Kentish Express Ashford & District
How colouring can stop you seeing red
Remember those childhood days when you spent hours creating a masterpiece in your colouring-in book? Well, the activity has made a massive comeback in recent times – especially with adults.
Colouring books for adults have surged in popularity, prompting UK publishers to ramp up production to meet global demand.
Adult colouring books created by Scottish illustrator Johanna Basford, for example, have been a worldwide hit.
Earlier this year, 250,000 copies of her new book were re-printed by North London-based Laurence King Publishing to meet global demand.
The first print run of her Enchanted Forest colouring book sold 225,980 copies within weeks, and Ms Basford’s first colouring book, Secret Garden, has sold 1.5 million copies since August 2013. Both books have topped Amazon’s bestsellers list and been translated into 24 languages.
Sainsbury’s announced last week it has sold more than one million colouring-in books – worth £1.2 million – since April.
The supermarket giant now sells 34 variations of adult colouring books.
The mammoth interest in such colouring books is reckoned to be because the activity is seen by adults as the perfect way to unwind, relax and relieve stress.
And now the Ordnance Survey (OS) has joined the adult colouring-in craze by releasing sections of Britain to colour in.
Gemma Nelson, OS social media manager, who is responsible for the release of new OS’s colouring maps, says: “Some time out spent colouring in can be hugely beneficial. There does seem to be some science behind the trend, with numerous psychologists admitting that when it comes to relaxation, colouring has surprisingly scientific results.”
So the map-making organisation has created a series of OS maps that have had all of the street names and colour from the map stripped away to create a blank canvas ready to be coloured in.
And they’re inviting people to have a free go. You can download and print a copy of an OS logo representing London at www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/ blog/2015/08/maps-join-adultcolouring-in
Many people find mapreading in a car, for example, fairly stressful, but perhaps colouring one in will have the opposite effect. Give it a whirl and see.
The word “hangry” is among new entries in the Oxford English Dictionary.
The announcement comes as new research (oh how Nuts and Bolts loves a good bit of research!) reveals how people can become bad-tempered or irritable as a result of hunger – in other words hangry.
The research says that people who make decisions on an empty stomach are nearly twice as likely to make the wrong one compared with people who have eaten.
In clinical trials, 62% of adults got more decisions wrong when they were hungry than when they were not.
But after eating a wellbalanced meal, nearly half (48 per cent) were able to make the right decision, according to researchers for malt-loaf maker Soreen.
Academics advise couples on the verge of a row to pause and eat a sugary snack instead!
Last week’s paper included several reports of the impact of flooding on Ashford, following four days of heavy rain.
But one flooding incident that affected our very own Kentish Express editor Robert Barman went unreported ... until now.
Mr Barman and news editor Alastair Irvine were walking down Canterbury Road to their cars on Tuesday evening of last week.
Our editor was on the kerbside of the pavement when a big white 4x4 went past. Its wheels touched the flooded gutter sending a torrent of water up and over the roadside half of Mr Barman.
Mr Irvine escaped unscathed as Mr Barman ‘took the bullet’. And as it had been a long day and Mr Barman was heading off home to eat, getting drenched definitely made him feel hangry ... with a capital ‘h’.
We all know the feeling. It’s been a stressful day, you’re tired and just as you get into bed and your head hits the pillow you remember you haven’t brushed your teeth.
But you’re too exhausted and bone idle to get out of bed and go back to the bathroom to do them so you drift off to sleep.
If that’s ever happened to you then you’re definitely not alone because in a survey of 10,000 adults for the Love Your Mouth campaign (oh how Nuts and Bolts loves a good survey!), 45% of those questioned said they have gone to bed without brushing their teeth, which could increase their chances of cavities, gum disease and even tooth loss.
And if that wasn’t bad enough almost 1 in 5 people surveyed (18%) said they just brushed with water without using toothpaste, and 14%brushed their teeth by using a finger.