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Duke Of Edinburgh Award
by jlaker1992
Duke of Edinburgh award was compulsory at my old school in year 11, every student was entered into bronze level. You could opt out of it, but you were made to do boring things instead, so reluctantly I decided to do it, I am so glad I did as it was one of the best things I have ever done in my life. The duke of Edinburgh award is ... basically a long walk, camping and then another long walk. I will explain how it works in more detail later in the review. I personally do not know a lot about why the award itself, but I have completed it so I will give my opinions on the award and what I learnt from it!
How does it work?
You are put into groups of around 6 or 7 of your own choice. You are then given a place to get to and given a map and a few essential tools such as a compass and cooking essentials for when you get to you're camp. Before setting off we were told to plan a route on the map and this was checked by the moderators. Our walk was just over 13 miles which was very long, and this was just the first day! The second day was a little less miles but still a fair way to travel. There are three awards, bronze silver and gold. Bronze you take part in over 2 days, silver 3 and gold I believe is 5.
The bad bits:
The worst thing I found was carrying a ruck sack for 2 days becomes tiring, I really overpacked on clothes and food and was carrying way too much on my back! I had a very bad back. Also the camping over night is very painfull as you only carry a sleeping bag! I much prefer camping with a blow up air bed!! You will also become very hungry. I can't complain too much though as this was only the bronze level, I can imagine you would be shattered if you were attempting the gold level.
The good bits:
This really taught me a lot! I became much better friends with the people in my group, you bond brilliantly as you all work as a team and spend Nearly 2 days constantly with each other. My map reading skills got much better and I learnt how to read maps and fend for myself! I did this nealy 7 years ago, but I can still remember all the laughs and difficulties! It's something that will stick with you for ever. It's essential life skills that you don't realise that your learning when you do it. This also looks great on your cv! It helped me with interviews for jobs and got me Uncas Points when applying for uni. There are far more good bits then bad! The worst part is filling out the log book at the end, this takes ages and you must get lots of signitures from various members of staff!
Overall:
This really helped me with many things and has benefited me and looks great on my cv. I wish I had carried on and done the other levels when I was younger and had the opportunity to. I would recommend you make your kids do this as they will learn essential life skills! This gets 5 stars from me! Fantastic :)
Josh
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Girls Day Out Show
by GuruOnAMountain
Having heard about this before but not being a very girly girl, I'd given it a wide berth. This year, though, my sister talked me into going with her so we headed off to the Glasgow SECC in April for a Girl's Day Out.
Tickets can be bought on arrival or in advance but booking tickets in advance entitles you to a free Goody Bag ... so is probably worth it. Tickets aren't cheap with a ticket coming in at £15 or £12 for a concession. Considering you are essentially paying to enter a trade show where people will try and get your money off you, then I think it is fairly pricey being asked that much just to get in the door.
We travelled in on the train and many other girls seemed to have the same idea as us as they all got off the train and crossed the bridge to the SECC. Inside, it was mildly chaotic. There was a desk where you could buy tickets; another desk where you could pick up pre-booked tickets and then entrance desks where people who already had tickets could go in. I could imagine that a lot of people with pre-booked tickets who hadn't got them posted out to their homes would have stood in the main queue only to be turned away and sent to the pre-booked tickets booth as the pre-booked tickets booth was tiny. It would also have been frustrating as after picking their tickets up here, they needed to join the main queue to get in, essentially having to queue twice. Luckilly, we'd got our tickets posted to us so just joined the queue. The queue was very long but moved fairly quickly. At the desk, you got given some leaflets and were told to collect your goody bag inside the hall.
Inside the hall it was set up like The Ideal Home Show or something similar with lots of vendors having their own stalls and a couple of main stages for performances. It would have been handy to have been giving a leaflet detailing what was on at each of the stages during the day so you could plan what you wanted to see but there didn't seem to be a leaflet anywhere (unless I missed it in all the chaos) although the main stage had a sign up with what was on beside it.
It was extremely busy, especially since each of the 'stalls' were small and if a few people stopped to try samples or look at goods, then this created a bit of a bottleneck for other people trying to get by. We did go on the Saturday, however, and I'm sure it was probably quieter on the Friday when a lot of people would have been at work.
The stalls were, as you might guess, aimed at 'girly' stuff, so there were a lot of make-up vendors, perfume sellers, clothes stalls and nail bars. There were a handful of more generic stalls such as sweet vendors, cake stalls, chocolate stalls and charity stalls. The prices, as you can imagine, were high for most things even though a lot of the vendors advertised that they were selling things at a discount (but believe that if you will)!
Our first stop was to collect our goody bag. It was a bit of a task to get to the back of the room where we'd to pick it up due to all the people milling about and then, of course, we'd to join yet another queue! Again, though, it moved quickly and we got our goody bags. They contained 3 No. 7 nail varnishes and an eye pencil. The nail varnishes were in quite unusual colours (one of the ones I received was a horrible muddy brown/grey colour) so I can imagine they were probably less popular colours that Boots was getting rid of on us.
We'd also been given free drinks vouchers for a glass of wine at a wine bar inside and a cocktail at another bar. I am tee-total but there were non-alcoholic options available, although I just let my sister have my drinks as well. They were both served in tiny cups so it was really just a shot of wine and a shot of a cocktail!!
We then decided to get lunch before starting to shop and found a jacket potato stand with seating. Surprisingly, the prices were very reasonable (I think around £3 on average for a potato with a filling). I'd expected the food in a place like this to be over the odds since people had nowhere else to go for food so that was a bonus that my wallet didn't have to suffer too much for lunch, at least!
Walking around the labyrinth of stalls was hard work with the amount of people that were there and the staff at the stalls were all trying to approach you to try their products and as you couldn't move away very quickly, you tended to get sucked into a hard sell! I'm pretty good at saying no in these situations but my sister is awful at it and ended up spending over £100 on things she didn't need! It was hard to look at anything you might be interested in because of the number of people and also because the sales people were too keen to try to talk to you, which I found off-putting.
We spent some time at the main stage to recouperate where we saw a fashion show of the new season looks and were told of the high street shops that we could get them from. As I'm not a girly girl, I wasn't hugely excited by this but it was OK. Virgin Active were also there doing demos of Zumba and Body Jam etc. and then we watched a poor Man Candy Waiter getting his armpits waxed for charity. There was also a game to be played at this point for a member of the audience to win a £50 voucher to spend at the show. My sister's friend was lucky enough to win the voucher but redeeming it was a bit of a drama! None of the stalls seemed to know anything about the voucher and, understandably, wanted to go find the show's organiser to confirm it was legit before they let us spend it but trying to find the organiser in a busy venue like that was no easy task. Eventually we managed to spend it at the Benefit counter but had to wait quite a while on a manager there to go verify that it was real.
The previously mentioned Man Candy Waiters were walking around with nothing but small aprons hiding their dignity and their pert bottoms on full display. This was probably the highlight of the show for me!
Would I go back? Possibly, although I think the entry fee is far too steep only to be fleeced inside even more! It was an entertaining day for even a non-girly girl like me but after a few hours there I was desperate to get out the crowds and get home for a relax! I imagine a more girly girl would love it there but make sure you have a full bank account before you go!!!
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