmother

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This has been a sad week for me.  A week of loss and of reflection upon the passing of time.  My paternal grandmother has died and with that a permanent and towering fixture in my life has gone.

My grandmother was a quiet woman who held herself with a lot of dignity even in her declining years when she left her city of Glasgow and came here to Girvan to be nearer the family so that we could look after her.  That was nearly five years ago and in that time I saw her most days and got to know her far better than I had as a boy.  It also meant she got to meet her three great grandchildren and see them regularly as they grew from tiny babies.

Cathy Syme and Gavin Syme in the 1980’s

I will remember her as a strong person who held my hand all those years ago and learned me the manners that helped make me the man I am.  From her vantage point of a birth in the year 1919 she had seen the world change almost out of all recognition from when she was a girl in the roaring twenties.

Goodbye Grandmother Syme.

GBS

Five Pounds for a Week – The End

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Well that is it.  Five Days on a Pound a day for food.  It is now over…

For the last five days I have had, to start with, a little bundle of golden pound coins in my pocket and nothing else.  No other coins, no bank notes, no cards, no cheques.  Refer to my last post.  I think I managed my aim which was to ‘feel’ how it would be to have so little to spend on food but I will be the first to admit that a week was not long enough for a proper experiment.   I find myself feeling hungry but more used to it.  However knowing that it would end made today easier and knowing it would end meant it was not ‘real’ either.  Plus the sheer amount of heat here today put me off eating!

Custard for 17p Excellent!

Bread is very expensive compared to other staples

So in conclusion my previous post on this gave my thoughts on how I felt eating a lot less with the short answer being not good and also having to spend a lot more time and effort finding affordable items and getting to the reduced items in the evenings in supermarkets.  However it can be done assuming you can put about ten pounds aside before you start to get bigger value packs of eggs, grain and so on.  Also it assumes that you do not need alcohol, cigarettes or caffeine as these are just too expensive.

Oddly enough though overall I actually feel physically better after doing this.  Lighter on my feet so to say.  Detoxed and Trimmer.  It could be the heat talking though.

Taking back to the start the notion that in this day and age working families and children in Scotland are going hungry is just not funny and its just not on.  I think now I can identify with that a little more and it makes me just a little bit more angry too.

GBS

Blood and Badges

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Ten Good Deeds

Good deeds are their own reward and that is the case for my good lady wife.  But I feel the need for more, the need to sing her praises.  For you see she cares greatly for not only her own family but for the welfare of others too.  This care is shown many ways with her volunteering at the local school and nursery and playgroup whenever help is needed and also raising funds for charity but what impresses me most is her insistence in giving blood.

The Scottish Blood Transfusion Service comes to Girvan every now and again and my good lady is always near the front of the que.  This is despite not being able to donate for several years due to being pregnant and being a new mother too three times in the last decade.  She donated last night and came home with a little certificate and badge that you can see above.  She did not want a fuss to be made but I insisted and here we are.

Love you!  🙂

GBS

Five Pounds for a Week – Half Way Point

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This week I am trying to live on five pounds for a week (monday to friday) for food.  You can learn about this by going to my previous post.  We are now at the half way point so what am I thinking.  Well mainly I am thinking…hungry, hungry.

I have managed to stick to the budget but I do have some thoughts about this which you should be able to hear over my rumbling tummy!

46p for a week's cereal choice

  • Finding and choosing food takes quite a while.  Instead of a bank note and ‘give me that please’ it is a matter of scanning the shelves looking for the tightest price you can.  This often means really bad value as the only packs I can afford are the smallest ones so I can buy something but the amount I get is tiny compared to what  could get if I had more money for the same item such as Pasta.
  • Variety.  I am already bored of a meat free diet of mainly bread and pasta.
  • Vices.  I do not smoke or drink much alcohol which is great since I can afford neither.  The lack of caffine is getting to me too.
  • Size Matters.  I am not a small fellow, at about six foot and two eighty pounds in weight it needs more fuel for my engine!
  • Reduced Rack.  Major supermarkets reduce the cost of food in the late afternoon and evenings and you can get some really good deals with items dated that day for consumption being some 80-90% off their normal prices.  I just have to time it correctly and get in first!
  • Work and Temper.  I am starting to feel a bit cold while sitting at the computer and I have a lot less desire for complex tasks than normal plus my mood is not great as I am constantly hungry.
  • Avoid the urge to eat once a day.  Spread the food, do not eat it all at once.  Made that mistake!

Jamming for 35p. Taste's fine!

