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What's New - US Picks - Yahoo! Aust./NZ Picks - Yahoo! Canada Picks - Yahoo! France Picks - Yahoo! Germany Picks
Irish Picks - Scottish Picks - Picks of the Week
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What's New - US Picks - Yahoo! Aust./NZ Picks - Yahoo! Canada Picks - Yahoo! France Picks - Yahoo! Germany Picks
Irish Picks - Scottish Picks - Picks of the Week
We've had fun finding the sites that make Yahoo! UK & Ireland one of the best places to find UK or Irish sites, so we thought we'd share a few with you. If you have any suggestions, please send us a note about them. Also send any general thoughts or comments about Picks of the Week or even suggest sites you'd like us to consider for the next issue. Click here if you only want to view the list of sites.
Long car journeys and children don’t mix, we have found. Generally they are painful episodes for all concerned and, unless the aforementioned brats can be rendered unconscious, to be avoided. Some relief maybe afforded through the playing of various games -- although even those can prove stressful. For example, one "game" which we have direct experience of involves the youngsters fixing their eyes, Midwich cuckoo-like, on the milometer and beginning to sing in a tuneless, flat, monotone: "Two hundred and fifty miles to go, two hundred and fifty miles to go ..." over and over and over and over and over and over again. This continues (decreasing with every mile) until either a) journey ends or b) desperate driver smashes into motorway bridge at 110 mph in a fruitless bid to escape (after about 10 miles).
Less destructive is the Geographical Illness game, the aim of which is to ascribe vile and utterly unnatural symptoms to place--names as you sweep past them. Until this week the undisputed best geographical illness award went to the army outpost of Nether Wallop, for reasons which should be all to apparent. But that was before we encountered the Irish town of Lough Swilly. Now, if a doctor hasn’t at some time turned gravely to a patient and said:" That’s the worst case of lough swilly I’ve every seen. We must operate immediately!", then there is no justice in the world. The place is in County Donegal and is the location for the Lough Swilly Archeological survey, which aims to study Ireland’s population movements between the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods. This academic guide to the project contains a slide-show, a scrap-book and a version of the published research paper.
The subject of imaginary illnesses is something that the Victorian writer George Gissing may well have considered himself am expert, seeing as he appears to have been a bit of a hypochondriac: "I am haunted by the idea that I am consumptive; I never cough without putting a finger to my tongue, to see if there is a sign of blood," this rather gloomy cove wrote in his diary in 1888. We’d not heard of him until we stumbled across this lovingly maintained Japanese archive, but in his day he was considered something of a rebel, and an authority on the works of Charles Dickens. There are several of his own writings on display, including Eve's Ransom and Demos, as well as information about The Gissing Trust, and links to several academic works. There’s even a message board where you can post your own comments.
Our next Pick keeps us on the topic of things we did not know (a wide and varied field, indeed). The humble kitchen sink seems an innocent enough everyday object, but it’s apparent artlessness masks a dark and secret past. Sinks as we know them were first manufactured commercially in the 17th century by two Amsterdam potters who set up shop in Staffordshire. They guarded their methods with as much care as the Chinese hid the secret of silk, until two cunning locals posing as ill-educated yokels, obtained employment in the factory, stole the manufacturing technology and set up a rival business. We learned this from Kitchen Sinks for the Discerning, an umbrella website for two businesses -- Soft Options, which offers a range of modern, stainless steel appliances, and Brass and Traditional Sinks, whose name gives you pretty much all the information you need.
Hoping not to experience a more literal sinking feeling is Aeroflot UK, the newly established London arm of the Russian national airline. Obviously aware that saying you are Russia’s number one airline probably isn’t the best marketing strategy ever devised, they’ve gone to great lengths to stress their global nature. "Look around and you'll find this is NOT your father's Aeroflot. This isn't even yesterday's Aeroflot," says the Why Aeroflot section, which highlights Comfort, and Safety. There is also information on flights, how to reserve tickets, and services offered to business travelers.
If you are planning this year’s holiday, a wider range of destinations is offered by Travelocity, the latest and one of the slickest in a long line of travel services. Registration is a must in order to use features like the flight search, but they promise in their Terms and Conditions not to sell your information on to third party spammers. You can use this site to hire a car , reserve a hotel or get the best weekend deals to a variety of locations.
If we may interject with a final word ... our advice about children and long car journeys at the top of the page holds double for long plane journeys. Take a tip from us ... leave them behind. They’ll understand one day. If you haven't taken our advice and nipped off for a a few days of sun, sand and sea, we will see you next week...