Crunching through the recession at Winter Wonderland

Sales at Winter Wonderland in London's festive Hyde Park are up by 30% from last year despite the credit crunch.

Over half a million people have already visited the festive event; Winter Wonderland spokesman Jo Murray talks about the possible reasons behind their success during the financial crisis.

“We are a cheap attraction compared to other London events – it’s free entry and you only have to pay to go ice-skating... In a weird kind of way the credit crunch has actually helped us.”

The free admission for Winter Wonderland is certainly an attraction, as are the German Christmas market, the outdoor skating rink and traditional rides such as the helter skelter, teacups and the haunted mansion. A newer attraction is the 60m observation wheel, which has been compared to the London Eye.

The cost of the attractions has been held at 2007 rates with special children’s prices starting at £2 being introduced this season.

Trainee lawyer Rebecca Norris, 22, has been visiting Winter Wonderland for years and discusses the changes that she has noticed this year.

“It seems that there are more people, especially foreign tourists and there are more attractions than there were last year. The festive spirit seems unaffected by the economic conditions and that may be because people want to escape into their own Winter Wonderland.”

This Christmas, as the industries struggle through the credit crunch, the only crunching that Winter Wonderland will be hearing are the sounds of the snow beneath their customers’ shoes.

This festive event in Hyde Park is open from 10am-10pm every day except Christmas day and New Year's Day until 4 January 2009. To book tickets for the ice rink or observation wheel, call 0844 847 1771.

Tube Etiquette

This is the last of my tube features series. Enjoy!

Tube Etiquette

1.) Do not eat smelly food on the tube, and if you absolutely have to, don't forget to take the remains with you. No-one wants to sit in samosas.

2.) Don't drink alcohol on the tube. This isn't just about manners, it's also a law.

3.) If you are drunk on the tube, do not start shouting at other tube riders.

4.) Try not to burp or fart.

5.) Smile. It won't kill anyone if you smile when on the tube, in fact it might just brighten up someone's day.

6.) Don't breathe over passengers, however cramped the conditions. Especially if you haven't brushed your teeth in a while.

7.) Don't bosh people round the head/legs with your oversized bag or rucksack.

8.) Always make room for others to sit down, i.e., move your bag off the seat next to you if you see someone standing.

9.) ALWAYS give your seat up for the elderly or disabled. Now that's just common sense.

10.) Oh, and if you are a man, it couldn't hurt to give your seat up for a woman. It's not sexist, it's courteous and polite.

Find your Inner Calm this Christmas

Inner calm, improved motivation and concentration, better mood control and heightened senses. Sounds good doesn’t it? And you don’t even need to take any mind or mood altering substances. Your body is a temple of untapped resources.

The ancient art of meditation is a powerful tool that can help any stressed out woman as she tries to create the perfect Christmas. Meditation can aid you in ways you may not have thought possible.

Forty-year-old Jean Lawrence from Northamptonshire has always found this time of year particularly stressful:

“In my house at this time of year I have to cook for 15 people, wrap all the presents, fill the kids’ stockings and turn a blind eye to family politics. Christmas used to be a stressful and unpleasant event that I had come to dread.”

Last year however, Jean decided to take matters into her own hands and completed a short meditation course in the run up to Christmas and as a result had a calm and stress-free Christmas. Well, apart from the hangover on Boxing Day of course!

Women all over the Western world will be pulling their hair out come 25th December. You can imagine the scene.

Excitedly torn wrapping paper is carelessly strewn around the kitchen floor and the table is still not set. You’ve just missed the Queen’s speech on TV that you’ve been looking forward to for oh I don’t know how long. The Yorkshire pud is still in the oven and the beans and carrots are simmering, but now the roast pork is overdone and the crackling is looking more like burnt bacon than the juicy pieces you had envisaged.

Meditation helps

Now imagine this. You wake up on Christmas morning before little Sally, Mandy and Harry wake you up. You sit cross-legged by the window with the perfect antidote to Christmas stress, and clear your mind of mince pies, cooking, and stockings.

