With the number of disappointed students failing to gain entry to so called “uni” or even the most humble of further educational establishments more and more teenagers to whom the prospect of starting work have little choice than to take an enforced gap year.

Traditionally gap years were planned well in advance but the sudden shock of not being allowed to continue education means that there is a huge number of late-comers to the gap year party.

Good Advice For Gap Year Travellers

Planning and packing can be just as stressful as actually taking a gap.  Here are tips on how to make your gap year as stress-free and fun as possible – and how to avoid spending too much of it on the toilet…

1. Make a budget. You might not stick to it, but the guilt of going over it will act to temper your reckless spending.

2. Get decent insurance. Make sure that the policy is usable, with an affordable excess charge and comprehensive coverage. The Lonely Planet’s mantra is right: if you can’t afford good insurance, you can’t afford to go travelling.

3. Be flexible. Don’t stick religiously to your travel plans. If you like a place, stay there for a bit longer. Likewise, if you really hate somewhere, leave. There’s no point forcing yourself to stay somewhere if you’re not enjoying it.

4. Give yourself time. Don’t expect to visit 30 different countries in eight weeks. Even if you manage it, you’ll have spent most of your time on trains and buses, rather than exploring and enjoying your trip.

5. Don’t expect to always be happy. Some days, circumstances will conspire to make you damned miserable. Don’t worry: it’s all part of the experience and will probably turn out to be the anecdote of your entire trip.

6. Pack playing cards. An excellent prop to help make friends and pass long journeys. If you’re travelling in a twosome, steer clear of games liable to make you fall out.

7. Bring hand sanitizer. A must if you’re travelling in Asia, it’s useful on any trip you take. Particularly because it reduces the chances that you’ll need the next tip.

8. Take diarrhea pills. Because a holiday spent on the toilet is no holiday at all.

9. Get your jabs. Vaccinations can be expensive, but they’re mandatory for some places. Bear in mind that some have to be booked weeks in advance. Find out before you go by checking this NHS website

Mind the Gap

10. Learn a bit of the lingo. Even just being able to say “please”, “thank you” and count to ten can make an otherwise surly local grin while they deal with you. Remember a cunning linguist is always welcome

11. Don’t take the guidebook’s word for it. In some cases guidebook tips are out of date by the time they’re published – the bar that was banging in 2008 might not be so hot in 2010. Guidebooks are there to give an opinion – they’re not infallible.

12. Read about the culture you’re going to. Don’t be the guy who gratuitously insults the locals and makes them resent tourists. Try to fit in. But at the same time…

13. Don’t kid yourself. Visiting Cuba does not a make you a revolutionary. Two months in India will not turn you into the Dalai Lama. Concentrate on having fun during your gap year, rather than trying to seek enlightenment. You’re still a teenager. Act your age.

14. Be confident. You’re not five anymore, talking to strangers is allowed. Talk to everyone you meet, whether they’re locals or fellow travellers. A random conversation in a bar can result in a travelling companion for a month and maybe a friend for life.

15. Have fun. You are young and have very few responsibilities. You won’t get that glorious mix in such unadulterated form ever again. Enjoy it while it lasts.

If the word “campervan” summons images of pastel-coloured VW Vans, that iconic badge, and a beach-blond surf dude at the wheel, it’s time to broaden your definition.

How about a Toyota Lucida, kitted out with a double bed and mini kitchen, spray painted in lurid slogans?

Wicked Camper Vans

Welcome to Wicked Campers, an Australian import that is offering refitted “people carriers” for hire.

The vehicle that is more the preserve of the school run or the car park at Sainsburys, is popping up at music festivals and campsites across the country this summer, and has even been spotted over the Channel.

They may be Toyotas under the hood, but they bear little resemblance to the vehicles that left the Toyota factory.

For a start, there’s fold-out beds, storage boxes, table and seating in the van and mini kitchens in the boot.

