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Today I've been up at the National Water Sports Centre in Holme Pierrepont, near Nottingham, at their canoe slalom course.
We've been filming 2004 canoe slalom bronze medallist Helen Reeves, who's going to be commentating on the sport for the BBC in Beijing this summer.
She's retired from competitive canoeing now, so spending the day doing run after run while we filmed a canoeing guide for the web and telly took it out of her - especially as she had a cold to start with, let alone by the finish!
But it looks like it will be brilliant stuff, particularly the headcam we strapped to her helmet. I've only seen about a minute of that and if the rest is as good as I think it will be, you'll be wanting to see it. Gives an amazing impression of what it looks and feels like to go down an Olympic canoe slalom course.
And believe me, it's not an easy sport. You need the upper body strength of several yaks and the love of cold, wet climates normally associated with penguins.
Having said that it's easier to understand, as a spectator, than you might think. At a very basic level: you go through the green gates downstream, the red gates upstream, and get penalised if you miss or touch a gate. Through the gate is the plan. There's 25 gates to get through, and the courses normally take about 90 seconds to complete.
Good to see Andrew Hadfield as well, who only just missed out on going to Beijing but should be a huge prospect for 2012. He's been writing for the BBC Sport site during the Olympic qualification process and has just posted a cracking summary of how he nearly made the 2008 Games.
Today's lesson: never forget your coat when going to film canoeing. I'd just joined the M1 at about 6:45am when I thought, "I wonder if I picked my coat up," and had a quick glance at the back seat. Nothing there. The morning wasn't too nippy but the wind and rain settled in for the afternoon and a certain pillock got quite cold and damp, despite telling anyone who would listen that he was fine, brave, and liked the cold anyway. Honest.
You know it's desperate when you've appropriated the t-shirt kept in the car as a rag to clean condensation from the windscreen for the last half-year, and are wearing it as a base layer for want of anything warmer.
Today's other lesson: if you're not an Olympic athlete, make sure you get some breakfast at Leicester Forest East services on the way up. Stupidly I was in the fast lane with no hope of flinging the car across to the sliproad, so that opportunity passed me by. I got to Holme Pierrepont - a UK Sport Centre of Excellence - for 7:30am, so nipped inside to see what the canteen was doing.
The menu promised me scrambled egg, sausage, bacon, beans, the works. Excellent! But when I rocked up at the counter and ordered one of everything, I was asked if I'd stayed overnight. For some reason I told the truth and said no, and was then informed I wasn't allowed a cooked breakfast then.
This left me in the horrible position of having to find something else unhealthy for breakfast in an elite athletes' canteen. In fairness I can't complain about the combination of croissants, yoghurt and banana I ended up with, but there wasn't a greasy spoon option in sight. The very best you could do was a basket of muffins above which a sign had been placed, reading: "Stop and think". Run and eat!
Pics from the day (and a few from an Olympic training camp in Holland) are on BBC Sport's Flickr stream.
After banking with Barclays for eight years they've finally given in to my perpetual complaints and palmed me off with a £100.00 lump sum. My latest complaint regarded the fact they charged fees on a telegraphic transfer I made. I insisted the fee was to be taken out of my account not the amount being paid to the recipient. Naturally, in all their incompetence, Barclays went against this instruction and subtracted it from the amount being paid to the recipient. As a result the amount due to the recipient was short and I had to make a second transfer, incurring another set of charges. One verbal complaint, one complaint form and one complaint letter later and a written apology arrives in my post box and £100.00 arrives in my account. Barclays, I thank you.
Have you ever wondered whether there is a hidden meaning in the colour of someone's umbrella? I was waiting for a [delayed] DLR this morning (clearly given Ollie's post below the "wrong kind of rain" hit the transport network today) and observed a complete myriad of different umbrellas on the platform.
