Picture Yourself There

It's half term - Go Ape!

A frightening prospect has been hanging over mums and dads across the land recently, filling them with no little trepidation. No, it’s not time for parents’ evening, and it’s ages until the school’s three-hour Christmas bonanza (featuring the obligatory performance from the beginners’ violin group). No, if you’ve got a youngster running riot - or moping, depending on age - around your house you’ll all know by now that half term has arrived, and you’ll probably be racking your brains as to how to keep them occupied and out of trouble for the next week.

Well, you could keep the little monkeys amused with Go Ape!, which takes place at a number of forest locations all over Britain. Devised by an ex-army officer and his wife, kids can tire themselves out in treetop escapades with rope ladders, bridges and zip slides, all up to 40 feet above the ground. This is an unusual and exhilarating day out which is also very popular – so booking in advance is essential. Choose from locations such as Thetford Forest in East Anglia to Sherwood Pines in Notts: full details here.

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Baggy Trousers ban, Opalocka

If your fashion sense is somewhat casual, you’d better smarten up before taking a trip to Opalocka in Florida. News this week, it was reported that this is one of at least eight states in the US where officials are placing a legal ban on saggy pants. The reason? Well, just as in the UK hoodies are clearly responsible for teens turning to a life of crime, slack, erm, slacks are to blame for rising crime rates in these areas of the states. Obviously.

Tim Holmes, councillor, explains: ‘Kids going around wearing pants below their butts is not decent. It frightens pensioners’. While we at Picture Yourself There aren’t sure that pants are entirely to blame for the wider social implications, we do know one good reason to ban them anyway: they look stupid.

Crime caused by baggy trousers? That’s just Madness.

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Halloween, Santa Monica Boulevard

Credited to Jeremy Price

Halloween’s one of those funny festivals – some countries love it, and others really can’t see what all the fuss is about. In the UK for instance, all it usually amounts to is having eggs thrown at your house when you suggest that the visiting trick-or-treaters’ costumes don’t quite warrant your entire stash of Quality Street (oh, come on, you don’t really believe they deliberately dressed up as ‘hoodies’). In the US, however, they really do get into the spirit (geddit? Ahem).

So why not take a trip down to Santa Monica Boulevard, where you’ll find the biggest – and most excitable - gathering of ghosts and ghouls this side of death’s door. Around half a million people will dress up to celebrate Halloween in a carnival style, and will party way beyond the witching hour.

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Ochi Day, Greece

You know our motto at Picture Yourself There: every day’s a school day. And you can prepare for something of a history lesson this morning as we give you the lowdown on Ochi Day, a national holiday for Greece which falls on 27th October. On this day in 1940, the Greek dictator Metaxas was issued an ultimatum from Mussolini’s ambassadors which threatened war unless Italian troops were allowed to occupy areas of Greek territory. Metaxas delivered his response, ‘ochi’: ‘no’.

Well, so says the urban legend, anyway. To be fair, it was supposedly 4am when all this was going on, so he probably wasn’t feeling all that talkative at the time (who is before a coffee and a bagel?). Student parades take place to this day (is there any occasion students won’t commemorate with a march?), with the boulevards of Athens grinding to a halt as the people celebrate. Take a trip to Syntagma square to join in the fun.

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Oldest Painting in the World, Aleppo Museum

Credited to: Syrialooks

A very interesting painting discovered in the Syrian countryside has just been excavated, and while the red and black geometric pattern isn’t exactly Van Gogh, its creator was working with some fairly primitive tools – after all, it was made around 11,000 years ago.

The French archaeological team who made the discovery have estimated that the piece comes from around 9,000BC. We guess that, when you’re working with burnt hematite and crushed limestone, your artistic possibilities are bound to be somewhat restricted, but this image is still very powerful. This incredible relic will be on display at the Aleppo Museum as of next year.

