The WhyNotSmile Guide To The Northern Ireland Assembly

First of all, apologies if you don't live in Northern Ireland, because you're not going to care about this in the slightest. However, over the past week, at least several people have asked me who they should vote for in the upcoming elections for the Northern Ireland Assembly, and it has become apparent that the reason for such a flurry of questioning is that most people (ie at least 2 of my acquaintances) don't actually know what the Northern Ireland Assembly is, or how it works.

Thankfully, WhyNotSmile is here, as ever, to help.

Secondly, i have no special insider information on any of this; I just read it on Wikipedia. So don't take it as Gospel.

1. What is the Northern Ireland Assembly?

The Northern Ireland Assembly (NIA) is a group of people who've been elected (of which, more presently) by the rest of us to keep things running. So they keep an eye on things like schools, hospitals and, apparently, heating systems. There are some things they're not allowed to meddle in, because it's important for Westminster to have something to do, so, for instance, they can't suddenly make us use funny currency, or declare war on the Isle of Man. There's a whole list of things that they can't do ever, and then there's a list of things that they can't do yet, but might be allowed to do in the future if they demonstrate that they wouldn't make a pig's ear of it, and then they're allowed to do everything else, unless they do something that no one's thought of yet but that it seems unwise for them to meddle in, in which case that thing might be added to one of the first 2 lists.

So, the Assembly has 108 members, called MLAs (Members of the Legislative Assembly). It has recently been decided that we could live without some of these MLAs (in general; not specific ones), so the number is being cut down. But we'll come back to that. They all have debates about what they think they should do, and then the DUP override it with the Petition of Concern (which we'll also come back to), and every now and then they all have a Proper Fight and the whole thing collapses for a while while they go to a fancy hotel and figure out what to do next. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because it means more Mark Devenport on my TV *swoon*.

Now, the things the Assembly is allowed to do are divided into Departments, like the Department of Education and the Department of Sports and Other Kinds of Fun (they keep changing these names; these are just examples). So, every department has to have someone in charge of it, and the people in charge of the departments are called the Executive. I shall explain later how they decide who gets to be in charge.

So the Executive are in charge of departments, and then they all have sub-committees (which I think are made up of some of the other MLAs, and maybe some Civil Servants and stuff; I dunno) to actually do stuff, and the Assembly debates what stuff they should do. Roughly.

2. How Does The Northern Ireland Assembly Work?

Now, before we start, it's important to establish that, when it comes to how the Northern Ireland Assembly "works", we need to somewhat broaden our definition of the word "works". In your average situation, when we say that something "works", we imply that it functions, in a reasonably consistent manner, in order to achieve something useful. In this case, though, that's expecting a bit much. The Northern Ireland Assembly "works" in the same way that my 2-year-old "helps" when I'm doing the vacuuming: energy is expended, noise is made, and a lot of praise is accepted at the end, but if we're being honest, the whole thing would proceed much more efficiently if he could be plonked in front of the TV and remain uninvolved. However, also like my 2-year-old, there are large swathes of Northern Irish society who are much better when kept where we can see them, and putting them in the Assembly is (marginally) cheaper than putting them in prison (there being, of course, an uncommon proportion of our Elected Representatives who have tried both).

So, what happens is this: we have elections. Northern Ireland is split into 18 constituencies (soon to be cut to 17, though I'm unclear who we're ditching). A constituency is an area, like, East Belfast (yeo), Fermanagh and South Tyrone, or South Down. Each constituency has, until now, been allowed to choose 6 MLAs, but this is being cut to 5, to save money or something. So this will give us 85 MLAs instead of 108. Each party can choose some candidates to stand for election in each area, and random individuals can put themselves forward too. Then they all spend a fortune putting posters up all over the place, because it is well known that people often think "Oh, I was going to vote for Candidate X with all those great policies they're putting forward, but now that I've seen an actual photo of Candidate Y I will vote for him instead". I suppose that's what happens when you have candidates who look as responsible, efficient and majestic as Jim Allister and Edwin Poots.

Then we all vote, or at least 12% of us vote (in some cases, several times each), and the winners are announced. Now, it is worth considering the method of voting which is used, because this is one of the key bits that no one seems to understand. The Assembly Elections use a system called the Single Transferrable Vote. I plan to explain this in more detail in a future post, but for now it can be summarised thus: you vote by putting numbers instead of an X. So you can vote for lots of people, in order of preference, and if your first choice doesn't get in, then your second choice counts instead.

This is important in Northern Ireland, where vast numbers of people base their view almost entirely on who they don't want to win. Traditionally, one would spot a new, forward-thinking, progressive party, and one would think "I would like to vote for them, but then that's one less vote for Us Lot, so it's basically a vote for Them Lot, so I shall not vote for this new, forward-thinking, progressive party, but instead I shall vote for Us Lot, just to be safe". Under the Single Transferrable Vote system, one can take a punt, as it were, on smaller parties (I don't mean literally take a punt, before someone tries to sail up the Lagan on Naomi Long), and then put the big parties towards the end, so that if the smaller party candidate doesn't win, then your vote gets passed on to the Us Lot party of your choice.

Then someone, somewhere, does some complicated maths, and figures out which 5 people have won in each area. Those 5 people become MLAs.

Next, we have to form the Executive. Now, there are 3 "groups" of parties in Northern Ireland. There's "Them", there's "Us" and there's the "Wishy Washies" (each MLA declares which group they're in). The biggest party in the group with the biggest number of MLAs gets to nominate the First Minister. This is considered Brilliant, although it's never been entirely clear to me what the First Minister does. Having said that, I'm not sure what the Prime Minister does either, but I'm fairly sure it's broadly similar. The biggest party in the group with the second biggest number of MLAs gets to nominate the Deputy First Minister, who does roughly the same as the First Minister.

Then we need to put someone in charge of each department. I'm not entirely clear how this works. First, I think each party has to decide whether it wants to be in the Executive (so a party could, in theory, get loads more votes than everyone else, but decide they don't want any actual responsibility, and therefore not go into the Executive; this puts them in Opposition). Then, of all the ones that want to play, they get allowed to choose some Departments, in proportion to how many MLAs they got.

So, let's say that there are 3 parties who have agreed to go into the Executive. Party A has 25 MLAs, Party B has 15 MLAs, and Party C has 10 MLAs. So 50 in all. Then, let's say there are 8 departments. Party A has half the MLAs, so they get 4 departments. Party B has 15/50 MLAs, so that's 3/10, which is about 1/4, so they get 2 departments. Then C get a fifth, so that's one department. Then there's another formula to figure out how to split up the spare department. I'm not sure how they decide who gets which department; maybe it's like picking teams in school, where you take it in turns to choose. I dunno.

What I DO know is that no one is allowed the Department of Justice unless they're one of the middle ground parties, because it's obvious to everyone that Us Lot and Them Lot wouldn't trust each other with a bucket of water, let alone actual justice. Probably with good reason, let's face it.

Now, the one aspect of all this that we haven't discussed is the Petition of Concern, which was designed to stop Them Lot ganging up on Us Lot, but seems to have morphed into a way of big parties stopping anyone else from doing anything at all that they don't like. The key here is that if a party can get 30 MLAs, they can use the Petition of Concern all over the place to stop anything they just don't like the look of. Other parties have proposed changing the PoC so that this can't happen, but obviously the proposal was blocked by the people who are Quite Happy with how things are, thank you very much.

There's also the Speaker, but I have literally no clue what they do; I think they're essentially a glorified referee, but don't quote me on that.

So, to summarise: you're voting for the people who'll run the place, and it's all designed to be very representative, so basically you should vote for whoever you want and not vote for whoever you don't want, and it'll all be more or less fine.

I trust this helps.

The WhyNotSmile Guide To The World Cup

After the raging success of the WhyNotSmile Guide To The Elections (which went what I call "viral", receiving upwards of 19 hits), it has been requested that I produce a Guide to the World Cup, which is a football thing that starts today. So here goes.

Football
We need to begin by understanding the concept of football. Essentially, football is a sport which involves 2 teams battling it out to see who can get a ball into a net the most often. To make it twice as easy, they have a net at each end of the 'pitch', but they also allow you to keep one of your team members in the net at all times, to try to stop the ball from going in.

Things get more advanced than this, of course. For instance, if you kick someone else and they fall down, then they get to have a special attempt at kicking the back into the net, called a penalty. Sometimes you're allowed to line up all your players between them and the net, to try to block the ball, but this doesn't always happen, and I'm not sure why. Also, at the end of the allotted time, if both teams have got the back into the net the same number of times, then they get to do a penalty shoot-out, and then Germany win. I'm not sure why this happens either.

Then there is the offside rule, which I'm not supposed to be able to understand because I'm a girl. In reality, of course, I understand many things which are much more complex than the offside rule, like the rules of social engagement, which appear to pass many footballers by; the reason I don't understand the offside rule is that I just don't give a fiddler's fart.

In addition to the two teams, there is also a chap called the 'referee' who runs about and tries to make them stick to the rules. Fans have lots of chants about referees, many of whom appear to be "bankers".  I assume this is why football is often played on bank holidays.

The Teams
Now, for the World Cup, there is a team from every country who want to send one, but of course they can't all play each other in a fortnight because there are, like, 200* countries who have football teams, so if they were all going to play a sort of knockout tournament where the winner of each match progresses to the next round, then there would have to be 8 rounds, but the first one would have, like, 100 matches going on, and in total you would have 255 matches, and the wallchart would just be too big for the wall.

