We may be in lock down but your HEART, your LOVE and you SMILE are not !

DAY NINE: Saturday 9^th  January 2021:

We may be in lock down but your HEART, your LOVE and you SMILE are not !  They are not in chains, they are waiting for you to spread them. So what are you waiting for ?

Today’s SMILE:

JUST SENDING OUT A BIG HUG TO WHOEVER MAY NEED ONE RIGHT NOW.

Do it.

Smile of the Day appears on Facebook starting on Monday I am going to send it out by e-mail every day to the media. Do you think they will be loving and kind enough to spread the love ?  Be interesting to see !

One million words to be written by midnight 31^st December 2021. As of yesterday I have penned or typed 154,317 !  Doing OK yeh ?

30,430 of those words are within an e-book I want to offer to teenagers and to schools as part

of their home learning programme. It is a fun poetry album under the title of POETRY FOR TEENAGERS. It is not an academic study but by presenting a series of poems from different writers I am aiming to get teenagers to decide which are special to them and to research more poets.

Everyone knows how much I hate smart phones !  The worst invention mankind has ever come up with. This book is designed to be used on a phone. With it goes the instruction. USE YOUR PHONE SMARTLY.

Another book for the phone, for teenagers is JUKEBOX JURY. I am 12,651 words into that book. In this book I take teenagers through the music their grandparents would have listened to. I send them off to check out tracks on YouTube then to engage with their grandparents to talk about the music, life and times through which they lived.

What happened ON THIS DAY in history. Within the feature each day history I only go back to 1950, the year I was born and only include things I can

remember.

So here we are on 9^th January:

9^th January 1957 British Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden resigns from office following his failure to retake the Suez Canal from Egyptian sovereignty. I remember that happening.

9^th January 1960 President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser opened construction on the Aswan Dam on the River Nile. I have been to this now operational dam.

9^th January 1961 British authorities announce they have uncovered the Soviet Portland Spy Ring In London. I may have only been ten years old at the time but I do remember this on the news.

9^th January 2007 Apple introduced the iPhone. A sad day in history.

9^th January 1982 Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge was born

Yesterday’s china virus figure for Britain were 68,053 new cases with 1,325 more deaths. I am sensing, I do hope that I am right, a new attitude towards the spreading of the virus and with it recognising those who are going then extra mile to hug our society.

This morning I dropped off the SMILES for the Dreamsai boxes which will be put together and distributed one week today. Earlier SMILES are now in this week-end’s boxes which are being distributes as you read this.

Here’s a SMILE quiz I am preparing, not finished yet, for a future week:

TRADITIONALLY WHAT IS MADE WHERE

1.    Which town’s football club is named after millinery ?

2.    What is Britain’s Steel City ?

3.    Why was the early textile industry centred on Manchester ?

4.    In which city would you find the fashion icon Carnaby Street ?

5.    Which county has a wafer named after it ?

6.    For what food is Melton Mowbray famed ?

7.    What red product comes out of Leicester ?

8.    Wensleydale Cheese, where is Wensleydale ?

9.    Mad as a what from Luton ?

10. Joey Taranto played a drag queen in which film set in Northampton ?

11. Bourneville is a suburb of which city ?

12. What is sweet about York ?

13. Where in England was the tea bag invented ?

14. Where would James Bond go to buy a car ?

15. Why as Arsenal FC known as The Gunners ?

16. Which county is famed for its cider ?

17. In the days of amateur 8mm cine filming where in England was Kodak film sent to be developed ?

18. Which midlands city has its Jewellery Quarter ?

19. Cheddar has its George and its caves but what food is it famed for ?

20. It used to be said that you could look down a mine anywhere in the world and find an Englishman from which county ?

21. Traditionally cream teas come from where ?

22. The Potteries can be found in which county ?

23. Why does a Cornish Pasty have a thick crust on one side, a thick crust that was not meant to be eaten ?

24. Name an island famed for its bovine.

25. Name another.

26. Where was the Ovaltine Farm ?

And here’s the next poem I am about to write into my e-book.

DAFFODILS by William Wordsworth

   I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
and twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not be but gay,
in such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
what wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

And with that I think it is probably time to sign off for today.

Speak again tomorrow.

Dave