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Turner Prize - A restrospective

It’s a little bit like that crazy auntie of yours who comes round every Christmas, wearing stripy stockings and shouting over the Queen’s speech: perennially controversial and a touch abrasive, but nothing less than an institution. The Turner Prize, the one event in the art world guaranteed to get everyone talking, is looking back at its 23-year history this month, with an exhibition of the best (and worst) entries since the competition began.

So, you can take another look at Damien Hirst’s famous ‘Mother and Child, Divided’ (or, more prosaically, the one with the cow in formaldehyde). Likewise, Tracey Emin’s ‘My Bed’ is on show, a work that will undoubtedly provoke thoughts either on a) our own private insecurities and imperfections, or b) the fact that, compared to this one, our own bedrooms really are quite tidy.

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Fashion Rocks, Royal Albert Hall

OK. If you grew up in the seventies or eighties, the concept of fashion and music existing side by side is not an easy one to swallow. Take Abba, for instance. Cracking harmonies – shocking threads (and, boys and girls, those dodgy barnets didn’t help). In the decades that brought you everything from Adam Ant to David Bowie, you may look back and think that while the music was great, the outfits left a little to be desired.

But times are changing, and for all you music-loving fashionistas out there, Thursday sees the Swarovski Fashion Rocks take place at the Royal Albert Hall. With weird and wonderful pairings between designers and musicians (Joss Stone and Calvin Klein, Johnny Borrell’s Razorlight and Burberry, Iggy Pop and Versace), this mix of concert and catwalk will showcase cutting edge clothing with a super-sharp soundtrack.

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National Chocolate Week - Hotel Chocolat

The ever-organic Jamie Oliver may be tearing his hair out, but kids across the nation rejoice: this week is Chocolate Week. Seemingly to fill the gap (and the hungry stomachs) between Easter and all those other excuses to stuff yourselves - Halloween, Christmas, New Year, the list goes on - this is officially the time to indulge. Perhaps this week will be the sweetest of the whole year…

Actually, no. There’s a dark side to chocolate, and we’re not just talking Bourneville. In news this week, truffles at Hotel Chocolat in Nottingham - the luxury chocolate store which does a cracking Rocky Road slab – suffered a shocking act of truffle sabotage by a rival chocolatier. The adversary in question, a respected chocolate maker (who has previously designed cakes for the Queen and Prince Charles), seemingly went a bit fruit and nut, and was caught on CCTV deliberately squishing the Hotel Chocolat’s priciest delicacies. The high-profile saboteur has now resigned… and must be feeling very bitter about the whole thing.

You can visit Hotel Chocolat too, by downloading the NavPix here… we’re sure you’ll behave yourselves.

Austria National holiday

Hold on to your lederhosen. 26th October, is a national holiday in the fair country of Austria. This is a place with an extraordinarily rich heritage in music – Mozart, Schubert, Strauss and Mahler are among some of the great composers born in Austria, and Vienna retains its reputation as one of the musical hotspots of the world.

But, more importantly, this is the country that gave us Climb Every Mountain. In terms of pure musical entertainment, you can’t do much better than the antics of the infuriatingly perky Maria Von Trapp in our favourite New Years Day hangover film, The Sound of Music. Definitely one of our favourite things. Go on, go and have a dance round the famous fountain in Saltzburg

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England Vs France - Semi Final

Four years ago the weight of an entire nation weighed heavily on the shoulders of one man, Johnny Wilkinson, four years on nothing much has changed.  The golden booted boy is back and he is on form.  After England’s thrashing at the hands of South Africa nearly a month ago, few but the most optimistic fans would have thought that the men in white would have made it to the semi finals.  But the England team, aided by the immense kicking power of a certain young man, has battled their way to a clash with the host nation today. 

Thousands of England fans are thought to be making the journey across the channel to tonight’s match at the Stade de France hoping to drown out the home crowds’ cheers with ‘Sweet Chariot’.  If you are one of them get the NavPix here...