* I don't know. I made that up.

And even worse, if you had to insist that each team played every other team, then there would be, like, 200! matches happening, where 200! means "200 factorial", and not just 200 said with a gasp, and since 200! is too big for my calculator to even work it out, we would basically be watching football forever.

So instead they have matches ahead of time to see who is good enough to qualify for the finals, and teams like Northern Ireland fluke their way through every now and then, but mostly it's teams who are actually good, and also England. I think they let England play every time because they invented football or something.

It's always important to establish who's actually still in the thing if you want to sound competent in work when the topic comes up; I once spent a fortnight supporting Republic of Ireland before being taken to one side and told they hadn't qualified that time. In some workplaces, of course, they'd just have given me Ireland in the office sweepstake (of which more later) and been done with it.

So if someone asks you which team you're supporting, you want to say the name of a country; preferably one that's good at football, or England.

The 2014 World Cup
Now, each time they have the thing (which is every 4 years), they have it in a different place. This is decided by some manner of corruption or something, rather than by my preferred method of keeping it like Eurovision, where the place that won last time gets to host it this time round. Anyway, this year it's in Brazil, and if you fancy going over to it you should probably take a paintbrush and be ready to give them hand with painting the lines on, for it is widely believed that things Aren't Quite Ready Yet. Next time round it's in Qatar, which is a real place and is too hot to play football in.

World Cup Traditions
Now, regardless of whether you like football or not, you can still get into the spirit of things by involving yourself in one of the many time-honoured traditions which have sprung up around it. These include:

• Sticker albums: produced by Panini, these are like scrapbooks, but with spaces for stickers with footballers on them. You can often get the album for free, and then spend approximately £3800 on stickers, in a futile bid to collect them all. The stickers come in little packets, and the idea is that you swap them with your friends in school until everybody has all of them; naturally, the people who make the stickers ensure that a chosen few are really rare, and these become valuable currency in playgrounds across the country. It used to be that sticker albums were the preserve of the pre-teen boy, but now with EBay and everything, access to stickers for "swapsies" is wider, thus restoring the dream to adults as well. Note to adult males: women do not generally consider this to be impressive behaviour.
• The Office Sweepstake: this happens in every office in the land when the World Cup is on.  Basically, you get a list of all the teams who are playing, and then throw them in a box (except usually you can't find a box, so someone cups their hands and you put them in there), and then you allocate everyone in the office a team or a number of teams. Everyone pays a pound and whoever's team wins gets to keep all the money at the end.  More advanced systems involve 'seeding' the teams, or having first, second and third prizes, but this really makes no difference, because there's always one person in the office who always wins, every. freaking. time. (yes, Alex, I'm looking at you). Obviously a challenge is presented if you have more people in your office than there are teams playing, but this can be resolved by sub-dividing the office into more manageable groups.
• Wallcharts: a staple of every World Cup, ever, the Wallchart usually comes free with The Mirror about a fortnight before it all kicks off. Even I have been known to end up with a World Cup wallchart, and take great delight in filling it all in.  The essential components are: lots of pictures of flags; some enlightening commentary on each of the teams; and the actual Chart bit.  The Chart bit lists the various 'pools', and the scheduled matches, and there's a little space for you to write in the score for each match. Then when it all progresses to the quarter finals and so on, you get to write in the matches and the winners and stuff.  For some reason, it's all completely glorious fun.
• Anthems: every time, some trendy band are asked to write a World Cup anthem for everyone to sing when they cheer on England to their certain victory.  It's usually crap, so then some band that no one has heard of comes out with something much better and unofficial, and everyone sings that instead. The vital ingredients are references to: 1966 (the last time England won), the hurt which has engulfed the nation ever since, curry, beer and a lot of cheering because this will be Our Year.

So the World Cup kicks off tonight, and you can now prepare yourself for every conversation you will have between now and July 13th.  I trust this helps.

The WhyNotSmile Guide To The Upcoming Elections

Now, we have elections coming up here in Belfast on 22nd May, and a number of people* have asked for guidance on how the process works, who to vote for, and so on. So it is as a Public Service that I hereby present The WhyNotSmile Guide To The Upcoming Elections.

* 1 person, plus my husband, who didn't actually ask but got told anyway

How The Process Works
Now, there are various types of election, and they require voting in different ways. This can be confusing for the amateur voter, but is easily resolved by reading the instructions at the top of the voting form, or by asking the person who hands you the form to start with. There are generally 2 methods:

1. The one where you put an X beside one person's name
This is quite simple, so long as you're careful not to accidentally write your name or draw a smiley face or something in any of the other boxes or on the rest of the page. 30 seconds of self-control and you're grand.

2. The one where you put all the people in order of how much you like them
This is Voting For The More Advanced Citizen. You put a 1 beside the person you like the most. Then you put a 2 beside the person you like the next most, and so on, until you get to all the people you don't like at all, at which point you stop. It's a bit like in school when you got to be team captain and choose who you wanted in order of how much you wanted them, except that this time you can stop when you get down to the riff-raff, and not be stuck with the likes of me on your team, all over-enthusiasm and skill-less-ness. It also means I get to sit on the sidelines and read my book, rather than accidentally ending up elected to something, so everyone's happy.

What You're Voting For
The next question must be: what are we voting for? What are these people going to do? There are essentially 5 possibilities here:

1. Local Councils
These are the people who collect the bins and get rid of dog poo. For this you want your basic Responsible Type, who can sit through a meeting without stabbing annoying people in the face, and who understands how dumps work and that sort of thing. These are Details People. If they call at your door looking for votes, you should quiz them on things like what can go in the recycling bins, and where to catch the bus into town on a Saturday.

2. The Northern Ireland Assembly
This is Where It All Happens, or so the occupants like to think. This lot decide how we spend all the money that we get from England, and whether The Gays can get married or not, so it's Quite The Place. Mostly, of course, the DUP and Sinn Fein spend the time shouting at each other, so for this you want someone who's not too easily wound up by twits. It's probably going to be a choice between a series of people who think they're quite important, and then one or two who might actually Make Stuff Happen; contrary to historical practice, it might be worth trying to identify one of the latter, and giving them a shot at it.

3. Westminster
This is the person who gets to fly to London and claim duck houses from the taxpayers. Now, generally this will end up being the same person who's been doing it for the last 50 years (or, if they have recently retired, their son), but I urge you all to follow the example of East Belfast from last time around and vote for someone who'll actually Do Stuff, and not just fanny about naming leisure centres after themselves. But, of course, it's up to you.

4. Europe
Every now and then we get to send people to Europe. I'm not entirely sure what they do; I think it's mostly about organising fishing. Anyway, for this one we want to send someone nice, rather than someone who's going to make us look like we couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery without first separating the brewery into 'themuns' and 'usuns', drawing flags all over the place and then parading past each other singing about how we beat you 3000 years ago so NAH! Seriously, nobody in Europe cares. Let's try and not look like idiots in front of Angela Merkel.

5. Some sort of referendum
From time to time you'll get an election paper where the options are just 'yes' and 'no' instead of being people's names. This is a referendum, and you just have to say what you think is the right answer to the question. It's sort of like a survey, but there's no prize draw for completing it.

So we see that it is important to establish what the election is all about and what sort of person we require before we move on to the next step.

Who To Vote For
Now we come to the more important question: who to vote for. There are a series of steps involved in this decision.

1. If you have the option of voting for Naomi Long, always vote for Naomi Long.
She has personally promised Mr Smile that she will reduce tax on crisps when she becomes Prime Minister. And also, she's not a twit, which is Quite New for Northern Irish politics. She organises debates in parliament and has not yet named anything in the constituency after herself. I'm thinking of getting her to cut the ribbon on my new living room once the decorating is done.

2. If you do not have the option of voting for Naomi Long, try moving house, preferably to East Belfast.
I appreciate that this is not an option for everyone: some of you, for instance, will have to stay in the likes of Fermanagh to milk the cows and so on. But it's worth a shot if you're able to try it.

3. If you have moved to East Belfast and still do not have the option of voting for Naomi Long, it may be that it's Not That Type Of Election.
You should probably have had the foresight to look into this before you went to all the effort of moving house, but East Belfast is nice and we're glad you're here anyway. Please familiarise yourself with the recycling regulations.

If you do end up unable to vote for Naomi Long, then you may have to decide for yourself. At this point, it is useful to know a bit about the various parties.

The Unionists
These will generally have a name containing the letter 'U', and a logo with a British flag on it. The exceptions to this are the New Kid on the Block, NI21, because they're trying to be all cool and stuff, and UKIP, who have a 'U', but not in the Northern Irish sense (and are only Unionist in the technical sense, not in true Northern Irish fashion). We can summarise the Unionists as follows:

Ulster Unionists
Bonkers level: moderate
Key facts: led by Mike who used to read the news, the UUP is the party of choice for those who want to keep Sinn Fein out, but think the DUP are a bit mental. All in favour of the traditional bastions of life, such as parades and flags, but think it's a bit undignified to come out on the streets about it.

Democratic Unionists
Bonkers level: high
Key facts: the DUP have many years of experience of getting very odd people into highly unsuitable jobs. Like the health minister who thinks The Gays are all contaminated and won't let them give blood in case they spread Gay to the rest of us. Or the one who kicked up a big fuss because he wanted creationist displays alongside the Finn McCool displays at the Giant's Causeway. They're all terribly, terribly earnest, of course, but if you met any of them in the back of a pub (which you wouldn't), you'd feel inclined to back away slowly and in as heterosexual a way as you could manage.