More on Friday…roll on the weekend!  🙂

GBS

Live for a Week on Five Pounds

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All the Money I have for Five Days Food

I was quite moved by the newspaper article that I outlined last week here.   So to that end I decided on Sunday that I would try and live on a pound a day for food for one week (that is Monday to Friday).  It will only be me, not my wife and children and it will not include petrol or other payments (otherwise I will not be able to get to work and I will be the ‘bad guy’ for making the kids live on 25p each a day!).  I will post a couple of times to let you all know how its going.

At the moment  I am about to head out to the super market to see if I can spend my remaining day’s budget on some reduced food…waste not want not!

GBS

Going Hungry in 21st century Scotland

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Front Page of the Ayrshire Post this week

I do my bit to support the local economy here in South Ayrshire, Scotland.  Part of this is to buy a copy of the Ayrshire Post almost every week even though it is more than half made up of adverts and most of the news in it is…well…rather boring.  But this week the front page told me something interesting, you can see it above, about a subject I had thought would not make much of an impact where I live.  It is true that Girvan is counted as one of the poorer parts of the county (but when your county include the very affulent town of Ayr and with in Doonfoot and Alloway…land of Robert Burns, this is no surprise) but I really had not realised that Children would go hungry here.

While the article concerns another part of the country it does make clear that Girvan will be included in ‘Food Bank’ schemes that are being rolled out.  It also makes it clear that it is not only ‘people of chaotic lifestyles’ (we know what that means) but normal working families who are suffering.  It seems that even with the availability of what I would count as cheap but decent food in supermarkets (many large items for less then one pound) which would allow one to live for a week for not much money it is not enough.  I do not want to go into the reason for this but it seems perhaps unemployment and misuse of funds in budgeting results in those people having this problem.

I have three children and I will admit that a large and ever larger portion of my income goes on food for them and for myself and my good lady.  I do not smoke or drink much in the way of alcohol, nor do a I gamble (how boring am I!) and aside from spending money on the bills, the car and on wargaming (Shussh!  Got to have my latest little metal men!) I do not expend money on many other things.   Even so I do find it at times a stretch to keep the little ones in top class caviar and champaign.  So perhaps without an iron rule on the purse strings it is easy to slip.

This makes me think.  Would I be able to live (just me, I will not inflict my schemes on the family!) on just one pound a day for a week for food?  The amount many claim is the minimum per person in the UK.  I will give this some thought.

GBS

The Awards of Youth

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Awards for May 2012

Every couple of months the local primary school which my children attend gives prizes out at an assembly in front of the entire school.  Last week it was the turn of the younger classes in which ‘The Thinker’ and ‘The Poet’ are members.  Both won prizes which you can see above.  These prizes are based on the accumulation of ‘stars’.  Stars can be earned for top marks in class, full attendance, prompt homework and so on.  The note book is a good prize achieved, by my estimate, about 40% of a class while the tin star is a very good prize with only 20% of a class getting one.  The paper behind them is a note from a teacher affirming ‘The Poet’ as the top lad in his class.

I am very proud of the two of them.  Solid little lads.  Five Pounds each for making the grade.  Dad 🙂

GBS

 

Assembled for the Avengers!

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I had promised my eldest that I would take him to the Avengers movie when it came out.  I made this promise several years ago after a brief trailer at the end of his first Iron Man movie experience..he remembered and now it was time to collect!  He even wore his Avengers t-shirt!

So off we went to the local cinema in Ayr.  Not to be a ‘moaning mini’ or anything but by the gods going to the movies in the UK is no longer a cheap experience.  I will not list numbers but if the movie had been on DVD on new release we could have bought three copies for the price of seeing it in ‘kinda 3D but not really’.   But enough of that..what was the film actually like?

Excited to see the film dad!

Honestly it was very good.  It had a decent plot which moved at a good speed with a few twists in it.  Every hero was given development and screen time.  It retained a sense of humour which is sadly lacking in a lot of hollywood films now (it reminded me of the banter between Han Solo and Luke Skywalker at times) and unlike previous efforts the Hulk character was very good indeed.  I will not spoil surprises but it was a shame that the alien army for the big fight scene at the end was the same dumb cookie cutter foe that was almost identical to those in ‘Battleship’ and ‘Skyline’ and ‘Battle Los Angeles’ with a change of hair cut only in some places.

So we gave it an 8/10 or for me…worth the effort of going!

GBS

p.s.  This post is a bit late, we actually went on opening night this week but its taken me until now to get this up!