You have the business men with the sober black brolly. The middle-class (yes, even in the East End) professional with the golfing umbrella. Is he trying to make up for deficiencies in other areas by the size of his umbrella? You have a woman in a conservative suit yet holding an umbrella with scenes from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (or equivalent) on it. Possibly wanting to display a less conventional, more artistic side? The young student, dressed rather hippy-esque, with a child's blue, yellow and red brolly. The young man gingerly holding a black umbrella littered with the playboy symbol. Clearly a player. The middle-aged lady carrying an umbrella, base colour pink, covered with cats and dogs. Does it belong to her daughter or is she trying to connect with a youthful, humourous side? The young professional, dressed solely in black, with a pink and purple stripy affair. There is some character beneath the more formal exterior. The elderly lady holding an umbrella covered with sunflowers. A National Trust purchase, one suspects. The slender lady in a black suit and red high-heeled shoes, holding a transparent umbrella. Designer, no doubt. And so the list continues.
I think umbrellas are like socks. Personality can shine through both umbrellas and socks. Take the wearing of "weekend" socks (a Dayorama Reader) or, heaven forbid, socks with the days of the week on them (another Dayorama Reader), or even the insistence on always buying colourful socks (a Dayorama Author).
There must be a PhD thesis in here somewhere. All I can say is that I see the same people, everyday, waiting for the DLR. And yet by observing their choice of umbrella, in contrast to their general attire and look, I felt - albeit rightly or wrongly - able to make assumptions about their character. Don't get me wrong, I don't spend my time trying to character assess, it's just this morning I couldn't help it.
Incidentally, no prizes for guessing which of the above relates to me.
Not often I get let loose on a new blog. Once every six years, in fact, going on current form. We've just launched our Olympics blog and yours truly will make occasional appearances not writing about trains, website design and the Anglo-Saxons. Unless I can find a way to crowbar the story of the otters who dried St Cuthbert's feet into a canoeing update.
"We apologise for the inconvenience to your delay."
The man on the tannoy at High Wycombe station has as much grasp of the English language as we do of where our train is.
"Due to an incident in the West Ruislip area, the 0720 service has been delayed approximately 12 minutes' time."
Eh? Delayed approximately twelve times? No wonder we're standing here getting cross.
I'm not hot under the collar about a mere 12-minute delay, you understand. The train I should have caught was cancelled about an hour ago, and I've just had to evacuate a train which changed destinations while I was sat on it at the platform.
Back on the concourse, a guard - 'train dispatch', then - summarises the incident at West Ruislip as follows:
"A train has hit, um... [long pause while guard tries to find a word for 'person' without giving anything away] something. Yeah, a train has hit something. But we don't know what.
"Whatever it was ruptured the fuel tanks and there's diesel all over the line. Everything has to go incredibly slowly through there. You could walk faster than they're going."
Not by the time I'd got to West Ruislip I couldn't, sunshine.
I'm not certain but I suspect this is the first time a train has ever cancelled on me. This places trains equal with women. I can't decide if trains or women are favourites to go on and win.
I've not defected, it's the name of the programme. It may say a little too much about Setanta Sports that its most original piece of programming is a five-minute comedy puppet show, but it is a very good puppet show.
If you've ever seen You're On Sky Sports, the Sky phone-in show usually to be found polluting the airwaves late after midweek football games, you'll understand it was ripe for the mickey-taking. Presenters would gaze semi-comprehendingly at the camera while punters ranted about the latest injustice on the pitch, then ask their N-list celebrity ex-player for his opinion of their opinion, and maybe get the caller's opinion of his opinion of their opinion.
Setanta have wisely elected to do away with involving the public (boring), presenters (boring) and pundits (boring), in favour of glorified sock puppets which bear a vague resemblance to Jose Mourinho, Sven-Goran Eriksson and Wayne Rooney (hilarious).
Jose, naturally, bosses the show, Rooney provides the slapstick and acts like a sort of faithful golden retriever of comedy, and Sven gets the raw deal in almost every gag, often finding himself playing a musical instrument in a fashion ill-appreciated by his colleagues.
Not enough sports programming is this funny while knowing its place (they keep it to five minutes a show, which is perfect). More please.