Traditional Unionist Voice
Bonkers level: off the scale
Key facts: formed by people who left the DUP because it was too wishy-washy, these guys mean business. They rarely achieve it, due to all being completely mental.

NI21
Bonkers level: unclear, but initially not, apparently, too bad
Key facts: formed not that long ago, they haven't really got themselves together yet. You probably still have time to sign up as their Euro candidate. Policies appear to depend on what will get them lots of votes, and I don't think even they have high expectations of winning much. Still, they all seem quite nice.

PUP
Bit scary.

Sort-of Unionists

UKIP
Bonkers level: they're either very very bonkers or extremely cunning. Quite possibly both
Key facts: you can cost them money by sending stuff to their Freepost address, but only up to Large Letter size. You can also not vote for them, and you can improve things further by voting for someone else instead.

NI Conservatives
Bonkers level: no idea
Key facts: no idea. They all look very earnest on their posters though, and are clearly wearing their best suits.

The Nationalists
Generally these have logos featuring lots of green (although so do the Greens and Conservatives). There are two kinds:

Sinn Fein
Bonkers level: more scary than bonkers
Key facts: they are very keen to stress that violence is not the way forward. Any more.

SDLP
Bonkers level: not at all bonkers in any way. Also not very interesting.
Key facts: they still exist.

The Others
There are a few parties out there who are not really all that fussed about The Border, and prefer to concentrate on things like the economy and making it easier to cycle. They are:

Alliance
Bonkers level: not generally bonkers at all, though I'd say David Ford could liven up a party if you filled him with whiskey
Key facts: people argue that they can't vote Alliance because they sit on the fence too much, without recognising that the fence is fine; it can give you a commanding view of the surrounding area, and you can maybe sort out the economy and healthcare and stuff while you're up there, instead of arsing about on the ground yapping about parades. Also, flegs.

The Greens
Bonkers level: highly variable
Key facts: the sort of people you meet in the pub, with fabulous big ideas that are completely implausible but also brilliant. If they actually got put in charge, the place would be in pieces by lunchtime, but you definitely want a few of them about to keep everything grounded.

Independents
Bonkers level: suspect
Key facts: I'm always suspicious of people who don't belong to a party but stand for election. It's like people who are self-employed; you sort of assume they're lazy and don't like being told what to do.

So those are your options, and it is important to choose wisely. I trust this helps.

The WhyNotSmile Guide To Childcare

So one of the UK government's recent crazy plans is that people who look after children should be allowed to look after more children.  Specifically, one person should be allowed to look after 4 babies, or 6 2-year-olds.  Now, if this sounds like quite a lot of small people for one person to handle, that's because it is, and one can only assume that it was dreamt up by someone who wandered into a room with 10 sleeping babies and wondered what all the fuss was about.

However, the fact that a policy is insane does not, as we have seen, prevent the current government from implementing it, and thankfully I have some experience in this field, since (due to what I'm sure will turn out to be some sort of clerical error) I am left in charge of a group small children at least once a week.  Not in sole charge, mind, but still, I like to think I have an air of authority.

So it is without further ado that I present

The WhyNotSmile Guide To Childcare

Now, the first thing to appreciate is that childcare is not like a regular job, where the first fortnight is considered a roaring success if you spend less than 78% of your time sobbing in the toilets.  With childcare, you have to be On The Ball right from day 1, and if you end up crying, no one really cares.  So, before looking after small children, you need to master the basics:

The Basics

1. Your main aim is always to hand the children back alive.  No matter what else you do, no matter how much fun they had, and no matter how healthy the snacks you provided were, you have to make sure that you keep your charges alive and kicking for the duration of their stay with you.

2. You have to hand the children back with all essential parts still connected.  It's all fun and games till someone loses an eye.  Or an arm, or a leg.  Even a small appendage, like a finger or toe, cannot be accidentally removed if you want to seem competent.  Now, the key here is to determine the meaning of 'essential'.  If they break a nail, it's ok (in fact, probably a good idea) to snip off the little loose bit so they don't injure themselves, or (more likely) pull it off themselves and eat it.  You can also get away with giving hair a slight trim if it gets Play-Doh or something stuck in it, although you should try not to remove large chunks.

3. You need to end up with the same children you started with.  You might think that, in the early days, it is sufficient to ensure that each parent who left a child with you gets a child back in return, but this is not the case.  At this point it is helpful to introduce some form of System, ideally one which prevents any child from leaving or entering the room.  This will help you greatly.

So, to summarise, you need to make sure that the children are kept in a locked room from which they cannot escape, preferably with padded walls and nothing they can climb on.  You should probably also not have a lot of sharp or pointy objects around.  However, children are notorious for creating sharp, pointy objects out of fixtures, fittings and soft furnishings, so it's best to keep an eye on them regardless.

Intermediate Level

The basics are all well and good, but once you get a bit skilled, you'll naturally want to up your game a bit.

**Proceed with caution**

Here are some tips for this difficult transition phase:

1. Try to get as many of them as possible to go to sleep.  You'll find that the parents aren't always entirely keen on this, as they like you to have to take some of the grief that comes with having wide-awake children, but at this level it is acceptable.  It is handy because while asleep, most children can't injure themselves, shout, or spill things.  Remember, however, that if you have one awake child, you might as well have two, since they can entertain each other, so time the sleeps carefully.

2. Understand that small children fall over a lot.  There is no shame in them having the odd small bump.  The important thing is to minimize the risk, and to make sure that you report all bumps which happen to the parents.  If their child falls off a chair, they'll find out anyway when the bump comes up, so you might as well look like you at least noticed.

Larger bumps are more serious, as is anything which leads to actual blood.  Small children are quite bouncy, but if they bump their heads, then it might be worth Getting Help of some kind.  Likewise, if they fall and their arm suddenly has a 90 degree bend, or if there is blood gushing from anywhere (exceptions to this are mouth injuries, which will bleed like mad from the tiniest cut you can imagine, and nosebleeds, which are sometimes serious but sometimes happen for no reason whatever), then you'll want at least a second opinion.

3. At the intermediate level, you're hopefully starting to introduce some element of fun to proceedings (though don't go too mad - you're still new to this, and things can still spiral out of control very quickly).  The first thing to understand is that things that you think will be fun for children invariably aren't.  Get over it.  I have made you a helpful chart:

Activity	Amount of Fun	Risks	Summary
Colouring in	Average	> Children may eat crayons > Children may stab themselves with pencils > Children may start fighting over who gets to colour in which picture > Crayons will fall on the floor and you may either kneel on them or slip on them > Paper will end up on the floor and you may slip on it > Everyone always wants the same colour of crayon.  In the event that you have several crayons the same colour, everyone will want exactly the same crayon	Possibly worth it, in a confined space
Eating	Lots	> Screams of 'he got a bigger bit than me' > Food will end up all over the place, so choose your menu carefully > Don't expect to get to eat anything yourself, other than the squished up soggy crusts which are handed to you as children tire of them	Quite good for a while; be cautious about giving them sugary food unless they're about to go home anyway, in which case it's someone else's problem and you might as well go for it if it keeps them happy
Play Doh	Lots of fun for you; less fun for children	> Try not to let them eat the stuff (if they do, it's not the end of the world, since it is technically edible, but make sure you mention it to the parents, as it will get pooed out eventually and then you'll have to fess up) > The stuff gets everywhere and is really hard to clean off cushions and stuff	Meh
Reading	Depends on the book	> Children may throw books at each other; books are easy to get a good swing with > Children may stab each other with the book corners > If there are flaps to lift, they'll all fight over them; if there are no flaps, they'll create them by ripping the pages > Even agreeing which book to read can be fraught with danger and strife	Good for a while
Toilet Trips	Epic; can provide 45 minutes of entertainment, particularly when hand washing, giving out the soap, and throwing the paper towels in the bin is involved	> Technically, you probably shouldn't be spending 45 minutes in the toilets with children, so there's potential for it to look bad	Definitely a good idea, but try to make sure you have a pedal bin for the fullest form of happiness

Advanced Level

Once you've mastered all of that, it's time to move on to Advanced Childcare.  The aim of this is to reach a state in which you and the children are all safe and happy; in the hands of a true expert, such a state can be maintained for up to 24 seconds at a time.

To maximise your chances:

1. Never consider any disaster impossible.  Do not allow yourself to say things like "I'll put that up there where she can't reach it".  If she wants it, she will reach it.  Likewise, "Those two can play quite happily together in that quiet corner" is simply Asking For It.

2. Never be fooled into thinking they're on your side.  Small children look out for no one but themselves.  They lull you in with their big eyes and their cute smiles; the sneakiest among them will do things like learn to say your name.  Do not think that this means you're home and dry.  Right at the point when you think they're happily sitting on your knee, ready to go to sleep, they'll barf into your top, and then laugh their heads off.

3. Make sure they all go home. A rookie mistake in childcare is to say things like "Oh, don't worry about being on time to pick her up, I can hold on to her for 5 minutes".  Next thing you know, you're there for an extra hour.  Remember: in Parent and Toddlers, the people on the door are not there to stop children leaving without their parents; they are to stop the parents leaving without their children.

I trust this helps.

The WhyNotSmile Guide to Helping a Depressed Person

A few days ago I read a thing entitled something like "How To Help a Depressed Person", which had some ok advice.  Then I searched for it again, and couldn't find it, but found all manner of other crappiness instead, and decided that the internet needs to be Taken In Hand.  And hence I present the WhyNotSmile Guide to Helping a Depressed Person.

