Before I start, can I just say thank you to everyone who listened to The Tom Davies Show with Tom Davies on Friday. It was generally very well received and Ben Webb from The Siren Mixer pretty much pooed his pants (though I do say so myself) in laughter when he was given a sneaky, advanced preview during rehearsals on Thursday night. Remember the show’s repeated on Tuesday between 9 and 10 and episode two takes place on Friday during those same hours. I really think we’re on to something here.

The holiday is officially over and so I’m now cracking through my ‘to-do’ list which was put on the back burner while I sunned myself on the beach for a tremendously agreeable period – naughty me. On that list are the words ‘plug Carol’s maths thing’ and this takes us back to the Vorderman interview I recorded in July. Unfortunately, for reasons beyond comprehension, the interview was completely obliterated and shall never be seen or heard of again; however, that doesn’t mean I can’t plug “www.themathsfactor.com” on here. In fact, it’s probably a good idea to because I should imagine her ‘people’ are pretty miffed with the whole affair, so here goes:

In essence, what I learned in the inteview is that Carol is now running her own online maths school called ‘The Maths Factor’ for which she and her team of maths brains have worked very hard, not least through writing out millions of sums. The website is a fantastic tool for children to use in improving their maths, whether they find the subject challenging or came out of the womb doing algebra. With very little else to maintain proficiency in the field during the school holidays, it seems that Carol is quickly becoming the saviour of young mathematicians who wouldn’t normally sit down in front of a geometry text book during the summer months.

The exercises are all very good fun and easy to understand, whilst the testemonials tell you exactly how much of an impact Carol and the Maths Factor are having on young minds across the country. With the use of words such as ‘inexpensive’ and ‘affordable’, as well as a 10 day money back guarantee, who wouldn’t want to sign up for this invaluable service (unless you don’t have kids – and even then you might need a refresher on primary school maths).

To get signed up and to get your youngsters learning again go to www.themathsfactor.com.

As Carol detailed in the interview, Maths is actually far more important than a lot of us make it out to be. Furthermore, a lot of young people actually enjoy maths so don’t delay! Lock away their video games and let the good fun-yet-decidedly-beneficial-in-an-educational-sense-times-roll!

In the interests of balance I believe I should inform you that other such facilities are available and I should not be seen to endorse The Maths Factor over any other services of a similar nature. The education of our youth is a matter close to my heart (most probably because I am one – a youth not a heart) and I am fully supportive of all outlets which strive to improve the collective young person’s mind

There’s going to be very little blogging in the next couple of weeks because I will be on holiday and there’s something very big going down at Siren FM. More anon.

Td x

Well for those who don’t know me I am a 17 year old photography (plus Gov-Pol and History) student at Welton’s William Farr School Academy. I am currently undertaking a project within the Flickr community known by many as the ‘365 project’. To complete this project you must take a photograph every day of the year and upload it to Flickr.

Easy, Right?…Not as easy as you might imagine. To think up fresh and creative ideas everyday to produce a highly polished image is a mighty challenge. I am currently edging towards halfway, as my end date is the 2nd of February 2011 (my birthday).

‘So whats this got to do with Tom’s blog space?’

Well the Fantastic Mr Fox Tom Davies Is allowing me to use a small section of his website to blog in a photo journalistic style before, during and after my upcoming travels around the globe. This will not just be a part of 365 Project but also as the written section of my photography A2 unit.

‘When and where are you going?’

Currently I have two confirmed destinations. The first trip will be to Iceland (not the microwave meals for a pound one, the country) on the 9th to the 13th of August 2010. The next trip is to Russia on the 25th of October 2010 for 6 days.

Also my Father, due to him having free petrol has suggested a trip round Europe or to Northern Ireland for a week sometime in the summer (2010), but this is not fully confirmed.

‘So what will we expect?’

I aim, with the help of Tom’s editing genius, to deliver one beefy photo journalist blogpost for each day of the trips. These non vegetarian segments will be made up of several high quality images from the day’s highlights, plus a diary account of the day. This diary will not just be written by yours truly but will also include quotes from other travellers on the trip with me.

These blog posts shall vary in size from the tiny update on the go, to the mighty articles when I return.

Goodbye for now.

Alex

“Goodness Gracious”, I hear you cry, “what manner of a position was this, Tom? Were you contacted by two ravishing young ladies who both happened to have a small fortune tucked away and were interested in the prospect of marriage, thus leaving you to have to decide between the two?” Surprisingly, no. Nor was I offered the chance to put a baseball bat through Peter Mandelson provided I lopped off my left testicle and yes, I did witness the accidental destruction of my interview with Carol Vorderman today, but that’s not what I’m getting at. The situation I was in this evening was far worse than any of these conundrums combined.

Most difficult scenarios for menfolk usually occur when they’ve just got in the house, probably after a hard day at the office. This is difficult enough in the Davies household as it is because mother delights in bombarding anyone who has just come in through the front door with a great string of questions about dining arrangements and who’s going to cook the tea three weeks on Thursday. However, this was not an issue today; partly because my Dad and I have decided that we won’t answer any questions outside of the regular press conferences we now hold at our own convenience, but mostly because mother was out. In fact, it was probably because mother was out and I took advantage of flopping straight in front of the tv with a pizza and a few slices of garlic bread that the problem arose.