You feel and experience your breathing, and when your mind starts to wonder away into a thought, you notice it float by but release the mind from the thought and continue to focus on your breathing and bodily sensations.

The idea is that every time your mind comes back to the breath, your mindfulness increases. This is called breath-based meditation but there are plenty of other types if you don’t feel this would be suited to you.

Now when the children come bouncing buoyantly into your room on Christmas day you feel calm, serene and ready to face – and enjoy – the day. If you feel yourself getting frazzled later on, just take another ten minutes to meditate and empty your mind and that cloudless sky will be yours again in no time at all.

This time when Aunt Sally has one too many sherries and starts flirting with your husband, you will be armed with your new mindfulness. You will be able to see any negative thoughts that may arise from this situation standing like dominoes on a conveyor belt.

Armed with your meditative tools, you will merely view the floating domino-like thoughts and let them pass. Perhaps you will then take a further two minutes to yourself to regain your meditative stance by doing some deep breathing and abdominal exercises.

In the past you may have jumped onto the conveyor belt and joined all those domino-like negative thoughts until they escalated into a messy heap on the floor of your mind.

Different types of meditation

You do not need to be a meditation expert to benefit from this practice. There is more than one method to the practice although they all have the same aim of focusing on the present.

Breath-based meditation (see above) is when you observe the rise and fall of the breath in a controlled manner. Or you could use tools such as a candle where you observe and focus on the flame.

Mantra meditation focuses on a specific word or sound and is similar to visualization meditation. This is where you use images to still the mind.

A popular visualization is the ‘golden flower’ mediation, where you visualize light filling your body from head to toe and imagine darkness filling your body when you breathe out.

Meditation benefits

There are more benefits to meditation though than feeling slightly less frazzled during the festive holidays. Several studies have demonstrated that subjects who meditate for as little as ten minutes a day show decreased anxiety and a significant increase in alpha waves (relaxed brainwaves).

On a more physiological side, Harvard Medical School found meditation activates the part of the brain in charge of the automatic nervous system, which controls functions such as digestion and blood pressure that can be compromised by stress.

Controlling these bodily functions through the mind could help ward off stress-related conditions such as digestive problems, infertility and heart disease.

Meditation can also relieve symptoms of panic attacks, pain and depression. Emotions that are partnered with these mental health problems are in the mind, not the body. Grief is mostly memory, sense of loss and abandonment.

These are concepts based on what has happened to you in the past. If you can meditate and bring yourself back to the present moment, the sensations of pain or grief are not nearly as strong.

Swami Vishnu-Devanda, a Sivananda meditation expert and teacher says that yoga and meditation can “help to balance, harmonise and strengthen the body, mind and soul. It shows the way to perfect health, mind control, and perfect peace with one’s self and the world.”

Sivananda yoga and meditation centers can be found throughout the world, visit www.sivananda.org for details of meditation classes and courses.

So book yourself in and have yourself a merry – and calm – little Christmas this year using the tools of meditation to help both your body and mind cope with the stresses that this festive time of year can all too often bring.

Ireland: This little piggy went off the market

Tonight fears have been publicized that there is a strong possibility that contaminated Irish pork may have reached markets in over 20 countries.

On Saturday families were warned to avoid all pork. Which brands to avoid however, were not addressed.

The warning came from the Food Standards Agency, who had discovered cancer-causing chemicals in Irish pigs.

Families all over the UK will now be checking their packets of sausages, salamis and hams for the whereabouts of their potentially life-threatening pork.

One type of meal you may want to avoid is the ready-meal as this genre of 'easy dinners' do not state where possible pork contents originate from.

A Food Standards Agency spokesman says, “We’re going as fast as we can to get a list”, reports The Mirror.

Where, When and How

A large selection of Irish pigs were supposedly infected by their breaded farm feed that had not been depacketed.

The pigs munched down the loaves of bread that were still wrapped in plastic. The supplier recycles dough and bread as animal food.

Contaminations were revealed when test results on Irish pigs displayed up to 200 times the normal and safe level of dioxins. Dioxin is a dangerous chemical that can cause cancer.