Please note that I have no medical training, so there's a fair chance that most of this is pure guff.  I wouldn't go trying it out on actually depressed people - at least, not without adult supervision.

The WhyNotSmile Guide to Helping a Depressed Person

1. Appreciate that you cannot, in fact, help in any real way at all.  I'm sorry about this, because I know you mean well.  But in reality, there is nothing you can do or say which will do anything more than make the other person Feel Better.  Now this is nice in itself, of course, because we all like to feel better than we did 10 minutes ago, but the point is that if you say nice things and I feel better, there is nothing to say that once you leave the room I won't go back to feeling worse again.  You should still feel free to tell me I'm awesome, though (except you'll have to be more specific, or I will assume you just read this and then decided to be lazy and not actually think about the ways in which I am awesome).

2. Crying is not the end of the world.  Some of us like to cry.  Not in a miserable crying-is-more-fun-than-laughing sort of way, but if you want to cry, you want to cry, and sometimes the easiest thing is just to get the feck on with it.  After agreeing to marry Boyfriend Smile, I cried for 3 days.  When I said that out loud, some other people said that they did too (when they got engaged, I mean, not when I did, because that would be weird), but people tend not to tell you things like that, so then you feel bad for crying and having to send Boyfriend Smile home so you could calm down, even though other people do Things Like That as well and everything turns out more or less fine.

3. All attempts at 'Cheering Up' will be met with the contempt they deserve.  Remember, sad is happy for deep people.  And I don't really care that there are other people who are worse off than me, unless they are standing right in front of me, in which case I will do what I can to help and then go back to bed feeling pretty much how I do right now.

4. Remember that depressed people are not necessarily useless.  Some are, but this is generally an inbuilt characteristic, rather than something that the depression caused to happen.  In much the same way, some depressed people are lazy fecks, some have blue eyes, and some like yogurt.  Much like not-depressed people, in fact.  The fact that we may not have the energy to do anything but stare out the window for an afternoon is not an indication that we are incapable of doing anything, ever.  It's more that sometimes what's happening out the window is more interesting than you are, with your insistence on conversation and your questions and your complex expectations that I'll be able to formulate a reply.  Especially if what's happening out the window is 'nothing'.

Tomorrow you might hold more fascination. Or you might not.  It's hard to say.

Also remember that your parties, gatherings, and social events are not endlessly fascinating.  But I'd still like to be invited to all of them, even though I probably won't go.  From time to time you could suggest we do coffee or I get out of bed or something, as this may be more achievable.

5. Not all depressed people think in exactly the same way.  It might be helpful to make an analogy with not-depressed people here.  In fact, it may help to think of depressed people as if they are regular people.

6. If someone says they are depressed, don't say "Again?  You're always depressed".  I speak from experience when I say that this tends to be discouraging.

7. Also discouraging is when you say you were depressed that time your dog died.  You weren't.  You were sad because your dog died.  And you might remind me about the time my dog died, and then I'll be sad too.  So you're being discouraging and insensitive, and that's just mean.

8. With all this in mind, it should be apparent that perhaps one of the best things one can do if someone is depressed is to help them to help themselves.  This may mean allowing them to be sad when they are sad.  Or allowing them to cry when they want to cry.  Or generally just demonstrating that being depressed does not make them a worse person.  In other words, allowing them to realise that they are regular people who are not in the wrong for being sad.  And that it is ok to say that.  And that they can talk about being depressed without it being odd, or people thinking they're a bit dodgy or selfish.  And that they can even go and tell a doctor that they are depressed, and that the doctor might be able to help.

Remember that depression is a lying fecker.  It gets into your head, and then it's all like "Oh, you're useless and no one likes you", even though you are not really useless, and some people think you are Quite Nice.  Sometimes it is helpful to point this out.  Sometimes it's just annoying.  You may have to experiment.  It may be useful to be able to help the person to recognise that their brain is lying to them.  Although, it may just freak them out, so you should probably try to say it tactfully.

It is always fine to tell me you think I'm Quite Nice (but again, you'll have to be more specific, or I will assume you just read this and then decided to be lazy and not actually think about the ways in which I am Quite Nice).

You should probably also read something written by actual medical people, who have some idea what they're talking about, rather than listening to me.

The WhyNotSmile Guide To The Higgs Boson

Long-term readers will recall that 4 years ago (yes, really) we discussed the Large Hadron Collider.  More recent interlopers may wish to recap: http://why-not-smile.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/science-and-what-it-might-do-to-us-all.html

So, today they say that the Large Hadron Collider has found the Higgs Boson, and at least one person so far  has asked me to explain this.  So here goes.

First of all, let's get over this ridiculous idea of calling "the God Particle", because it's not God and has nothing to do with God really, except insofar as everything has something to do with God, who either created it all or doesn't exist, depending on your take on things, but let's not get into that here.

The Higgs Boson is very small, which is why it's so hard to find, but it can also explain why other stuff is heavy, which is why they thought of it in the first place.  Think of it as having mice in your house: you may not be able to see them, but then you find poo in a cupboard, and your cereal boxes have been gnawed, and you think "maybe I have mice".  As with mice, so with the Higgs Boson, because it is too small to see, but the Scientists have seen things which suggest it might exist, such as teeth marks on other particles and things.

With mice, you can just get a cat or put traps out or things, but with the Higgs Boson, you have to build a Big Machine and do Experiments, and even then you can't really be sure that you've found a Higgs Boson, but you can be reasonably certain, and this is what has happened.  To be precise,

they ha[ve] attained a confidence level just at the "five-sigma" point

which means it is quite likely to be the Higgs Boson, but also maybe someone sneezed or wrote down the wrong number or something.

Also, although it is referred to as "The" Higgs Boson, this is a little bit misleading, as there are actually lots of them, and not just one, but so far they have only found one of them.  To find more they will have to build a new Big Machine in another place, where a different Higgs Boson lives.

The WhyNotSmile Guide To The Superbowl

So apparently this weekend is Superbowl weekend, and this is Quite A Thing, although mostly for Americans.  But, as ever, WhyNotSmile is all about the culture, so I hereby present the official WhyNotSmile Guide to the Superbowl.

Now, the first thing to understand is that, despite its Twitter tag, the Superbowl has nothing whatever to do with superb owls, or any other kind of owls.  Nor does it have anything to do with any type of bowl.  The superbowl is all about football, I think, or maybe baseball.  One of those.  I believe it's the final of some manner of contest which has been happening for the past while, and this year the teams are New York and someone that people from Boston would support (I'm cheering for the latter, because I've been told to).

Anyway, as we all know, everything in America is to do with the presidential election, which this year will happen in November, and one of the aspects of that has been that various candidates have been round all the states trying to convince people to vote for them.  I think these are called either Caucuses or Primaries, but that might not be correct.  So in all the states, they chose who they wanted to win, and now it's between New York's choice, and Boston's choice (or maybe the state that Boston is in, which is hard to spell), and whichever state wins gets to choose the next President.

So, as you can imagine, the Superbowl is Quite Important, and should not be taken lightly.

PS. By the way, thanks for the help with the roofs/rooves thing.  I think we have established that it should always have been rooves, and that when I was in primary school, people lied to me.

The WhyNotSmile Guide to Valentine's Day, Part 2

Having failed, yet again, to find any reason whatever to celebrate Valentine's Day this year, I have decided to fall back on the next best thing: spoiling it for everyone else.  My logic is thus: I need to take care of myself and do things I like, and misery loves company.

I have figured out how best to ensure that I set up Valentine's Day in such a way that I cannot lose, and instead make everyone else feel bad.

For those who display their cards, chocolates, flowers etc all over Facebook, I can be cross with them for rubbing my nose in it and kicking me when I'm down.  They are insensitive and lack compassion.

For those who do not make a Big Thing out of Valentine's Day, but instead keep it low key, for fear of offending their single friends, they are patronising and childish.  Imagine assuming I'm so fragile that I cannot cope with seeing their insipid displays of what-they-call affection!  Ha!  Do they not know I'm bigger than that?

I'm pleased with myself for managing to achieve the Moral High Ground in all situations.  Now, if anyone needs me, I'll be sitting in a pile of self-pity, sobbing and eating chocolate.

The WhyNotSmile Guide To The Offside Rule

There was a whole big thing at the weekend there about how men think that women do not understand the offside rule in football.  Thankfully, WhyNotSmile has done her research, and can now reveal how it works.

Apparently the thing is best understood if you imagine three women in a shop.  Woman 1 sees shoes behind the counter, and would like to buy them, but there is someone (Woman 2) in front of her in the queue who also wants to buy them.  She cannot push in front of Woman 1, because that would be rude, and anyway, for reasons we cannot begin to imagine, neither of them has any money, but has joined the queue regardless.  So woman 3 is at the back of the shop and throws her purse to woman 1, who can now bunk in front of Woman 2 and buy the shoes.  But they are all offside, because they should be on the football pitch and not in a shop.

And this is how the offside rule works.

The WhyNotSmile Guide To Blue Monday, And Other Depressing Times

Good Afternoon, and Happy New Year.  Sorry for not posting, been busy and so on and so forth.

So today may or may not be Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year (currently the score stands at 3 for (This Morning, Virtual Methodist and my friend Claire; it is possible that these sources are connected), 1 against (Wikipedia)).  This is the day on which we all feel very miserable, due to having bankrupted ourselves at Christmas, not being paid for a few weeks yet, it's Monday, we're all getting divorced, and it's dark outside.

