Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Let’s do this together
COMMUNITY CORNER
A KILLELEA
HEN lockdown first hit in March last year millions of business owners up and down the country suddenly found es struggling for survival. ars and restaurants, to hotels and musicians and breweries, to pubs s, they were all left desperately keep their heads above water. 2 months on, many have barely e to reopen at all and have seen me all but dry up. me ingenious entrepreneurs outside the box to keep their s ticking over during the pandemic actually thrived, not just survived. e speak to some of the success lockdown.
amanda.killelea@mirror.co.uk @akillelea
This is a public service announcement: Tomorrow is World Book Day. I repeat. Tomorrow is World Book Day and if your child hasn’t got a costume, you may panic now.
But before you panic-buy another bit of flammable landfill tat online, I’m here to help with my years of experience at rustling up last-minute, fairly crappy outfits armed with just a black eyeliner pencil, a bin liner and a couple of bog rolls.
You can try and be creative, but in the end the kids just want to look like each other.
So that’s Harry Potter or Hermione Granger, Cinderella or the same dress for Alice in Wonderland (after explaining to a belligerent fiveyear-old that Elsa from Frozen wasn’t a book before the movie), Mr Bump and Gangsta Granny.
Many years ago I tried to get imaginative and sent The Dark Lordette into school as her favourite book, Father Christmas Goes on Holiday, complete with beret, stripy top and a baguette.
It went down very well at school until she started getting into character and calling everything “blooming this” and “blooming that”, just like the real Raymond Briggs character of a cuddly but crotchety old chap with a drink and wind problem.
When I picked her up at home time, she said she’d had a good day, but would have preferred to be a “pwincess”. “What happened to your baguette?” I asked her. “Everyone ate it,” she told me sadly.
Then a mum-of-boys came over and said, “My Peter thought Jesse’s outfit was genius – and it came with snacks!”
Jesse cheered up at the thought of being called genius, and demanded more baguette for dinner. After that she got into the brilliant Harry Potter series, but sadly it just meant a hunt for the glasses and wand she’d worn the year before and World Book Day became World Bore Day.
Good luck with yours – and if all else fails, just add a snack!
Email me at siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.
Yours, Siobhan
THE TERROR PREPARE for a scare as this chiller brings a tale of horror on the ocean to the small screen.
It first aired in the US nearly three years ago, but now the menacing 10-parter, executive produced by Ridley Scott, finally hits mainstream UK telly.
Ciaran Hinds, Jared Harris, Paul Ready and Tobias Menzies head up the cast, while sumptuous sets and costumes bring some movie magic.
It’s loosely based on true events, in that in the mid-1800s, two British ships headed out on an ambitious Arctic voyage and never returned.
Their fate remains a mystery, but let’s hope it was nothing like you’ll see in this fictional account.
We’re told that in 1845, two Royal Navy ships left England to find a passage through the Arctic, in the most technologically advanced ships of their day… but they vanished.
Years later, there are only whispered rumours of a “thing made of muscles and spells” and the men being pursued until they were dead and gone.
The action cuts to HMS Erebus and HMS Terror on icy waters in 1846. The two crews are headed up by Sir John Franklin (Hinds) and Captain Francis Crozier (Harris), who don’t get on that well – while Captain James Fitzjames (Menzies) likes to stir up trouble.
Nonetheless, it’s all dining and drinking and telling each other anecdotes about how brave they are.
But then some unexpected events spook the crew and everything starts going very wrong for the ill-fated expedition.
Hold your nerve for a double bill of episodes tonight.
COMPLAINTS about guarantor loans have rocketed by more than 3,000% in the space of a year.
The Financial Ombudsman Service had more than 10,300 complaints about such loans between October and December last year.
That compares with just around 300 for the same period in 2019.
Guarantor loans are offered to people on the condition someone else – often a friend or relative – will make the repayment if the borrower defaults.
The unsecured loans have overtaken payment protection insurance when it comes to complaints to the financial ombudsman.
Most are about what happened at the time the loan was provided. They include borrowers saying they should not have been given a loan, and people claiming they never agreed to be guarantors.
And 81% of cases between September and December last year were found in the complainant’s favour, the ombudsman said.
Amigo, Britain’s biggest guarantor lender, has come under increasing regulatory scrutiny. It revealed in June that the Financial Conduct Authority was investigating the way it that it assessed credit worthiness.
Adam Butler of debt charity Stepchange said: “These loans can compound problems for those in financial difficulty.”
Dear Coleen
My daughter dropped the bombshell last week that she and her fiance plan to have a small, intimate wedding with no fanfare or big party, which has really disappointed me and my husband. They don’t want to wait until the lockdown restrictions are lifted for celebrations and said they are happy for it to be the two of them.
I think my husband is most disappointed, as she is our only daughter and he always imagined himself walking her down the aisle in a church ceremony.
What makes it harder is that both our sons got married abroad a few years ago and we weren’t there either, although both of them did have celebrations when they returned, which we attended.
This has really upset us, probably because we’ve felt so cut off from family over the past few months. I don’t want to upset her by making a fuss, but at the same time I feel I should tell her that we’re disappointed. I’d love your advice as I don’t want to say the wrong thing and cause a falling out.
Coleen says
I think you can share how you feel with your daughter, but also tell her you love her and understand it’s her life and her decision.
But I think it’s OK to acknowledge that you’re disappointed to not see her get married.
They could still have a tiny wedding and have both sets of parents present, but perhaps they’re worried about upsetting people by doing that.
The bottom line is, you have to accept and respect the decision and you will get over the disappointment. Perhaps when all the restrictions are over, they will have a party to celebrate.
I think this is hard from both sides because I’m sure your daughter and her fiance don’t want to upset you or anyone else.
And what I find lovely is that for them getting married is not just an excuse to have a big showy party and wear a lovely dress (which it is for some people), so I think that says a lot about their relationship.
They just love each other and want to be married and that should be reassuring for you as parents that it’s a good decision and they’re committed to each other.
My husband had imagined walking her down the aisle