Police are focusing on one mill located in the Irish republic which cannot be named for legal reasons.

Worryingly, the mill is said to have supplied up to 10 pig farms in the Republic and nine in Northern Ireland, according to The Mirror.

Tube Praise

Following my first blogish feature tube rant, my second London tube feature will be doing quite the opposite.

I decided to look on the sunnier side of commuting life and have compiled a cheery list of the tube's more positive features:

1.) The tube transports you from A to B. Quickly.

2.) It's quite cheap (providing you have an oyster card).

3.) Taking the tube is both quicker and cheaper than driving.

4.) The London Underground tube map is colour coded and easy to use.

5.) The London Underground isn't all doom and gloom; 55% of the network is above the ground.

6.) At New Year and other public events, the tube runs 24 hours a day.

7.) Transport For London staff have your best interests at heart; throughout the year they continue to tell customers to 'please mind the gap', and on the hotter days of the summer, announcements are made to remind people to stay hydrated and cool.

8.) Buskers frequent the platforms, tube carriages and escalator areas across London and can add music, joy and vibrance to the commuter's day.

9.) Short poems are often printed inside tube carriages, making for a literary and rhythmic journey. The Underground sponsers both Poems on the Underground and Platform for Art projects.

10.) Our Underground is the longest metro system in the world. There is 400km of track, and is one of the most used travel systems internationally.

Next week please tune in again for the last of my tripartite tube series.

Britney: For The Record

At 8pm tonight millions of viewers around the UK will have tuned in to Sky One to see the exclusive candid interview and documentary featuring superstar Britney Spears.

The aim of this documentary, in Britney's words, is to "let the public see the real me". Britney wants us to see her life as it really is away from the cameras.

However, as we discover, there is no life for her away from the cameras. Britney Spears is always being hounded by the paparazzi and says that there are often as many as fifty paparazzos outside her house.

She tells her interviewer she feels trapped and as though she is in a live prison all the time. Her jailors are her team who are constantly surrounding her.

Because Britney now has to check in with pyschoanalysts and various other people at least once a day now, she tells us that everything is now too structured and that her life severely lacks any spontaneity.

Impressions

Britney comes across as a mentally stable woman who is in control of herself, although maybe not her life decisions.

Parts of the interview made for uncomfortable viewing. Britney speaks tearfully about how she has found herself again and is very happy to be performing and singing again.

Britney is however clearly very unhappy, and tells her interviewer how difficult she can find life:

"I just cope with it every day....It's better not to feel anything at all and have hope than to feel the other way . . . It's bad. I'm sad."

The Breakdown

When asked about her breakdown and the possible causes, the singer says that she was surrounded by many 'bad people' who took advantage of her money and status.

Exactly what she means by 'bad people' isn't specified, but Britney does elaborate on how these people were a catalyst in her mental breakdown:

"My trust has really been battered . . . Sometimes it can get kinda lonely . . . I had totally lost my way. I lost focus. I lost myself. I let certain people into my life that were just bad people. . .I really paid the consequences for that."

According to Britney her current team are 'good people', who just want to see her succeed.

Personally, I think that Britney Spears needs a long break away from the spotlight. Unfortunately though there are too many people are making huge amounts of money off this vulnerable young woman, who has now turned into a worldwide commodity.

Break-ups and tears

Ms. Spears also spoke out about her notorious break up with pop singer Justin Timberlake,

"With Justin, he was a part of the magnitude of what I had become. So when he was gone I was like, What am I supposed to do with myself? I was devastated [by the breakup] but I handled it a lot better than the [split] with Kevin."

Britney went on to discuss her recent divorce with Kevin Federline:

"He [Kevin] started to do an album for himself and he started to do things for himself, and I just never saw him anymore . . . When it ended I felt so alone. I didn't really wanna think about the reality of it. I never faced it . . . I just ran."

Britney Spears is clearly a strong woman who has been through a lot of life stresses and traumas.

However, at the same time you can't help but feel that she is also incredibly fragile and easily influenced.

You can view a live preformance of Britney's new single 'Womanizer' below: