MONDAY 3 DECEMBER 2007

FREERICE.COM
This is one of a growing number of websites which seem, to the end-user, to be able to raise money by ‘magic’. In this case, all you do is play along with a word-game (you’re given a word and choose what it means from four options) and each time you get the answer right, 10 grains of rice are donated to the UN World Food Programme. The words get harder as you go along but - hey - you can always start again AND it doesn’t actually cost YOU anything. The site is able to do this because of the adverts that scroll along the bottom of the page. Neat. Several conventional websites are supporting charities in this way now - including Google. Other sites - though performing regular internet functions like browsing and email - are actually dedicated fundraisers. Take a look at magictaxi.co.uk, which is a browser and email client AND donates to named charities which change daily. Isn’t the internet amazing?

SPEAKING OF WHICH....
Someone very wise and perceptive - it may have been David Attenborough or Michael Palin - said recently that the lives of ‘ordinary’ people had changed more in the last 50 years or so than they had in the previous 2,000 years. Think about it. For most people education, communication, travel, health, life expectancy and all the trappings of everyday life didn’t alter in any meaningful way for centuries. When I was born (59 years ago tomorrow), almost no-one had a private phone; in the street we lived on in Peterlee, only one household possessed one. There were only three or four cars at most. People took their holidays in Crimdon or South Shields - and they went there by bus or train. You did your shopping locally. Computers hadn’t even been imagined, let alone mobile phones and foreign holidays. In fact, when you think about it, almost nothing about the daily lives of ordinary folk is the same now as it was then. I reckon we’re quite lucky to have lived through such exciting times.

TRUCKSHUNTER GEMS
The Gems this morning were You’re Gunna Lose That Girl, from the The Beatles’ 1964 film Help! and a truly delightful - and genuinely sad - local song called Mally Didn’t Come. It was sung by Pete Scott.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?
In local place-names, -bottle (as in Shilbottle and Newbottle) means ‘dwelling-place’ or just ‘building’. It’s related to Scots bothy.
This morning’s question.......in Pauperhaugh, Derwenthaugh and Humshaugh, what does ‘haugh’ mean?

CONTACT ME
Post comments on this blog or contact me in any one (or more) of these ways....
ian.robinson@bbc.co.uk
text 07786 200954 (while the programme is on-air)
call (between about 0545 and 0630 Monday to Friday) 0191 232 6565
Ian Robinson, The Nightshift, BBC Radio Newcastle, Spital Tongues, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE99 1RN

NOTE
Please bear in mind that the views expressed in this blog are my own and NOT the views of the BBC.