Thanks to TV chef Jamie Oliver, the issue of school dinner quality has moved up the political agenda.
But I was confident that my five-year-old daughter was eating a decent lunch, convinced by the healthy-sounding menus published on the noticeboard at her Cheshire school. However, before Easter she was looking at a picture of the internal organs of the human body, and seemed particularly struck by the intestines. "They look like what we eat at school - Twizzlers," she said. Now healthy packed lunches have replaced the Twizzlers.
In Rochdale, it's not just about the food - children at one school in the town are being taught table manners. Staff at St Luke's Primary, in Heywood, say many youngsters do not know the basic rules of polite society.
Peter Baddeley, the head teacher, explained: "We want to teach the children how to speak and listen and teach them dinner table etiquette, because in some families it is not possible for everybody to sit together." The result is a scheme in which children are encouraged to find a member of teaching or office staff they want to talk to in the morning, and arrange to have lunch later in the day.
"We've introduced this because of the frantic pace of modern living," Mr Baddeley added. "It's amazing how many children go home in the evening just as their father is coming home, and their mother is going out to do an evening shift."
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The Grand National at Aintree, that mainstay of the northern social calendar, will be delayed by 25 minutes, beginning at 4.10pm instead of 3.45pm.
That change is the result of the postponement of Prince Charles' wedding to Camilla Parker Bowles, and the decision was taken by the race organisers in consultation with the BBC, who wanted to avoid the two events clashing. Charles Barnett, the managing director of the Aintree racecourse, said: "We have made this decision in consultation with the BBC in order to offer members of the public the best possible afternoon's viewing."
The National was last postponed eight years ago, when an IRA bomb threat prompted the evacuation of the racecourse. It was eventually run two days later.
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A small business card arrives in an otherwise empty envelope. It is from the Bureau of the Centre for the Study of Surrealism and its Legacy. The address is the University of Manchester, but the phone number connects with an American voice on an answering machine. Detective work leads to the museum on the university campus, and a room off the entrance hall. But the door is locked. There is nobody in there.
Windows in the panelled door permit visitors to peer inside: two comfortable red armchairs are set on red linoleum in front of a fireplace, with a case of stuffed birds on the mantelpiece. There's a filing cabinet, a desk, a glass-fronted cupboard, and a black Bakelite phone. A closer look reveals details such as copies of the Kinsey Report and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and a tartan scarf on a hatstand.
The scarf belongs to American artist Mark Dion, and the Bureau is all his own work - an installation that is the product of time spent rooting through the university's drawers, cupboards, cellars, attics and store rooms.
Dion is artist in residence at the museum and the university's Research Centre for the Study of Surrealism and its Legacy, which is real, and not a surreal fragment of the artist's imagination.
"I came to meet the people there in the art history building, one of the least inspiring on the campus," said Dion. "I saw that title [Bureau of the Centre for the Study of Surrealism and its Legacy] on the door and wondered what could be there. When I went in, I found a breezeblock office with a couple of Formica tables and a computer. I was dreadfully disappointed."
So he has created his own more desirable, more atmospheric office, packed with the bizarre and the forgotten. The room, which Dion hopes will be used by museum staff for meetings, simulates a surrealist experience. "The surrealists were less interested in technology than other avant-garde movements," he explains. "They were interested in the things that had slipped through the cracks to reveal the unconscious in some way."
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There was disappointment in the north-east when plans for giant Las Vegas-style casinos were shelved in the government's attempt to get its gambling bill through parliament before the general election. Developers in Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesborough had hoped to build casinos - considered a major boost to regeneration plans.
A planned casino for Sunderland FC's Stadium of Light, drawn up by the US firm Las Vegas Sands Inc, would have led to a £100m investment creating 1,200 jobs. But now just one pilot casino is to be allowed - and that is likely to be located across the other side of the Pennines, in Blackpool.
The North-East Chamber of Commerce chief executive, George Cowcher, told the Journal: "We're up against other premier locations in the UK and, although we've got a lot going for us as a great cultural area, we know that other communities will also make that play."
However, the Durham North MP, Kevan Jones - part of the Commons committee scrutinising the legislation - said the concession was sensible. "Some of this was impractical and unworkable - we need to look at what the effects of these changes are going to be by having one pilot," he added.
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Some pub landlords in Kendal and the South Lakes seem to have missed out on the idea of sexual equality. Last week, they refused the mayor of Kendal entry to their annual boxing fundraiser ... because she is a woman. The mayor is traditionally invited to the event, held by Kendal and South Lakeland District Licensed Victuallers' Association but, despite the current incumbent being a fan of fighters such as Chris Eubank and Amir Khan, she was barred.
Colin Burrows, the chairman of the organisation, told the Westmorland Gazette that the policy of not allowing women to attend had been in force since the event started 25 years ago. "It's been tradition, and tradition no longer seems to count for anything," he said. "We have had previous lady mayors, and it has never really been an issue because of the fact that the deputy or the mayor's husband has come," he said. He did, however, add that the policy might be reviewed.
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It was supposed to be a lasting symbol of Pope John Paul II's visit to Manchester 23 years ago: a tree planted in the city's Heaton Park.
But now it appears the tree has been stolen - the papal monument where it was planted is empty, as the Manchester Evening News reported under the headline: "Where's the Pope's tree?".
The Pope visited the city during a six-day tour of the UK in May 1982, and more than 200,000 people gathered in the park for an open-air mass, after which the pontiff planted a young whitebeam tree.
Monsignor John Allan, the priest who oversaw the visit, told the Evening News: "Someone has pinched it. We were looking at everything through TV screens in the control centre when it was being planted, so I wasn't actually there. But I did see him plant the tree [on a monitor screen]."
No special measures were taken to mark out or protect the tree, which was near a stone memorial commissioned to commemorate the visit.
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