I have no idea whether it's Blue Monday or not, but I do know that I feel feck miserable today.  It is unlikely that this is due to my impending divorce, and more probable that it has a connection with my doctor thinking that 2 weeks ago was 'a good time' to reduce my anti-depressants.  I'm not entirely clear that I follow her logic, but she's very nice, so I went along with it, and hey, I can always go back and get them upped again. Once all the people with swine flu get out of the surgery, of course, cos I don't want to catch that.  And also I like to get a bit of attention at the doctor's, and she might not have so much time if she has 300 whining people who woke up this morning and sneezed twice to deal with.

So anyway.  Virtual Methodist is feeling good, and we're happy about that.  Also, on Facebook the concensus seems to be that we're all enjoying the blue skies and sunshine.

Historically, the week of Blue Monday has not been a good one for WhyNotSmile.  Three years ago this week was the big Thing With The Boss That Led To 5 Weeks Off With Stress.  Two years ago was the Broken Arm.  Last year passed uneventfully, as far as I remember, so this either means the effect is wearing off, or I'm Due.  Hard to say.

But it's not like I need a special day on which to be miserable, for WhyNotSmile can be depressed on any day of the year, for no particular reason, and in great force.

So here are my tips for coping with depression:

1) Enjoy the little things.  Like your new Christmas jammies, which have been through their first wash by now, and therefore can be worn with confidence that this is the size they'll stay, and they can be washed again without losing all their colour, so it's ok to wear them as much as you want.  I hate that initial 'new jammies' thing, where you're enjoying them, but you have the worry that Something Bad will happen in the wash, so you don't want to wear them too much because then you'll have to wash them, and then you might never be able to wear them again.

2) Do little things.  There is no point in attempting to restructure your entire life in January.  The initial enthusiasm will fall away, and you'll be back to square one, but with less energy, and shattered dreams.  Save the big things for an indeterminate day in the future.  Instead, concentrate on the little things.  People always need hugs.  Give hugs.

3) Exercise.  They always say you should exercise when you feel miserable.  I'm sure it's great.  Give it a go, and let me know what happens, kk?

4) Remember that sad is deep people's version of happy.  Anyone can be happy.  But it takes a great intelligence to see the misery in everything.

5) Likewise, valleys.  We can all enjoy being on the mountaintop, much beloved by Christian musicians through the eras.  But coping with valleys is something else.  Sometimes we can even learn things from God when we're not in the middle of another hyper praise song, waving arms in the air, and yelling 'Amen'.  At least, I think that's true.  I read it on the internet, so it must be.

The WhyNotSmile Guide To Halloween Costumes

Now WhyNotSmile is not one for parties and dressing up and all of that, but nevertheless is a surprising wealth of opinion when it comes to creating a good costume for Halloween.  It feels appropriate to share this now, for many of you will be going to Halloween parties this weekend, and WhyNotSmile does not want you to look like idiots.

So, here are my top tips for a good Halloween costume:

1) Consider the long term.  It's all very well to walk in and have everyone gasp in awe at your outfit, but there will come a point in the evening when you wish to participate.  A cousin of mine once went to a fancy dress party as a bunch of grapes, by sticking balloons all over herself, which was rather ingenious, but she couldn't sit down all night. You may wish to try your costume beforehand, by performing the following activities: sitting, eating, relieving yourself, and standing within speaking distance of other people.

2) Don't go too obtuse.  No matter what your costume, there'll always be someone who can read the wrong sort of thing into it, and you don't want everyone secretly thinking you came as something rude.  Better to be obviously a ghost, than have people think you're dressed as poo.

3) It is not good to make your costume, or any part of it, from food.

4) It is best to be unique, but there are certain acceptable duplicates; it is quite ok for a Halloween party to have more than one ghost, witch or Wonderwoman.

5) Home-made costumes are better than bought ones, but there are 2 bands of acceptable effort: lots of effort, and no effort.  Basically, the chart of effort vs impressiveness is U-shaped.  Lots of effort = attention to detail, secure fastenings and a convicing outfit.  No effort = bedsheet ghost.  Either is fine, although you won't win best costume for the ghost.  What's NOT fine is a half-assed attempt at Daffy Duck.

6) Ensure everything is securely fastened.  Do not leave a trail of glitter all over the floor if you ever want to be invited back.  Equally, and I cannot emphasise this enough, make sure your costume won't fall off.

7) Know your limitations.  It is fine to concoct some kind of costume which allows you to appear to take your head off and spout blood everywhere, but you can really only get away with it twice in one evening, unless guest turnover is quite high.  Do not keep repeating your trick all evening, as it will become tedious.

8) Do not go as any of the following: yourself, someone who couldn't be bothered to dress up, a normal person, someone dressed as yourself, or you at work.  Those are all stupid.

I trust this helps.

The WhyNotSmile Guide To Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar On The Internet

I don't want to come over all Lynne Truss on you all, but it has become clear of late that the quality of writing on the internet has slipped alarmingly in recent times, and if I don't take it in hand, frankly, who will?  With this in mind, I set to thinking, and it is thus with great pleasure that I present:

The WhyNotSmile Guide To Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar On The Internet

Introduction
The rules of spelling, punctuation and grammar on the internet (SPAGOTI) are generally more relaxed than those in real life, and it pays little to get worked up over simple typing mistakes (hte, adn etc.). Indeed, the internet (and other modern technology) has birthed new language of its own, from the smilie, which we like, LOLspeak, which we like in its own domain (we shall return to this presently), and abbreviations like 'ur l8' ('You appear to be running behind schedule') which is ok (but not necessarily to be encouraged) on a mobile phone, but is intensely irritating anywhere else.

In general, it is fair to say that the internet is a fast-moving medium, and to this end, one does not wish to be pedantic about those instances when the spellchecker was an unnecessary hinderance; it is, however, reasonable to expect that communication be understandable and that it show signs that the communicator has put in some effort. With this in mind, we now consider the various elements of the Rules of SPAGOTI.

Spelling
1. Bad typing. As stated above, there is a difference between bad spelling and bad typing, and this should be respected. We all miss a letter from time to time, and sometimes we mix letters up because one finger paused for thought and another overtook. This is acceptable, and, unless it is excessive, it does not do to be churlish about it.

2. You're, your and ur; there, their, ther and they're etc. The following is a comprehensive guide; please memorise it:

• You're = You are. The apostrophe indicates that a letter has been omitted, as in 'phone for telephone, wasn't for was not, and 'ee by gum, which has omitted both some letters and any semblance of meaning. Example: You're learning fast
  
• Your indicates 'belonging to you'. Like 'our', but it's yours. Example: 'Your toothbrush'.
• Ur is text speak, and can be used IN TEXT MESSAGES ONLY to replace either of the above. This is an inappropriate place to give an example, as this is not a text message.
• Use = put into service, as in 'I would like to use your bicycle tomorrow'.  It is not the plural of 'you'.  Neither is 'youse'. Also, you write 'youse', I think 'louse'.

• There = in that place. Like 'where' and 'here'. It specifies a location. Example: The book is over there.
• Their indicates 'belonging to them'. Like 'your', but theirs. Example: Their spelling is excellent.
• They're = They are. Again, the apostrophe indicates that a letter has been omitted. It's really not that complicated. Example: They're starting to get the hang of this.
• Ther is not a word.

• It's = It is.  It's the apostrophe = missing letter thing again.
• Its = belonging to it.  Like his or hers.
• Its' is not a word

3. LOLspeak. It is possible that you have come across something which appeared to be badly spelt, but which you were able to understand when you said it out loud. If so, it is likely that this was either Ulster-Scots, or LOLspeak. LOLspeak is the language used on the Lolcats/Cheezburger sites. For those who have not come across this site before, it is essentially a worldwide, ongoing caption competition (with no prizes), in which anyone ('hoomans') can submit a humourous ('funneh') (or, indeed, non-humourous ('non-funneh')) caption ('capshun') to accompany a picture ('pictur') of a cat ('kitteh'). In many cases the humour is derived from the juxtaposition of the cat's seriousness with the incorrect spelling which goes along with it.
This is fine as far as it goes; the difficulty arises when the langauge of LOLcats is taken outside of its natural habitat and smattered disregardingly across the rest of the internet, or even (horror of horrors) onto actual, physical paper. At this point, a boundary has been crossed, and not for the better.

4. Abbreviations. It is perfectly acceptable to shorten 'later' to 'l8r' in a text message.  It is not acceptable to do this in an email, particularly if you are trying to convey a serious point.  On the other hand, there is no sense in doing everything in longhand; for instance, do not feel you must refer to 'Compact Discs', 'Personal Computers' or 'Automated Teller Machines'.
As a rough guide, if your father would understand it, then it's fine.  Your mother should not be used as a guide, as they are ferocious for picking up abbreviations and using them like crazy.

5. Please learn to differentiate the following words:

• chose = past tense (Last week, I chose strawberry ice cream).  choose = present tense (I choose tea, in general).
• lose = become unable to find (where did you lose it?).  loose = not tight

Punctuation
Contrary to what appears to be an alarmingly popular opinion, punctuation is as important on the internet as it is anywhere else.  'Punctuation' is all those little dots, dashes and wavy lines that are used to create smilies.  It appears to be unknown to some, but these all have value in their own right, as we shall now consider:

1.The 'Full Stop', or 'Period'.  That's the little dot which you may have noted at the end of all my sentences.  The full stop virtually exists to end sentences.  Because sometimes, no matter how important your point is, you have to stop talking.  At that point, you should enter a full stop.  For instance, the following are correct uses for full stops:

• The cat sat on the mat.
• I ran a marathon today.
• He went to the shop; I do not know when he will return.