Secondly, there’s the exterior… the racing green or slate grey finishes that rolled off the production line have been oversprayed with lurid graffiti and cringe-worthy slogans. There’s no disappearing into the crowd in a Wicked Campers van.

The phrases range from the baffling: “Gravity’s stupid – the Earth sucks”, to the lyrical: “People try to put us down just because we get around”, and even the political: “War does not determine who is right, it determines who is left”.

I drove one down the M11 last week and drew smiles, stares, and at one point a less-than-friendly hand gesture from drivers who passed my bright green van bearing a “punk” leprechaun and the slogan: “The luck o’ the Irish”.

Wounded though my pride may have been, I did take some comfort from passing at least two gorgeous retro campervans pootling along in the slow lane with their chug-chug engines and far-from-power steering.

Then there’s the smug-factor from the cost. Hiring a retro campervan will set you back upwards of £300 for a weekend, or £450 if it’s over the summer. By contrast, shed the cool factor, and a bit of self respect, and hire a Wicked Camper, and you’ll have change from £120 from a weekend away.

The company has been operating in the UK since 2007 when it started with 12 vans. It’s now grown to 140 vans with three UK depots and six in mainland Europe.

The fleet was booked out for Glastonbury Festival this year, and Wicked has vans going to festivals across the UK as well as Benicassim in Spain, Roskilde in Denmark and Sziget in Hungary.

It’s the UK outpost of a global brand that launched in Brisbane in 1990 and now numbers 1,400 vans in Australia and New Zealand.

“The Brits come over to Australia and wanted rent-a-bombs for road trips,” says UK managing director Denis Geary, “John [Webb, the Wicked Campers owner] tapped into this and Wicked Campers came after.”

Van Graffitti

“The graffiti obviously got a lot of attention, but we also do it to hide the dents. The used vans have good motors but the bodies are a bit roughed up,” says Geary.

The attention certainly wasn’t lacking in Australia, where the van slogans make the UK Wicked vans look conservative. The company became notorious for its designs, hitting headlines across Australia and Asia over allegations of sexism and racism. It has since toned down the language, but some of the more printable versions included: “If the van’s a rockin, don’t come knockin’”, and: “Sex police: spread ‘em”.

Back in the UK, Geary is keen to distance the company from the tone of its Australian sibling. “Australia is a lot more controversial and John doesn’t care who he offends… he has a very Australian sense of humour, and I don’t necessarily share that.”

Neither did many campsite owners in the UK, admits Geary – many of them took objection to the slogans sprayed on his vans. “We toned down the vans in the UK after we got banned from most UK campsites,” he said.

Our van graffiti wasn’t enough to get us turned away from a festival campsite in Suffolk, but I couldn’t help noticing that the pretty pink VW campervan with floral curtains got the prime spot, while we were relegated to the end of the field. We had the last laugh come Monday morning though, as we zipped back down the motorway, passing them squeezed between two lorries on the M11 slow lane…

The Low Down

It costs from £118 to hire a smaller Wicked Campers van for two days over the summer (from £94 over the winter – Oct 1-Easter).

The smaller van seat two and sleep two, and the large vans, launched in June this year, seat up to five and sleep up to three in the van (cosily) and two in a tent, supplied.

Vans have bed with mattress, indoor table, camping stools, outdoor table and chairs, CD player and/or iPod connection, sink, water container, cool box, crockery, cutlery, gas stove, kettle, saucepan and frying pan.

Unlike many traditional campers, they’re easy to drive – power steering, automatic, and even electric windows.

Each van comes with a road map, third-party insurance, 24-hour roadside assistance, London Congestion Charge paid-up, and with sat navs and cigarette lighter power adaptors as extras.

For van layouts, terms and more details got to www.wickedcampers.co.uk

The scale of the Pakistan flood disaster isn’t yet entirely clear but it is know to have claimed at least 1500 lives and Aid agencies reckon over two and a half million people have been affected.