Click here for the programme's official site, and you can also find out a bit more about the show's creators on the EPLTalk blog.
I'm tapping this post as I sit on the eternal District line. I've just left Ollie at South Kensington after spending a very pleasant few hours, (a) wandering around the National Geographic photography of the year (2007) competition at the Natural History Museum (along with a few of the other displays the Museum has to offer), (b) enjoying a particularly English and wholesome pub lunch, and (c) having a short stroll around one of London's more prestigious postcodes, namely the squares and tree-lines streets with grand Georgian terraces that surround South Ken station.
First up, the photography exhibition. Clearly some amazing - and inspiring - photography going on here. Some of the photos truly captured the innocence and the frailty of nature, along with the personalities (if I can call them that) of the individual animals. Truly breath-taking and thought provoking images. I'm unable to reveal my faourite image but let's just say that Ollie's Mum is a lucky lady. The exhibition was well presented and there was a helpful explanation (factual) of the featured animal in question, along with a comment from the artist.
If anything, what let the presentation down was the lack of judicial commentary (and I'm not just saying that because I'm a lawyer). It would have been helpful to know why a particular image was commended - was it for the colour, the composition, the imagination or the uniqueness behind the shot, or something entirely different? This is would have been particularly helpful in the context of the "winning" photograph. Not to say it isn't amazing or clever, but I (and I think I can also speak for Ollie on this too) thought that other photographs captured so much more in terms of spirit, ingenuity and imagination. But, who are we to know, eh?
All I can say is if I win the lottery... photography it is. The exhibition really did make you want to go and grab a camera and get yourself to the nearest park.
So, as I said I began typing this on the tube and was reading the magazine accompanying this week's Observer, the Observer Food Monthly. There's an article titled "Is food better than sex". The first paragraph seems, somewhat, to sum up the second part of Ollie and I's day ... "while food is [merely] a pleasant recreational activity, like golf, or peering in estate agents' windows and going 'blimey, half a million for that?'.
As I said, Ollie and I had a very enjoyable, somewhat quintessential (both for England and for Ollie and I's excursions), lunch and then wandered around South Ken. Despite the people who live there (pretence, Chelsea Tractors, comparing public schools and gymkhana successes) the area it’s self is beautiful. Ollie and I reckoned if we clubbed together we could probably afford to buy a one-bed flat. Sadly, we couldn’t afford the pad for £9,500,000 but – for compensation – we could afford the £170 per/month parking space. Praise be for small mercies. And then of course we had the ritual bet. Ollie’s going to get me playing a round of golf before the summer is out. Watch this space.
Recognise anybody there? BBC Sport's turned the clock back 100 years to celebrate the 1908 Olympics - held in London - with a video recreating some of the more unlikely stories from that summer. I think I'm allergic to fake moustache adhesive.
Photos from the day's filming to follow next week. I'm fast becoming a tug of war veteran, by the way: this time last year I was recording the Sandhurst team in training. Read more here and be sure to have a listen to the audio. The sound of a tug of war team is quite incredible.
“Early to bed, early to rise, makes a [wo]man healthy, wealthy and wise”. You think? Let’s examine the facts:
Early to bed… well, yes this did mean I only had a couple of glasses of wine at my parents’ house last night. Healthier for me and, perhaps, aiding their wealth.
Early to rise… so, I got up at 6.30am and by 6.45am I was out running for 7 miles on, quite frankly, rather undulating roads.
Healthy… well, the running is obviously healthy but I’m not sure my post-run breakfast was.
Wealthy… you see, the problem with getting up early is that your day begins much earlier. And thus your ability to spend begins earlier. And so I went and purchased a brand new, all singing all dancing sparkly black metallic BMW 1 Series. *big smile* Regardless of Ollie’s mutterings I haven’t purchased a new car lately. However, following last week’s RAC episode I decided that the time had come. I promised myself I’d always purchase a new vehicle when the old one began to cost me money. Well, it cost me £65 last week. Time for a change. So I decided last Sunday, finally chose the car, phoned the dealership on Monday and test drove / purchased today. Not bad going, really. Roll on June for the grand arrival…
Wise… nah, clearly foolish. I could have (a) had more sleep; (b) eaten less breakfast; and (c) not spent a silly amount of cash.