The following are incorrect:

• The cat sat on the mat then he ate lunch then it went outside lol
• He laughed. at me because I can't spell

From time to time it is acceptable to omit the full stop; for instance, in headings, or when the sentence ends with a question.
The other main use of a full stop is to denote an abbreviation.  E.g., e.g., i.e., etc., ibid. and so on; while there are rules about this on paper, I think we can safely say that in the online world one need not be too concerned.  Some abbreviations, such as Dr, NATO and CD do not require full stops, although I am not sure why.


2. The Comma.  The comma may well be the most abused punctuation mark in existence.  Partly this is because insertion of a comma is often a matter of personal preference, and partly it is because the comma has begun to be some sort of catch-all punctuation mark which is used by the uninformed as a short-cut.
Theoretically, it is possible to construct reasonably intelligible sentences without the use of a single comma, particularly in text messages and Facebook stati, and in many cases of uncertainty this is the best course of action.  Of course, one must take care to avoid such situations as the now well-known "Let's eat Harry!" in place of "Let's eat, Harry!", but in general one can get away with leaving a comma out.
One trend which has troubled me of late is the tendency to use commas in place of apostrophes, leading to sentences like "The man,s tie had become worn".  This makes no sense.  Please don't do it.
An even more disturbing trend is the multiple comma, particularly when it is used in place of a full stop.  On more than one occassion in the recent past, I have seen my Facebook feed littered with things like the following: "Just watchd the footie,,, Can't believe it [player name] was sent off!!!, , , lol whydo they do dat av nevr seen a ref so bad,", which, frankly, I do not believe I should be forced to read.

3. Brackets.  I don't have a lot to say about brackets, except that, for every open bracket, there should be a matching close bracket.  Brackets are for sidelines, extra information, and tangents; one should be able to remove them and still understand the sentence.  For instance: "The unicorn (which was white, with a golden mane) chewed the grass thoughtfully for some time".  It still makes sense if you remove the bit in brackets.  The difficulty here is that some of us make a mental note that we have entered a bracket, and take our thought volume down a notch every time we do.  We then ratchet it back up when the closing bracket is found; if it does not appear, we end up in silence, and confused.

4. The Colon.  Essentially, this should be used to introduce lists, viz: "I bought three things: a basket, a ball of wool, and a pair of scissors".  On the internet, if you're not sure, do not use it outside this context.

5. The Semicolon.  Like the colon, should only be wielded by those who know what they're doing.  With the more casual approach to punctuation allowed online, if you're not sure whether to use a semi-colon, it is best to use a comma instead.

6. The Question Mark.  This indicates that you asked a question.  It ought, in many ways, to be the simplest form of punctuation to master, but it appears that the internet is no friend of the simple, and far too many times have I seen questions without question marks, and question marks without questions.  The pairing should be as natural as yin and yang, Torville and Dean, or strawberries and cream (and just as pleasant), but (sadly), too often the two are torn asunder, and the rent halves are left alone, bereft.

7. Quotation Marks.  These are the vertical double dash thingies, not the vertical single dash, although the latter can also be used for quotations. They indicate that someone has said something.  For example: 'Right in the middle of the room, she stood up and said "Well, I have never heard the like!"'.  They can often be omitted in text messages.  The important thing to understand, however, is that they can be used to imply that someone has said something which isn't true; they are frequently employed by journalists to quote sources and indicate that some truth is being concealed.  So, one could say 'She told me she was "going to bed"', to imply that perhaps she was doing something other than sleeping.
Now the point here is that, if you put a word or phrase in quotation marks, particularly if you are trying to promote something, you end up making it look untrue.  For instance, 'Shop here!  We have the "best" prices in town!' may be intended as an advertisement, but what it means to the grammarian is that someone once said the prices were the best, but probably that was the owner's mother.

Grammar
Grammar is (and I quote Wikipedia) the set of structural rules that govern the composition of sentences, phrases, and words in any given natural language.  In other words, it tells you how to put words together so that sentences make sense.
Now, I have a number of bugbears here (as you might expect).  Most of these apply to real life as well as the internet; but whereas in real life you can generally disguise them with a bit of an accent, their use online is inappropriate.

1. 'I saw' and 'I have seen'.  Not 'I seen', and not 'I have saw'.  Yes, it matters.  Other examples include:
'I went' and 'I have gone'; 'I did' and 'I have done'.  It's all to do with past participles; you do not need to be familiar with the technicalities (although it's worth it for the sheer joy of knowing), but please take a few moments to memorise the rules.

2. 'I would have', not 'I would of'.  It's an accent thing.  People sound like they're saying 'of', but really, it's 'have'.  Trust me.  You get away with more in conversation.  You could say "I carried on disregardless" and the other person will think "disregardless?", but you will have moved on disregardless and it will all blow over.


3. Text messaging is a special case; email and Facebook stati are not.  In texting, you don't always have the time and space for the full 'subject-verb-object', and it is sometimes acceptable to omit one or more elements.  For instance 'I have your pen and I will bring it round to you later' can justifiably be texted as 'Have ur pen, will bring 2u l8r' (although if you have a pen, the preference would, naturally, be to write a letter).  Likewise 'I will be there in 10 minutes' can be shortened to 'Wiv u in 10'.  These are fine.
However, in emails, please use full sentences (possible exceptions can be made for emails sent from mobiles, as one can only type on those wee keypads for a short time before one gets Carpal Issues).

Conclusion
I trust the above guide has clarified some things for you all.  As we said at the beginning, the aim is not to start getting sniffy over every typing error and omitted article, but it is to be hoped that communication can be made increasingly clear (note: not increasingly clearer, which is a second order derivative and does little to add meaning, and much to make the user look a bit dense, or pompous).

The WhyNotSmile Guide To St Valentine

14th February is a day which suits WhyNotSmile well, being, as it is, a day devoted entirely to despair and crushing disappointment, and an opportunity to shore up the already hard-pressed greeting card industry. You will have heard the story about the primary school in England which banned children from sending Valentine cards in case some of them didn't get any and were scarred for life. Now WhyNotSmile was that child, and can testify to the common sense of this approach, but on the other hand, the annual devestation afforded by this ritual was very helpful in shaping my well-rounded cynicism and lifelong depression, and so was not entirely a waste.

But how much do we really know about St Valentine? As it turns out, not much, except that there may have been lots of him as it was, inexplicably, a very popular name in Those Days. Thankfully, this has not stopped the growth of a rich tradition of making things up, and it is to this that we now turn.

One would think that being patron saint of love would keep one fairly busy, but now that Clinton Cards have been enlisted, old Val has a bit of time on his hands, which he uses to turn to his other charges, viz:

1) Engaged couples, happy marriages, lovers. blah blah blah.

2) Bee keepers. Which is nice. Because it is good that bee keepers have their own patron saint. It may also go some way to explaining why so many Valentine's Day cakes are inscribed with 'Bee Mine', even when they do not have pictures of bees.

3) Epilepsy. Because love and chronic neurological disorders go together like a horse and carraige, if the carriage has a chronic neurological disorder.

4) Fainting. See point 3.

5) Plague. Because St Valentine has something for everyone, even those of us who are more likely to catch the plague than receive a pretty bunch of roses and a nice box of chocolates from the man of our dreams. And those of us who would, in fact, rather catch the plague than see more of our time and money go towards the annual beefing up of salaries for the fat cats who sell flowers and chocolates and other nice things which we do not need and do not at all want, because we are quite happy with what we have, thank you very much.

And that is the spirit of St Valentine, and I trust we all feel better for it.

WhyNotSmile Guide To Finding Work As A Freelancer

Good afternoon. I have been Quite Busy of late, making websites and quilts, and while I have had inspiration to post, I have not had the time to actually do it. However, today I am back with a Public Service Announcement on How To Find Work When You Are A Freelancer.

You see, what I do is design and build websites, which is quite nice, but can be a little stop-start in terms of the amount of work that comes in. To remedy this, there are a number of websites dedicated to helping freelance people find work, and I have signed up to avail of the services of many of them. Having done so for a number of months now, I am pleased to offer the WhyNotSmile Guide To Finding Work As A Freelancer.

1. Decide what you can do.
You can probably do more than you think. Technical skills are useful, of course, and there is a vast range of things that you could probably have a stab at, such as copy-writing (much, no doubt, to the annoyance of actual proper copy-writers), but there are also many jobs which require only willingness and no allergies. Most of them involve pets.

2. Find someone who needs that done.
You may need to be persuasive here. It is entirely possible that you are the finest juggler of nectarines in the South-East, but that's neither here nor there until someone wants to pay you to see it. At this point, you need to understand you USPs (Unique Selling Points). It doesn't really matter what these are, as long as you say them repeatedly and enthusiastically to as many people as possible - eventually you'll hit on a sucker and *bingo* you're off. The key is to forget the fact that no one needs your skill, and to believe instead that everyone does.
For instance:
! Finest juggler of nectarines in the South-East!!
! 5 nectarines at once!!
! IDEAL for birthday parties, bar mitzvahs, weddings and many other occasions!!
! Lessons available!!
! Fun-filled, exciting, edge-of-your seat entertainment at LOW prices!!
Now go to a freelancer website. Send your ad to everyone on there, even if they need someone to write a technical manual for their payroll software. Crowbar it in. Make a name for yourself. Get KNOWN. Go through the lists of projects and bid on everything.


