Archive for September, 2010

Food for sport

Posted September 27th, 2010 by Sarah.
Category Food, Interests Tags , , , ,
freddie football

Much has been made of the state of the accommodation at the Commonwealth Games athletes’ village in India, but what about the food?

With a son who plays football to quite a high level and rugby-loving husband, I’ve visited many different sports stadiums of all shapes and sizes from park pitches to Wembley. But the one thing they all have in common is the food. It’s universally dreadful.

After many a football match at clubs where they talk about the importance of nutrition to the players, my son is offered chips or a hot dog by the home club. A sandwich is rare and you can forget about fruit or vegetables, the five-a-day are nowhere to be seen.

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Lunges and Lycra at Leisure Industry Week

Posted September 23rd, 2010 by Claire.
Category Events, Marketing Tags , , ,
IMG_0140

With Leisure Industry Week (LIW) taking place at the NEC this week, we took the opportunity to go along and see what’s what and who’s who in the leisure and fitness industry.

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Proud of the PRides

Posted September 20th, 2010 by Becca.
Category PR Tags , , ,
MCG celebrating at last year's PRide Awards - Sarah's got her eyes shut

September is the time of year when I get especially excited. It’s Leisure Industry Week, it’s my wedding anniversary and it’s the announcement of the CIPR PRide Awards Shortlist. This year it gives me great pleasure to say that we are up for five awards. Shrieks, yays, whoops could be heard from MCG Towers the morning we found we had been shortlisted for all the categories we had entered this year.

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Doing the business

Posted September 14th, 2010 by Christine.
Category Language, Marketing, PR Tags , ,
verbs

I hope you’re having a good day. Experiencing more highs than lows. Sorting wheat from chaff. Making inroads. Achieving goals. Planning something special. Doing something nice.

Doing words – what we were told to call verbs at school to help remember their meaning. Probably the most important part of any sentence, asserting something about the subject, expressing actions, events or states of being. There are thousands to choose from. So why would we ever want to neglect them?

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Some things are just better in print

Posted September 7th, 2010 by Kate.
Category Interests, Language, Personal Tags , ,
Scrabble winning q-words

I’ve been browsing Amazon this morning following the news last week that the next edition of the Complete Oxford English Dictionary might not be published in a paper format. The full set of 20 volumes will set you back about £700 – perhaps a little excessive for my everyday use, but thinking about the pleasure of browsing through a really good dictionary prompted me to order a copy of the more modest Shorter OED for myself. I’m ashamed to say my home is equipped with nothing more than a school dictionary and a broadband connection.

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The art of conversation

Posted September 1st, 2010 by Christine.
Category Personal Tags ,

I’m on a packed train from Leeds to London – busier than usual because it contains the cancelled 8.40ers like me, now with irrelevant seat reservations, as well as the 9.05ers, determinedly claiming their rightful seats.

And I’m wondering whether we’ve all become less fractious as travellers now – grown immune to the frequent problems and delays and sweetly grateful when we can report “a really good journey” – or are we all just ensconced in our own virtual worlds?

I can see laptops on nearly every knee and table, several iPhones, Blackberries and other mobiles. But no conversation. Despite the gift of mutual inconvenience, shared train company gripes, competition for worst travel nightmare story – the only exchanged words are “I think that’s my seat” “Sorry” and “Thank you”. Were we all sharing our frustrations on Facebook? Tweeting our angst?

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