Scot's the Way

So yet another Burns day has just passed. A Scottish tradition for hundreds of years, involving poems that are barley understandable in today's culture, and the stabbing of a haggis. 

At every wedding you attend you will hear some combination of The Proclaimers "500 Miles," "Flower of Scotland," "Auld Lang Syne," and "Loch Lommond." Every single excuse you can think of is a justifiable reason to go for a night out, the slightest bit of sunlight is an excuse to dress for "summer," and if we were all to talk how we do at home, even the next town along wouldn't understand what you were saying.

When other countries think of Scotland, they think Braveheart, whisky, haggis, tartan and good old Nessie. The stereotypes that have shaped public opinion on our great nation. 

But within Scotland we all have our own stereotypes of ourselves, some of them are funny and most of them you hear or read and think that is so true:

1. When you go abroad you will have to correct people that no you are not English, and no you're not naturally ginger, and you don't know that person they met once who lives 400 miles away from you, because no, not everybody in Scotland knows each other.
2. Buckfast, Lambrini and White Lightening are for desperate measures only, and we have ALL tried them at some point or another.
3. You can easily tell people that yes Nessie is real, and Haggis is a real animal, with one leg shorter than the rest, and do this without laughing.
4. Swearing like a trooper is no big deal, it is acceptable for every second word out your mouth to be "fucking."
5. You're British when your winning, but back to being Scottish when you lose.

Man Up...

Watching the Twilight Saga and OMG Bella really needs to grow a pair of balls! Could she be any more pathetic? Saying that, she's bad enough in the film, in the book she is even worse. She sees the guy and instantly falls in love, pines after some guy that hasn't even spoke to her, acts a bit pathetic, finally gets with him when he saves her from some other guys she can't fight off then ditches all her friends to worship the ground he walks on.  All the while trying to avoid being eaten by him or his family. She then nearly dies because of him but has a mental break down when he mentions leaving her. All in the one film. Yes Robert Pattinson is hot as, but really get over it! 

So take the next film, New Moon, oh no he leaves her. Queue a montage of her sitting for months upon months staring out a window looking depressed. You're 18, move on. Suddenly, shiny new hot Jacob appears and Edward is out of the window, until she almost kills her self and has delusions of him appearing. He's not real you are clearly just way too obsessed! A lot of stupid behaviour later and she saves him from killing himself because life just can't go on if their not together.

Third film, Eclipse, the scary vampire from the first one is coming after her, oh no. So get an entire vampire family and wolf pack to look after you and fight for you. Why protect yourself? 

Bella, man up. Never really noticed before how annoying she is with it all. Think about it, with True Blood Sookie fights just as much as the supernatural people do, she doesn't hide behind the guys to protect her. And Vampire Diaries, Elena tries to fight, and helps come up with the plans, but Bella just pathetically whimpers in the background, trying to convince Edward nothing can go wrong in their strange relationship. In Spiderman, Mary Jane gets kidnapped, but through no doing of her own, she still tries to fight out of it. In all the horror films out there the damsel in distress still at least try to survive and get out.

PS. I love Twilight :)

The Lion King

So everybody talks about the great films that teach you life lessons, the classics and all that. Well to be honest I probably haven’t seen most of the films. Give me a good horror, chick flick or anything with some eye candy to look at and I’m happy. Amongst my favourite films are the likes of “Dirty Dancing,” which to be fair is a classic, but not really the thing you watch to learn about life, it’s more of a rainy day, duvet and ice cream film. And there’s the heart wrenching “Remember Me,” that a lot of people dismiss as “the guy from Twilight,” and assume will be a yet another cheesy generic chick flick, but turns out to be a devastating tale of misguided love and tragedy.  

But my all-time favourite film, ever since I was a kid, has to be “The Lion King,” and its sequel “The Lion King 2, Simba’s Pride.” I know it’s a kids film, and really, at 20 years old I should be over it, and have a more mature sounding favourite film, and after all these years I should defiantly be over crying every time Mufasa dies and give up hope that he will wake up and everything will be ok. But I’m not and I haven’t, because no matter how many times I see Simba’s poor shattered, bawling face I can’t help but cry with him. That’s just me.

Along with making me cry like a lost puppy every time I watch it, both “The Lion King,” and its sequel have taught me, and subsequently everyone who has watched it a good few lessons. 

1. People will do things, things that they shouldn't, and they will blame it on you, and consequently convince all your family it is your fault, before finally admitting to everybody it was them. The key here, don't listen when you’re crazy uncle tells you to run away. He IS evil, especially with a name like Scar, that one is kind of a giveaway.
2. Next - Hakuna Matata. "It means no worries, for the rest of your days." So listen to the Meerkat, because we all know talking meerkat’s are the way to go. 