3. Decide how much you want to charge.
Everyone will tell you that you can easily earn £500 per day as a freelancer, and even more if you actually know what you're doing. Of course, this is not at all true, as a cursory examination of jobs posted on these freelance websites tells you. The most frequent post is along the lines of:

I need a social website built with photo upload discussion board iPhone intergration, like Facebook but better I have loads of, ideas and I want it to be really good, no time-wasters please, my budget is £200. Also I would like it done as soon as possible please, please dont bid if you cant have it done by this weekend thanks

Essentially, most buyers of freelance services expect you to work for £2 per hour, and quickly.

4. Decide on your ethical and moral stance.
You may feel that you will do anything for cash, but it's not that simple, because if you do, sooner or later someone will sue you. For this reason, promising to build a 'Facebook clone' is probably putting you on shaky ground, as is anything that includes lines like 'I have the images already, to save money, I took them from our competitors website.'
There are also numerous requests for work which begin **NOTE: this post includes material or an adult nature. If you are offended easily, please do not read on **; it is best to have a Policy on these before you start.

5. Decide whether you can work with the buyer.
So you've found a job which is decently priced, within your skill set and legal. Well done. You have already achieved more than most. The next stage is to decide whether the buyer of your services is someone with whom you can do business. Since they are, at this point, basically words on a page, they will have to be doing something really bad to put you off immediately; the key thing is to understand the more subtle clues which hide between the lines.

For example:

'This is not a big job, but it needs to be done by tomorrow because I have promised it to the client by then'

TRANSLATION: 'I am pitifully disorganised and unable to complete my own work. This was due in a fortnight ago, and the client is threatening to sue me. I would like to have someone to share that responsibility with.'

'You need to be available 5 days a week, 9-5'

TRANSLATION: 'I am a control freak who will Skype you every 20 minutes and hires freelancers because all my full-time employees quit after 3 days'.

'Top-quality workers only'

TRANSLATION: 'We need someone who will make up for the complete lack of talent in the full-time team'.

'LOL' (anywhere in advert)

TRANSLATION: 'I'm an idiot'

6. Place your bid.
I'm assuming here that we're on one of those sites where people post jobs they need done, and you bid for it (not one of the ones where the price is fixed). The golden rules here are:
i) Try to sound sane, upbeat, positive and skilled. Saying 'I hav nevr used RubyOnRales but I learn relly fast' is not going to get you the job. Saying 'I have completed a number of similar projects in CSS, which is similar to Ruby on Rails, and am confident that I will complete this job to the best standards' might. The buyer typically won't have a clue that comparing CSS to Ruby on Rails is like comparing Dolly Parton to the Large Hadron Collider, and you can always get help online.
ii) List your past projects, unless they were really bad, in which case, don't.
iii) Do not bid first. The first person is there only to set the bar for everyone else.
iv) Ignore the budget. Just say how much it would cost you to do the job. Lots of buyers have no idea how much the project will cost, so they aim low. Convince them that you are worth paying more for. Acknowledge that your bid is a little above the posted budget, but do not say things like 'but I'm worth it'.
v) Do not completely ignore the budget. That's just silly.

7. Sit back and wait.
In the meantime, read the job specs and see if you really know how to do it.

8. Put Google Ads on your blog and try to raise money that way.

WhyNotSmile Guide To Choosing A Good Password

You know that WhyNotSmile is looking out for you all, all of the time, and so it was with a certain amount of concern that I read yesterday that the most common password among a load nicked from Gmail/Hotmail/Yahoo/or something was '123456'. Other frequently used passwords include 'password', 'hello' and 'secret'. I mean, seriously, people, you need to do better than this. This is your identity we're talking about here, your emails, your photos, your secure personal data and your bank details. It's about time you all started taking password selection with the appropriate gravity.

And so I am pleased to present the WhyNotSmile Guide To Choosing A Good Password.

Section 1: What makes a good password?
A good password has 2 elements:
1. It must be secure
Words are not secure. How it works, you see, if you're trying to hack into someone's account, you get a computer and a dictionary, and you get the computer to keep trying to log in with each word in the dictionary in turn. A surprising number of people use words only for their password. Or they use their children's names, but this can easily be hacked in a similar way.
Short passwords are not very secure. g5, for instance, is not a word, but it's hardly rocket science to guess.
Combinations of letters and numbers are more secure. And if you add in some punctuation, it becomes even more secure. But some things you might sign up to will not allow you to use punctuation. So a password like 'x5t67!h1' is quite secure.
This, however, brings us to point 2:
2. You must be able to remember it
There is no point in outwitting yourself. Nor is there a lot of point in having a password so complicated that you need to keep it written down beside your computer all the time. So it needs to be something you will remember.

Section 2: Methods for generating good passwords
You can get things that will generate a password for you; these tend to be good on security and poor on rememberability. Fortunately, WhyNotSmile has some suggestions. In this section, we will look at how you can generate a 9-character password. For most things, this will be secure enough, but if you work for the FBI, you want to treat it as an introduction and extrapolate a little.

Step one: get 6 random letters of the alphabet. These can be anything, as long as you remember where they came from. Suppose you choose a song you like, and take the first letter of each of the first 6 words: taenat, for instance. Or, choose your grandparents' and parents' first names and take the final letter of each: nmdass. It doesn't really matter, as long as you remember what you did.

Step two: choose 2 random numbers. For example, take the final 2 digits of your parents' phone number: 46. Perhaps reverse them.

Step 3: choose your favourite punctuation: _

Step 4: combine them in some way that you will remember: ta46en_at for instance.

Conclusion
Now you have generated your own password which you can remember, and which is more secure than 'welcome'.

So don't come crying to me if someone steals your identity.

The Tall Ships: WhyNotSmile Investigates (Includes Special Pull-out Section: The WhyNotSmile Guide To The Maritime Festival and Tall Ships)

So, today was the opening of the Tall Ships and Maritime Festival in Belfast, and as promised, the Smile family headed over to see what was going on. If you only read one line of this post, read this one: go to the Belfast 2009 Tall Ships & Maritime Festival, it's class.

My parents were supposed to be arriving at my house at about 11, and managed to restrain themselves until about 10.30, which is an improvement on the general pattern followed for outings. So we went into Belfast, and after a detour to the bank, started searching for a bus to take us to the festivities at The Odyssey.

This should not have been difficult, what with the big buses with 'Odyssey' written on the front, but it took longer than you might expect and even then we had 3 attempts before we finally got on board - mainly due to Too Much Choice, as the buses were queued up and the Inspector kept saying 'You can get on the one behind this' to the people in the queue, at which the 3 of us obediently moved to the queue for the bus behind, at which the Inspector repeated his information and we moved again. By bus 3, however, we had cottoned on that we didn't actually have to move, it was just that we could if we wanted to, and thereafter things speeded up.

Anyway, we got off the bus and joined the orderly queue which we could see nearby, for no better reason than that if everyone else was thinking it was a good idea, we didn't want to miss out. After 10 minutes of not moving, we realised it wasn't quite 12 o'clock and things hadn't opened yet; when I mentioned this to mum I was overheard by several people in the queue and a lively debate ensued as to what time it started at and what time it was now, and shouldn't they have a 2-way system in place? I'm not sure how the 2-way system idea got started and developed, but it seemed to have wings, and by the time the boats sounded noon we were a mere several steps away from a complete re-organisation of the event logistics with WhyNotSmile at the helm.

Thankfully the crowd started to move, so we followed it, and after another 10 minutes or so came back out 10 yards from where we had started and decided to go for lunch. At some point we had each acquired a leaflet with More Information, and although none of us was quite certain where it had come from or who had given it to us, we agreed that it would be wise to have lunch before everyone else, and to read the leaflet while we ate so that we would know what to do.

Now, we discovered yesterday (on our reconnaisance cycle trip) that there is a nice cafe at the Pump House, and we strongly suspected that people would not generally know about it and that therefore it would be quiet, so we decided that that was the place to be (I didn't mention this before today because I wanted to make sure I had a peaceful lunch without hordes of people there, but I'm telling you now because I've had my quiet lunch and you can all congregate there as much as you like without disturbing me). So we just had to find the shuttle bus to take us there.

We asked a bus driver, and he didn't know because he was only doing the route into town and back out, mate, so we asked a man in an official looking jacket, who didn't know either, and then we asked a Scottish lady who had both a uniform and maps, and she told us roughly where to head. When we got about half way there, we saw a sign saying 'Queen's Road Bus Stop', with an official-jacket man at it, so we thought we'd better check that it was the Bus Stop we wanted to be at for the Queen's Road, and it turned out it wasn't, which we hadn't really expected.

So the moral of this tale is that nobody in red jackets knows anything much about what's happening, but they are all very nice and have walkie-talkies and will try to help, and I dare say they'll have got to grips with things a bit more by the time they've had a couple of days under their belts. It also didn't help, incidentally, that when I asked people, I kept calling it a 'Shuffle Bus' and they kept laughing at me, so if you're asking, you should probably try to get that right.

Anyway, the actual bus stop was just behind us, and we got there just as the bus came. The entire 500,000 people who were expected to come to the event over the 4 days appeared to be on board already, so we spent about 10 minutes watching people get off (as my mum said, "I think they're just getting off and then going round the back and getting on again"). Eventually we boarded, with the remaining 3 people in Belfast who hadn't just disembarked, and the bus set off.