In the UK Oxfam immediately began their Pakistan Flood Appeal hoping to raise millions of pounds to begin to provide clean water, fresh food and shelter to the affected regions

But such is the nature of the North West of the country where the catastrophe has struck that its going to take some time for the whole picture to emerge.  We do know that villages have been swept away, roads and bridges destroyed and an army of people is on the move as best it can.

Aleem Maqbool reports from one of the worst affected districts and explains what it is like:

In the last two or three hours we’ve had torrential monsoon downfalls onto an area that is already badly damaged, large areas still submerged, trees uprooted, electricity pylons down and a lot of building destroyed.

Huge swathes of Northern Pakistan look like this and what the new rains have meant is that those crucial aid flights of helicopters – the only way to get to the areas have been suspended.

A local explains how the people there are feeling about the aid situation:

The storm broke on Thursday in full swing, my village was totally drowned. No help came from local police, local government, federal government and politicians. People went from this place to highest place on foot taking their children and anything they could manage.  All the houses are in water, no food, nothing is available. When the helicopters came and they throw food – the food goes in the water. No help up to now.

People now are going back, cleaning their houses but they can’t get food and they can’t get clean water.

The rains have started again and more storms are on the way so the water levels will rise again.

Some areas are lucky and have transport links that are open again but there are huge areas where the army admits it has not been able to reach. These are the areas that the aid agencies and emergency services are most worried about – people who haven’t been visited at all in the last three days – as well as not being able to assess the loss of life there they don’t know if the people have access to food and clean water.

The floods in Pakistan cover over a quarter of the country, three million people affected – a conservative figure – 1.5 million severely affected – isolated and stranded by the water that surrounds them.

Early pictures form the helicopter showed the sheer force of the initial torrents that washed away motorway bridges, swept away roads and destroyed transport and communication slinks – a great deal of infrastructure has been destroyed that will need to be replaced or repaired.

This really is a disaster on a huge scale. And the forecast is for more heavy rainfall – please watch this video and do what you can

A fascination with the hind-quarters of celebrities is fueling a booming market for underwear that amplify the tush. Booty Pops or Wonderbutts – see the video – are the latest women’s fashion accessory that have egg shaped foam pads to create a fuller backside.

Forget hours of agonising training and gym work to develop a fuller derrière – slip on a pair of the padded panties and you are transformed becoming “Bootylicious”

High street shops in the UK such as Marks & Spencer are stocking shapewear within their ladies underwear departments but this tends to be more about overall size reduction and slimming with ranges such as magic pants so it would appear that these butt boosters are primarily for the US market

An American commented:

We have an obesity problem in the country and this is all we need… to make our fat back sides look even bigger.

I’m thinking this won’t be that big a seller since most adults could stand to lose a few in the posterior rather than gain.

I’m told that padded bottom underwear was fasionable in Paris in the 1950′s.

See how those fellows look at me, I have a well fixed behind (estoy bien dispachada atras)

There’s nothing wrong with a woman who feels sexy and confident about herself. Make-up, bras, heels, bum boosters are all tools of the trade just like a nice suit and tie, cufflinks, a good shave and polished shoes are for men.

I do hope the women wearing these butt pads have a sense of humor about it and readily admit to wearing them if questioned.

Egg-Shaped Foam Padded Panties?

Wouldn’t they get a little warm and sweaty and retain body odors?

FAKE

No matter how you cut this thing, it still comes down to false advertising. Fake booty, fake resumes, fake military medals, fake or altered biographies, fake this, fake that, fake everything.

Booty Pop projects it will sell close to 1 million pairs of padded ladies underwear this year

Since then I’ve managed to drink many wines, mostly with better flavors than the first. But after all of these years and wines, I have still feel a bit uncomfortable expressing how I felt about a particular bottle, especially after hearing people describe the same wine as “flowing with chocolate and cinnamon, intermixed with blah, blah, blah”.

Perhaps my palate died on the lawn. In any case, I’ll leave the lengthy descriptions to those with better imaginations than me and stick with more elegant descriptions like “it’s nice” or “not bad”

BTW Beer is better!

Flying in economy can be so unpleasant and leather seats won’t help.