Ah well, we’re only young once. Time to be wise in the future.
Golf. What a game. Few sports in the world allow you to be simultaneously crap and alone and still derive something bordering on satisfaction.
Of course, two heads are better than one, so it was even better that my dad had teamed up with me for our first golfing contest in well over a year, if not two. (It's certainly more than 12 months since I last played.)
Our local course is a lovely nine-hole affair, Princes Risborough golf club, which offers healthy-but-not-too-long holes set in the quietest rural idyll you could imagine - with the possible exception of the railway line, which adds a certain extra anticipation to your drive off the seventh tee, if nothing else.
Red kites, bunnies, fish and the chirruping of a million birds follow you around the course. Well the fish don't follow you but they're there, lurking in the small lake to the left of the fourth green. Over the years we've sent a fair few balls in there, although on one memorable occasion somebody (I forget which of us) hit the stake marking the water hazard with their ball, which rebounded back into play - a lucky escape.
The pair of us began with respectable double bogeys on the par-four first. Things slipped a little at the second, third and fourth, but we actually managed most of the round in single figures, in itself an achievement. As the round progressed I started to entertain the notion of finishing the par-68 course inside 100 shots - watch the video to find out if that happened (it goes down to the wire).
The sad thing is that I shouldn't be aiming to finish inside 100 shots, I should be playing off scratch by now. I was playing the far more challenging 18-hole Taunton Vale course inside 100 shots when I was fifteen years old, so it's a little disappointing that my golfing development has regressed, let alone stagnated, in the intervening eight years.
Of all the afternoon's developments, the most impressive came when I went rummaging in my golf bag for something to drink.
I'd just about finished my bottle of water so I delved deeper into the bottom pocket and produced an unopened can of Diet Coke.
Now I appreciate I have not had much call to plumb the depths of my golf bag over the years, but the expiry date printed on the bottom of the can surpassed even my expectations: December 2003. I have yet to put the taste to the test.
Plan: maybe if I leave a new can of Diet Coke in my bag after each game, and promise myself I will play another round before it expires, my game will improve.
It's always strange when you realise an assumption you've had - a rubbish assumption with no logic behind it - is wrong.
It had never even occurred to me that some people in this world would call Mt Everest something other than Everest.
So I was surprised, and immediately very disappointed in myself, to discover the Chinese (and quite possibly others) call the mountain Qomolangma.
Of course they bloody do. Why on God's earth would they call it Everest, when the Chinese probably know as much about the man as the British do about Cheng Ho? Stupid boy.
BBC man Jonah Fisher (good name) is in China at the moment, waiting to follow the Olympic torch up Everest/Qomolangma. Problem is, the Chinese - either by accident or design - are turning the trip into a bit of a nightmare.
Unfortunately so far we have been told next to nothing about the climb itself. No start date, no word on who is taking part, or even how many climbers there are. So we have been trying to wait patiently in Beijing, but as we make our final preparations there has been no shortage of drama behind the scenes.
Events came to a head this week at the Olympic Media Centre in Beijing. The 20 foreign journalists had just been told that the trip was being indefinitely delayed and were summoned to a meeting to be told why.
The Chinese officials told Fisher the delay was down to bad weather on the mountain but, whatever the reason, that means less time for journalists to acclimatise to the conditions - and moreover, no coverage of some big moments on the torch's route.
We would now depart Beijing only when the Chinese mountaineers had left base camp to attempt the summit. There would also now be no coverage of the arrival of the torch on the mountain, a potential flashpoint for pro-Tibetan demonstrators. Our three-week trip to Tibet had suddenly been condensed into one.
Collectively we protested that by being raced from sea level to over 5,000 metres in just two days, our health was being put at risk. After a 24-hour stand off, the trip was tweaked. The journalists were given an extra day to acclimatise in Tibet but also issued with an ultimatum. We were told to pay for our air tickets before 10 the next morning or miss out entirely.
