As daft as a brush

Daft is silly, stupid or unintelligent.

You'd have to be as daft as a brush to chase cheese down a hill but that's just what happens at Coopers Hill in England.

The story is featured in my new book, Crazy English. Here's the cover and an extract, followed by a video of Cheese Rolling.



http://www.amazon.com/Crazy-English-Intermediate-Upper-intermediate-ebook/dp/B007CGPK8W/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330245050&sr=8-1-spell

5. Cheese rolling

If your mother ever told you at the dinner table not to play with your food, then she wouldn’t be happy about cheese rolling. The Coopers Hill Cheese Rolling and Wake is one of the world’s strangest sports and takes place once a year. As you might expect, such a strange sport must be British! Nobody knows when it started but people think it’s at least 200 years old.

It happens in a small village in Gloucestershire on a very steep hill. The idea is very simple. A large, round piece of cheese that weighs 3.5 kilos, is rolled down the hill. The winner of the race is the first person to get the bottom of the hill or catch up with the cheese.

Nobody ever gets the cheese because they have to wait one second after the cheese is rolled and it can go as fast as 100 kms per hour! As you might guess, racing down the hill can be rather dangerous and it is quite normal for people to break bones and bang their heads. Altogether, there are five downhill races

0ne year, the race was stopped for a while because people had to wait for the ambulances to return from the hospital as so many people were injured!
If that isn’t mad enough, there are also uphill races too. It must be very tiring and leave you feeling hungry. For the lucky winners, there’s a great prize. Can you guess? Yes of course; a whole, great big Gloucester cheese!

Questions
Are the following statements true or false?

1) The Coopers Hill Race is 2000 years old
2) Playing with your food can be dangerous
3) People wait at the bottom of the hill to catch the cheese
4) One year the race was stopped as they couldn’t find the cheese
5) The winner is paid in cheese



Answers

1) False - 200 years
2) True/False - not at the dinner table but certainly in this race
3) False - they run after the cheese
4) False - it was stopped while ambulances returned from hospital
5) True!

To throw down the guantlet

These are gauntlets.



In the days of knights a challenge was issued by literally throwing down the gauntlet - like this:



These days it has more of a metaphoric meaning but it is still about openly challenging someone to fight - in argument, not physically. Like this:

BTW - whether you agree with this guy or not, he's one hell of a debator!

The last straw

Here is some straw.



Here's a camel.



If you put a lot of straw on a camel, it would break his back, It would be the last straw that broke the camel's back.

Thankfully, this is just a metaphor for the final thing that pushes you over the limit of tolerance.

Like this - Marillion with thier song, The Last Straw. To me, it sounds just like Genesis- that's the last straw!

To bury the hatchet

This is a hatchet.



It can be quite a nasty weapon. When you bury the hatchet you decide to leave arguments behind you and get on with being OK with somebody.

However, sometimes, that's easier said than done:

All work and no play

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

It means that somebody who works all the time becomes a boring person. Dull, in this sense, means uninteresting. So, you've been warned - don't work too hard all you'll turn into a bore!

But who's Jack?

The only Jack I can think of is this one - and he's certainly not boring!