I’m tall – leather seats don’t make you “more comfortable” when you’re completely crammed for hours. I don’t need a meal or a smiling flight attendant as long as I have room. So it seems to me that the airlines have their priorities wrong.

Leather seats are hot and make people sweat … won’t that be sweet? It will also be more difficult to muffle escaping gas. Imagine the inflight entertainment on a return flight from Mumbai – up, up and away!

Are they planning to fix my pet peeve? I don’t think seats in economy should recline. It’s like asking someone if they want to steal space from the person behind them at no cost to them. They should just put in those bendable head rests, pick an average seat recline angle and leave it.

Forget the wi-fi – forget the drinks – forget the toys – MORE space is priority #1. When a person is physically uncomfortable, nothing else matters.

While reading listen to the wonderfully hypnotic sound track from the eeppy peeps that accompanies their classic diet fizzy brand drink and mentos experiments.

Hi – my nana always loved telling me about her home brew exploits and getting aunt ada sloshed on a weeknight….she used to love eldferflower champagne and I have been meaning to do some for many years.

For the last couple of years I have missed the flowers so made great use of the berries later in the year to make some luscious elderberry vino.

I had a couple of scary moments with my homebrew exploding – I had taken advice previously and filled lots of tiny glass wine bottles, and many 2 litre plastic screw tops…..

….not long after bottling – fermentation must have started again….the 2litre plastic bottles felt like rocks – I held it in the fermentation bucket in case it exploded – BOOM! in a milisecond my hands were empty – the bucket was no where to be seen, my friend was stood on one leg with one eye closed dripping all down one side with sticky purple – I looked down at myself – i was covered from head to foot in purple and stood in a lake of it – we were both frozen to the spot with our mouths hanging open in absolute disbelief of what we were seeing – i looked around the previously cream kitchen…..purple was dripping off the ceiling, off the cupboards, downs the walls, looked like a massacre!

After stripping off where I stood and leaving my friend to start mopping up the insane mess using all of my best bath towels – I took the other bottles outside into the yard at arms length like unexploded bombs….took a towel and opened them all under the towel back into the bucket….half exploded in my hands again, covering me top to toe in streaks of blood coloured elderberry wine..the doorbell went, aargh! and the poor gas man nearly fell over where he stood – he took one look at me, went white as a sheet ‘holy moses are you alright pet?’ thinking I had suffered some terrible injury with elderberries dripping down my face/arms/legs.

Once the colour had returned to his face he recounted tales of his own homebrew exploding under the stairs.

anyway – it took a week to clean the kitchen – i then had to re-paint it, and we were still finding purple oozing out from skirting boards and light fittings in the kitchen for two years afterwards.

(the rebottled result of this debaucle is lush though!)

So – I am about to embark on elderflower champagne. I bought those ikea bottles someone earlier was talking about thinking, well – glass screw tops didnt work, plastic bottles nearly blinded my friend, maybe those glass swing tops might work.

Now I am seriously worried! I would rather have a VERY VERY slightly sparkling (rather than fizzy) champagne than have any more dramatic explosions.

So – can I ask you lovely people if you think that:

1 – I leave it to ferment in the bucket for a week or so, will it be less fizzy?

2 – If I put it in these glass swing tops and store them in the cellar (cool and dark) will it be less fizzy when I come to open them?

3 – If I open them when the bottles are really cold will that help prevent the bottle exploding in my hands!?? I am assuming that gases expand with heat, so if I keep them chilled the gases should be smaller by volume?

4 – I will make sure the bottles are all covered in something so if they do explode they wont be flying through the floor of my living room!

5 – OR – is there something else I can make out of this bucket of elderflowers/sugar/water/lemons…..(smells really nice!)

I am an absolute chicken.

6 – what if, after having bottled the volatile liquid into the swing tops – if I left the swing tops off and put a balloon over the necks of them? I have heard people do this with demi johns if they dont have an air lock – maybe with a pin hole in it (but then the gas would escape wouldnt it?)

hmm, i am worried about my 20 litres currently steeping in my (recently painted) kitchen!

