MOVE over Piazza San Marco, because Thurso's pedestrian precinct is now featuring in busker pianist Vroni Holzmann's film 10 Years of Streetpiano on YouTube at www.tiny.cc/streetpiano
"This film includes clips of street piano playing all over Europe, from Salzburg in Austria to Thurso, Scotland's most northern town," said Vroni, who has been travelling through cities, streets and parks for over 10 years bringing her acoustic upright piano and playing ragtime, stride and boogie-woogie to surprised audiences.
In the case of Thurso, the surprised audience in the pre-refurbished precinct includes our very own council street sweepers. The film also shows Vroni playing in Inverness and Fort William.
The 2011 piano tour of Europe includes Regensburg, Pilzen, Vienna, Ulm, Copenhagen, Gothenburg, Oslo, Hannover, Mainz and Brussels, which I'm sure are no match for the windy precinct in Thurso.
Vroni's CDs Streetpiano Ragtime and Streetpiano Boogie are available at www.streetpiano.com.
LOOKING out from my window on to the choppy Pentland Firth I still find it hard to believe that Aberfeldy woman Colleen Blair (33) managed to swim from Hoy to Scarfskerry in four hours and 41 minutes a few weeks ago. Colleen succeeded where others have failed and deserves her place in the record books.
But spare a thought for Diana Nyad (61), who recently had to abort an attempt to swim from Havana, Cuba, to Key West, Florida. She was pulled from the water after swimming for 29 hours with 53 miles still to go.
The swim was 103 miles and was expected to take 60 hours but she suffered from shoulder pain, asthma, jellyfish stings and was said to be vomiting when pulled from the water.
Open-water swimming has the equivalent of mountaineering's Seven Summits (the highest mountains in the seven continents) - dubbed Oceans Seven, the swims are: the North Channel between Ireland and Scotland, the English Channel, the Catalina Channel between Santa Catalina Island and Los Angeles, the Molokai (Kaiwi) Channel in Hawaii, the Cook Strait between the North and South Islands of New Zealand, the Tsugaru Channel in Japan and the Strait of Gibraltar.
The North Channel between Ireland and Scotland is regarded by some as the most difficult of these swims, so given that Colleen has already swum the North Channel and now completed the Pentland Firth, she should go down in the history books as an open-water swimming hero.
IT seems you can fight fire with fire, according to Scottish therapist Andrew Johnson who has launched a phone app to help teenagers addicted to... mobile phones.
Ofcom has released statistics that show 60 per cent of teenagers are "addicted" to their mobile phones, and according to Mr Johnson, his app, Disconnect, has a 95 per cent success rate amongst those who used it in a trial.
The recording lasts 30 minutes and is "best listened to in bed last thing at night" he says. "After doing this for three weeks, most teenagers find their addiction to their mobile phone together with PlayStation, e-mails, Twitter and Facebook, has dissipated."
The app uses a combination of relaxation techniques including deep breathing, visualisation and meditation "allowing people to shift their perception of life without relying on technology", claims the blurb.
Mr Johnson said: "It's slightly ironic that an app provides the most successful means of disconnecting with technology but it makes it widely accessible and cost-effective. Not only can it help teenagers but also business people who feel the need to check their inbox for e-mails every minute or feel naked without their Blackberry."
The app costs £1.99 and is aimed at those age 12 and up. A quick look at Mr Johnson's website - www.withandrewjohnson.com - shows that he has CDs and MP3 files on a variety of subjects including Beat Procrastination, Lose Weight, Positive Pregnancy, Stop Drinking and Visualise Healing. At only £1.99 each, this is surely something the NHS should be investing in...
A NEW Swedish study has shown that one in five seven-year-old girls want to lose weight but it generally takes a year or two before they actively try to do something about it.
Report author Josefin Westerberg-Jacobson, of Uppsala University, said the study had followed the girls from seven to 11 years old. Throughout the study, the scientists gave them a series of questionnaires regarding their attitudes to food, eating and their own body weight, as well as their mealtime and exercise habits.
As many as one in five seven-year-old girls wished she were thinner. This number increased as the girls grew older. When they had reached 16, more than half of the girls wished they weighed less.
The number of girls who actively tried to lose weight also increased with age from a few per cent of the young girls to almost half of the older ones. Among the girls aged between 14 and 18, one in eight used extreme dieting measures such as skipping meals, using dieting pills or taking laxatives.
According to the study there were many reasons why the girls wanted to lose weight. Most answered that they wanted to feel happy about themselves, but many also wanted to avoid being taunted at school and comments from family members, especially fathers.
Ann Wallbom Fagraeus, a Swedish specialist in child and youth ?psychiatry, said that the mother's body image and attitude to body weight was also very important in how the daughter perceived herself. She also believes that the "skinny ideal" is affecting younger and younger girls.
There is no doubt that we are bombarded on a daily basis by advertising and propaganda, whether it is about body image or some other agenda.
To counteract this, one farmer in France has taken a stand by forking out £2630 for a series of billboard advertisements that denounce the evils of advertising.
Some 25 huge adverts were emblazoned across the French town of Agen, showing a human brain stuffed with advertising images and carrying the slogan "Advertising is manipulating you - React!".
Farmer Pierre Kung (56) told the media that he was using the martial arts technique of using the strength of the adversary to floor him.
"My aim is simply to get people to ask themselves questions, because we've been brainwashed into thinking that happiness lies in consuming ever more," he commented.
Kung expressed sympathy for an anti-advertising militant group in Paris which attacks billboards and other adverts that it says blight the landscape and render the population consumerist sheep.
Shame on the junior litter louts
JUNIOR litter louts have been in action at Thurso's all-singing, all-dancing Pennyland swing park. The new play equipment has proved to be a big hit with the park well used over the summer.
Unfortunately some children are not using the bins for their litter and the park was littered with rubbish the last time I visited with my children. There were some beer cans amongst the rubbish but the majority of the litter was sweet wrappers and juice bottles.
This is a great shame when a lot of the children are clearly enjoying the park, using the bins and are rightly proud of the refitted facility.