1. Your family might be gone, but they live on in you. They will never be far away from you. 
2. The past hurts; you know life sucks and all that. “Oh yes, the past can hurt. But from the way I see it, you can either run from it, or ... learn from it." You can't escape from the past, you can't forget about it and you can't outrun it. But you can stop history repeating itself and learn from your mistakes.
3. Finally - the entire sequel teaches that different races (Simba's lions and the "outsiders") should be together as one, and that we should be tolerant towards anybody and everybody.

Live. Love. Laugh.

So 103 year old Gladys thinks that key to a long life is no men and good living. If that’s the case I must only have a few weeks to live, so goodbye cruel world. To raise my morale, and at least let me think that I will make it until the inevitable 2012 debacle, I decided to look the secrets of youth. There’s the usual, don’t smoke, don’t drink, eat healthy, exercise, eat your greens, avoid stress, all very boring, very normal and the total opposite of my lifestyle. This is not looking very good for me. It was nice knowing you all.

However, maybe not all hope is lost, as long as I don’t eat cold cooking oil (although why you would…?), chew my food, continue to breathe every day, and don’t wear tight underwear, then I still have a chance. This is starting to sound a little bit crazy. Another tip from this website, which will remain un-named, is that if you suffer from an eating disorder, take up smoking, “it could save your life”. Right, so don’t eat, smoke, breathe and void tight clothing and you will live forever.

Taking all this is, I have discovered the easiest way to stay young, lie about your age! But this will not help you live longer; it will just make your life seam a lot shorter. But these are some good (and fun) tips to help. And I like the sounds of there a lot more than Gladys’s.

1. Drink red win. I will admit I prefer rose, but if it’s in the name of health I will not argue. A glass or two a day will keep you young, they have some kind of antioxidant them. So drink up on that sneaky glass after work.
2. Eat dark chocolate. The chocolate also has the antioxidant’s, plus lowers your blood pressure, shame its not milk chocolate though. Thornton’s here I come.
3. Smile J Easy. Smiling is infectious, so smile, smile, smile. Be happy and you will live. Even faking a smile will eventually bring on a real smile, and smiling will make you laugh and laughing is good.
4. Have more sex. More frequent sex will help you live longer. And it relaxes you, which in turn will make you smile, see point 3.
5. Sleep more. Get the right amount of sleep, even if this means you end up sleeping half the day, just do it. Sleep lets your body recover from the endurance of the day, so sleep. 

So basically, the key to a long life is to have fun. Live your life, you only have one, so live it up and don’t waste it. Live, love, laugh. That’s my motto, and to contradict my last point, you can sleep when you’re dead. I can now justify my lifestyle as extending my life. As long as the alcohol is red wine, my wild nights out, chocolate binges and sleeping all day after crazy late nights, is totally acceptable. So screw everybody that doubts I will make it into my thirties, I will outlive you all, and I will spend the remainder of my life living long, loving and laughing, until I have outlived everybody and end up lonely.

Heart Fixing

For most people sitting in a quiet room and hearing a steady ticking noise would be a worrying problem. But for the friends and family of Gary Mackie this is a normal. Twenty one year old Gary underwent valve replacement surgery last year, being half the age of the next youngest patient going through thee recovery process at the same time. The left aortic valve in Gary’s heart didn’t let the blood through, so doctor’s removed the valve and replaced it with a metal substitute, causing the constant tick everyone who knows Gary has come to know and love. To do this, doctors had to crack Gary’s ribs, break his sternum and leave him with a vast scar on his chest. 

After finding out the horrifying, devastating news of having to undergo major heart surgery, Gary put on a brave face, something not a lot of people of any age could possibly do. He held it all together to stop his family from worrying so much. “It sucked, I’m not gunna lie,” but with his family upset, it calmed down the feelings Gary was suffering. 

The recovery process was long and hard. The high dependency ward, where from the darkness the screams and crying of other patients made the experience so much worse. However, it did get better. The recovery wards kept routine, helping to build up a sense of familiarity. Gary did amazing things though. He was walking within two days, when doctors said it would take at least a week, and was home only a week after surgery, when doctors initially wanted him to stay in for three to four weeks. Not a lot of people could do that. While recovering, the process was frustrating. People kept telling him not to do things, and Gary felt a lot of his time was spend being “cooped up,” but his friends made things better, going to visit and taking him out when they could. 

The operation was the best thing to happen to Gary. During the build-up to the whole thing, Gary was thinking the worst, unable to talk about how worried he was out of fear of upsetting the people around him further, all the time the people closest to him thinking they might never see him again after the operation. But now, several months on from then, Gary “couldn’t be happier,” and feels so much better for it, he has more energy and can enjoy his life to the full, something he does a lot. And despite having to take daily medication, the doctors don’t require to see him in the foreseeable future 

The last thing Gary has to say, if your faced up the same unfortunate circumstances as him, don’t panic and talk to the people around you! Gary made it out fine, much to the relief of us all around him.