By the way – the berries this year will be made into marmalade. I am not brewing anything with a colour ever again.

It sort of epitomises so much that has gone wrong in Britain over the past two or three decades. British people have allowed themselves to be so very easily manipulated, exploited and ripped-off.

They have embraced rip-off Britain instead of challenging it. House prices are a good example whereby people still bought despite extortionate prices compared to other parts of Europe and then struggling with huge mortgage repayments, when they should have, like Zammo from Grange Hill, just said no.

It shows that we’re a nation of spineless creeps always trying to suck up to the boss and never willing to challenge and stand up for our rights. I’m sure many forego their entitled lunch-hour becuase they’re too spineless to claim it, and it seems the same goes for holidays. What people don’t realise is that by taking this line, they’re making it worse for everyone in the long-term, because management will realise they can manipulate and bully their staff into conceding many of their rights. The culture then becomes exploitative by default because employees have allowed it to become that way.

The opt-out of the 48 hour rule is another aspect of this. Far too many people sign the opt-out when they should just be saying no, I do not want to work more than 48 hours in one week you can pay me a proper wage so that I won’t have to work excessive hours.

A lot of it goes back to the Thatcher era and the erosion of the unions and then workers rights but also the weakness and passiveness of us Brits to challenge anything.

What people don’t realise is that by taking this line, they’re making it worse for everyone in the long-term

Quite. This behaviour has a cumulative toxicity in the workplace, a little like people being prepared to pay over the odds for housing or any other product/service.

When we make concessions to companies, employers, banks or whoever, such as buying a video game with restrictive DRM, or agreeing to work additional unpaid hours, or being willing to pay £200k for a shoddy damp bedsit, we’re not only tacitly approving of that behaviour, we’re actively rewarding it.

It’s like rewarding a dog for peeing on the carpet, or rewarding a child for swearing. Utterly irresponsible.

Should air travelers meekly accept whatever debasement is inflicted on them?

Is it  rude to want to be treated with dignity and respect?

Several comments on the Wall Street journal have implied that there is little travelers can do about this.

Forget flying – take the car

One bright spark found a solution. One year ago, he decided that he would no longer allow himself to be treated like an animal, and he resolved to never fly again. He only goes where he can drive or take a train and grab car hire easily on arrival and it has been wonderful. The longer he goes without flying the less he wants to fly.

I suspect many others have made the same decision.

The result of all these tight airport security measures is that even flights that are 60-90 minutes in the air can quickly become all-day adventures (or longer if you hit a cancellation).

Drive more – fly less

So I too drive more. I can drive through thunderstorms; planes get cancelled. I can estimate the time it will take me to drive from one place to another, and almost always be right within 1/2 hour or so. Flying is a guessing game. In my car, I have whatever I need — 8 oz bottles of shampoo, as many “carry-ons” as I’d like, the food and drink of my choice to munch on, etc.

What is that HONK??

Hideous Vuvuzelas – Is that the droning noise I have to listen to watching the World Cup football games on tv??

This blasted horn should be banned if they want people to continue to watch the World Cup matches on television.

Ban Vuvuzelas!

I watched USA vs England, and between the drone of the commentator and the drone of these stupid trumpets, I think I’ll mute the next one.

I can barely take it and I am only on game two I have been able to speed up play and watch in silence, but is not near as much fun.

The vuvuzelas is just stupid. I am a world cup fan and love to here the chants. That horn sounds like an overcharged vibratory device.

But somehow if you say anything against the however-you-say-it… craphorns… you’re some kind of cultural imperialist. But I bet the stupid things are made in China.

I think there’s nothing wrong with some benign enthusiasm, no different from thundersticks, cowbells, or whatever else we’re used to in our spectator sports but I think that if  Vuvuzelas are allowed to remain in the crowds – it would be fantastic to honk them only to celebrate goals and they must be silent during the national anthems.