Stop 1 was the Harland and Wolff Drawing Office; the other 3 people got off, but since we were headed for lunch a bit further down we stayed aboard, and were joined by a gaggle of elderly ladies who couldn't decide where to sit, who to sit next to (in particular, Hetty was keen to go next to Aggie, but Aggie had already sat down next to someone else), where to get off or generally what they were there for, so that took some time. Stop 2 was the Pump House & Titanic Dock, and as we disembarked we realised with joy that our plan had been good, and indeed no one had thought to go to the Pump House for lunch. We perused the sandwiches at our leisure (Meal Deal: 1 pack of 'themed' sandwiches, a bottle of Coke/Diet Coke/Sprite and a packet of crisps for £4); I went for 'The Apprentice' on brown bread, mum had 'The White Star' on white bread (spotted the sandwich theme yet?) and dad just picked the one that looked the biggest.

So, moral 2: go to the Pump House for lunch; no one knows it exists, so it's quiet, it's not that expensive, and you can sit outside and look over the lough. Also, they have nice toilets.

At one point my dad disappeared; we had assumed he had gone to the loo, but once he had been gone a suspiciously long time, we realised he must be buying things. My dad loves buying things at stuff like this; so long as it's of no earthly purpose and is extremely awkward to carry round for the day, he will buy it (we still have, in the back of a wardrobe somewhere, a hawaiian skirt that he bought in a Christmas market back in about 1987, and which he has always sworn will come in handy for a fancy dress party sooner or later). So he came back with a Tall Ships Souvenir Guide, and we read that, and discovered all sorts of things about the boats, and formulated a Plan for the rest of the day. By this time it was about 1 o'clock, and we headed back towards the Odyssey, stopping off at the Drawing Office on the way. There they had an exhibition about the Titanic (made in Belfast - "She was all right when she left here") which is also worth seeing, and a man who will tap your name out in Morse Code.

After this we got the shuttle bus back to the Odyssey and wandered round there a bit; mostly it involved dodging people with prams and buggies and taking photos of everything in sight, much the same as everyone else was doing. At a conservative estimate, there must have been a million photos taken today alone, plus thousands of videos which will mainly consist of half a second of a tall ship and then 30 seconds of people almost walking into the camera and looking annoyed.

We strolled the continental market, where they were selling everything from hammocks, bags and jumpers to giant flumps, many-flavoured turkish delight and kangaroo burgers. There was also a funfair, but we didn't go to that, so I can't tell you any more; I'm just saying it's there.

Next step was to cross the river to 'The Other Side' - by now we had abandoned the idea of the shuffle buses, because although there were tons of them, you had to queue to get on, and my dad despises queueing - it's sort of a principle of his; even a queue of 2 people can be too much, and it is generally thought safest to keep him moving. On the way out of the Odyssey grounds, we caught a little bit of street theatre and then headed over the Lagan Weir with millions of other people. The crowds were massive, but all going in the same direction, so the only concern was that the person at the front would suddenly stop and 3 million people would grind to a halt, leaving us trapped in a sea of buggies, balloons and cameras, but fortunately this did not happen.

Across the other side (the Big Fish side), we made our way to Clarendon Dock and joined the masses there. The thing was, although there were lots of people, they did keep moving ahead, and unless you actually wanted something specific there was no need ever to join a queue. So we browsed the RNLI stand (we didn't take up their offer of sea rescue training, but it did look quite good), we looked briefly at the continental market and decided to do it on the way back, and then saw a sign saying 'Pat's Bar' and started following arrows (to be more precise, dad started following the arrows, and mum and I followed him). So we got to the bar, and sat in the square watching comedy acts performing, and listening to music, and laughing at people who had won giant teddies in the funfair and were carrying them around not quite knowing what to do with them, and had a drink (one each, you understand, not one between us).

At this point (by now about 2.30pm), we realised we hadn't actually done much in the way of Tall Ships so far (other than take photos), so we headed off to try to find one that would let us climb aboard for a look round. The first one we came to had a queue about a hundred yards long, and it was clear that dad was not going to manage that no matter how interesting the boat, so we kept going and found ourselves in another continental market and another funfair. Dad bought some macaroons, which were very nice, and we took more photos of boats and dodged some more crowds and buggies and then came upon a boat with a very short queue which was moving quite fast. This, clearly, was the vessel for us.

The ship was called Sagres, and is Portuguese, and really was very nice, and, most importantly, tall. Visitors were allowed on board and you could walk round a guided path and take photos and so on, and talk to sailors, although mainly only if you knew Portuguese, and get your Souvenir Guide stamped to say you had visited. So it was very interesting and we took plenty of photos and my mum flirted with sailors.

By now we were getting tired and hungry, so we came off the boat and went back to the funfair and market. The funfair, incidentally, is one of those at which, if you held a gun to my head and said I had to go on one ride or you would shoot me, I would carve you the bullets out of my own eyeballs, because it was all spinny things and high up things and those sorts of things which I hate. On our way round we saw some Gladiators with whom you could have your photo taken for a tenner, or you could just take a photo of them for free, which was kind of better because, to be honest, they were a bit slimy and their shorts were too tight.

So we got some Turkish Delight and a venison burger, and, having reached the apogee of this side of the lough, started to head back. Yesterday, Dad and I had seen a ship we definitely wanted to visit, called the Bounty - the one which was used in The Mutiny on the Bounty, and Pirates of the Caribbean - and thus we joined an orderly and not-too-long queue, and were delighted to see that about 10,000 people joined it just behind us, so we were able to spend our queueing time crowing over how we had come along just in time and if we had been a minute later we would have had to wait a lot longer. The Bounty was also very nice on board, and had the added bonus of letting you go beneath decks (as I believe the technical term has it), which was interesting to see. Again we got our Souvenir Guide stamped, and by now we were ready for home.

Of course, we couldn't find our way out of the docks area for quite some time, so by the time we were heading for the bus it was rush hour, and I ended up travelling the length of the Woodstock and Cregagh Roads sitting in the luggage rack, but the bus was full of people who had had a great day at the Tall Ships and everyone was delighted to compare notes; of course, it was also full of people who had been in work all day, and who were feeling grumpy and not all that keen on talking, but frankly, since it was full twice over and there was no room to move, it wasn't as if they had any option other than to sit there and listen.

So that was the Tall Ships and Maritime Festival, and really, if you haven't gone, you should go. In addition to the things mentioned above, there are many other things which were of less interest to us but might be of more interest to others, including bouncy castles, boat tours of the lough (which bring you up next to the ships for a closer look and more photos), the World's Strongest Man Contest (which hadn't started when we were there) and various radio stations doing roadshows. Oh, there was also live music. And face painting. And other things. In fact, there is tons to do, and it's free to wander, so you really should go. Just don't try to take the car in.

You will of course want to plan your visit before you go, and with this in mind, WhyNotSmile has thoughtfully produced a Guide To The Maritime Festival and Tall Ships, which you should print off and study:

The WhyNotSmile Guide To The Maritime Festival And Tall Ships
It is important to familiarise yourself with things before you arrive. To this end, you should visit www.gotobelfast.com and find out what's happening. This may seem like a basic instruction, but there really is a lot to see, and it's very hard to figure it all out when you're standing in a sea of buggies.

In addition to the things on the website, please note the following:

1. Food. Food is copiously available. For a quiet lunch, go to the Pump House, as detailed above. The Odyssey is also open for dining, and the continental market can supply a range of culinary delights and horrors, although this tends to be more expensive. It is also possible to take a picnic and eat it on the grass.

2. Footwear. Bear in mind that you will be going on boats, and therefore high heels are not appropriate. Many have tried, and while failure is frequently hilarious for others, it may detract from your enjoyment of the day. Wear something you can walk miles in, whether you intend to walk miles or not; once you get caught up in the crowd, you may have no option.

3. Children. Buggies get in the way. Take them if you want, but know that you will be annoying everyone else, and it will take 5 times as long to get anywhere or do anything. Narrow buggies are generally easier to manouvre and will get you fewer dirty looks, but it has been noted that an extra wide twin buggy can be advantageous, as it allows the pusher to build up a momentum which is not easily resisted.
If your children let go of your hand at all, they will be swallowed up in the crowd, so make sure they have their names and addresses round their necks, and enough money for the bus fare home. If it's wet, you should probably also give them a house key in case they get back before you.

4. Money. The only thing you have to pay for is food, and bouncy castles etc. The event itself is free, the buses are free, and the boats are free. In fact, you can probably turn a profit if you wear a strange wig and hold out a cap; buskers and street performers are copious, and sooner or later someone will give you a few coins.

5. The Boats. In all the excitement, it is easy to overlook the main point of the event, which is to see the Tall Ships. You should probably try to get on board at least one or two of them. Since they are generally not all open at once, the decision may be made for you, but if you find yourself confronted by choice, remember that in 15 years' time, you won't have much beyond a stamped souvenir guide and a vague memory of a lot of ropes and wood; choose the boat that where you can take photos of yourself wearing a sailor hat and standing at the wheel, and make sure you get your souvenir guide stamped.

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Please note that I will be spending the next several days sorting through a thousand photos, editing, cropping and deleting; once I have finished, I will publish for you an exclusive WhyNotSmile Photo Souvenir Guide of the Tall Ships in Belfast 2009, which will be worth Something in years to come.

Also I have to decide where to go to watch the ships leaving on Sunday; I think I've come up with a secret vantage point, but I'm not telling you because (1) you'll all turn up and get in the way, (2) it's kind of awkward to describe and (3) it might turn out to be wick; I haven't quite figured out the lie of the land round there.