The thing is that if a man is a real man he will struggle to get back up again having flung himself on the sofa and in front of the telly. With pizza and garlic bread in the mix he becomes pretty much immovable. What then, dear friends, does he do when Gok Wan’s How to Look Good Naked is beamed onto the screen in front of him and his sister has taken complete ownership of the remote?

I’m ashamed to say that I sat there and did nothing. Was it any consolation that half way through the programme Gok offered jeans-buying advice to young men such as myself? No, it probably wasn’t. I’m sure there’s a great many people who enjoy why-aren’t-you-wearing-this?-let’s-strip-you-down-and-see-how-fat-you-are type programmes but unfortunately I’m not one of them and, until Gok introduces an explosive to the series and blows something up, I’m not going to be converted. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing at all against the man, but at that moment when i was rooted to the settee watching Gok campaigning for bodily awareness in schools from the top of a cherry picker (that’s Gok on the cherry picker, not the bodily awareness classes), a small part of me wishes that someone had left him up there.

The very last straw came when Hannah changed the channel and I found myself lounging in front of Katie and Alex – for better for worse and, at that point, I did what any self-respecting bloke should do: I seized the remote and gave some japanese bloke a sound thrashing on wii tennis. However, there is a valuable lesson to be learned from what happened to me today. Gents, television is our close friend and ally. However, if you don’t check who’s got hold of the remote before you sit down in front of it with dinner, you could soon be conversant in hair extensions and this season’s must have. When you turn round and address someone with whom you don’t enjoy a romantic relationship as ‘girlfriend’, you know things have gone a little bit too far.

In other news, if you hadn’t already gathered, the Carol Vorderman interview and the backup both got deleted at work today and I am deeply distressed.

I am rather more pleased to announce that Alex Finlay will be a guest blogger on this site for the next few months while he travels around the world. So, in stereotypical voyager fashion, “welcome aboard, Alex”.

Photo courtesy of Luigi Diamanti.

I can’t remember how much I paid for these but it was at least £2. Bit miffed tbh.

I’ll be talking to carol about her latest maths venture and the best bits will be going out on Wake Up to the Weekend on Saturday. However, if you’ve got a question you’d like Carol to answer you are more than welcome to send it via e-mail – tom@tom-davies.net – or tweet me it (see what I did there?)

How odd.

...followed by Winnifred Robinson with two hours of the hottest dubstep mixes around.

Just a quick note to let you know that if you’re really, really sad you can start your Christmas shopping on August 2nd in Selfridges. That’s right, the store that sounds like it should specialise in home appliances will start dishing out toilet roll tubes wrapped in some fancy paper which, if you’re lucky on a good day and with the wind blowing in the right direction, might make a small banging sound before ejecting a pointless gift and a crap joke, a whole 145 days before we celebrate the birth of Christ. What’s more, they’ll probably charge at least ten times too much for the privilege of being able to wear a thin bit of tissue paper whilst reading the material Roy Chubby Brown didn’t want aloud to the rest of your family and friends. Shameless cashing in really has gone too far this time.

As if that wasn’t enough, the store are proud to announce that customers can paint their own baubles this year. Well that’s brilliant, but in my experience the average man on the street tends to be pretty pants at design and I don’t want my Christmas tree adorned with decorations which wouldn’t look out of place at the lower end of a primary school art class. Besides, if I wanted to paint my own baubles what’s to stop me painting them at home? I should imagine most of us have got a job lot of art sets we’ve been given for Christmas and then dumped in a small corner of the room we happen to visit least often. “Oh thanks Gran, that’ll be really useful for when I want to stick two fingers up at a four-months-premature shopping promotion on Oxford Street”. Pah.

Oh, and another thing. Who’s going to spend £500 on a life-sized donkey? If you can afford to waste that sort of cash on glorified teddy bear you’ve probably already got a stables on your 70-acre estate anyway and so you might as well buy a real one.

To top it all off Geraldine James, Selfridges Christmas Shop’s buying manager, said at the announcement of this abhorrence that “Christmas is coming earlier each year”. Erm, I don’t think it is. At a mere eighteen years of age my experience of a 2,000 year old celebration is nominal at best but I know enough to be able to confidently state that Christmas happens on the 25th December every year. Unless there’s been a significant drop in atmospheric pressure during 2010 which somehow then dictates that we start unwrapping presents a couple of weeks earlier, it’s my understanding that Christmas will jolly well stay where it is thank you very much and anyone who decides to buy a tree in August is stupid because it’ll be dead by mid-October.

So thank you, Geraldine James, but you can keep your first name for a surname because I’m not going to do any of my Christmas shopping in your shop. Besides, we bought all our baubles and fairy lights and Christmas cards in the January sales. It’s cheaper that way.

Photo courtesy of Filomena Scalise

1) I’m Welsh.

2) England’s world cup campaign was a bit crap.

Therefore:

I’ll blog something properly later on.

Td

Ps – BBC Lincolnshire’s Tom Morris has been added to the list of guests for the first ever podcast. More anon.