The world's three main news agencies decided they wanted further clarification and consultations before going ahead, and missed the deadline. They then discovered that the Chinese were deadly serious and refused to take them back. Read more: BBC News - Everest Olympic torch diary
Meanwhile authorities on the mountain have expelled an American climber who hid a "Free Tibet" banner in his pack. You get the impression a dam somewhere is going to break sooner or later.
Earlier this week I received an email regarding the recruitment section of the Firm's website. This forms part of the main website and, along with the main website, has undergone several transformations over the past five years.
Once upon a time the website simply included basic factual details, then it developed to include online applications and profiles of Firm members (if you search wisely on Google you can find a profile written [partially] by me about my "life as a trainee") and now it seems we've reached the next level... podcasts.
It seems that there are two types of podcast planned. 1. simply a podcast you can listen to where two or three attorneys will speak for a few minutes on a particular deal; and 2. a full podcast video where an
attorney speaks about their experience either within the Firm or of a particular deal. This new initiative is aimed at both lateral hirers and graduates.
Rather like the change to the BBC website there's naturally been a mixed reaction to this proposal. Some people think it will be "great", "innovative" and "heading with the times" whilst others have referred to it as "naff", "embarrassing" and "pointless". I have to say that my initial thoughts were that the podcasts would be ineffectual, gimmicky, no-one would listen / watch them and generally it would be embarrassing. These thoughts are probably due to the fact that it's currently planned that I'll be featuring in both types of podcast. However, the more I think about it, the more I am inclined to toe the party line. Why not, eh? It's fun, it's novel, it's certainly on-line with current internet trends and if people want to find out more about the Firm then it will be readily available at the click of the button. I hope at least, given the cost incurred in setting the podcasts up, someone finds them valuable. Having said that, I'm not sure how many law students will be downloading a podcast of me wittering on about a deal I've work on and then listening to it in the gym. I suppose only web stats. and time shall tell.
The irony of it is that although clearly we are, to steal that well-known cliche, "moving with the times", in some ways we're actually going back to basics. Above I described our Firm website five years ago as being nothing more than a simplistic placeholder of the Firm's presence, containing only key details and information. I'm unable to find a trace of it on the internet anywhere but what I neglected to remember is that on entering the site there used to be a pop-up video, painfully slow if using a then-dial-up connection, where the Head of the Firm in Europe said a few brief words welcoming you to the Firm. It seemed very "American" and "corny" at the time. The idea was swiftly disposed of. And yet now, it seems set to return. Proof that along with polka-dots and leggings, history is always bound to repeat itself.
Consider this part two, and this time it's Mercia (otherwise known as the Midlands), the strongest kingdom in eighth-century England, led by imposing King Offa.
Since Mercia's a bit nearer than Northumbria was, rather than take a few days to explore it I decided to bomb round the place by car. So at 6am I was out of the house and by 7am was already stuffing down the largest breakfast mankind has ever known at Hopwood Park services. (When I tentatively stuck my nose round the side of the breakfast counter to see if Burger King were open and doing breakfasts, the lady there yelled: "Don't you even dare! I've only just cooked this!")
By 9am I was on the Welsh border in the small town of Knighton, half of which sits in Powys, the other half in England. The legendary Offa's Dyke, for which the king remains best known, runs straight through the middle of Knighton, so my journey began sat on top of that. It's not quite as impressive as you might think, if you were just told you were visiting a 60-mile stretch of earthwork wall built 1200 years ago. Time has taken its toll and were it not for a little plaque marking the spot, you could easily confuse the dyke itself with three or four other hedgerows in the vicinity. Sadly I didn't have time to explore up into the hills, so a few quick poses with this mound of earth and we pressed on.
Next stop was the Anglo-Saxon capital of commerce, a place so rich in raw materials, trade and coinage that it could never possibly fade from prosperity, its reputation known across the world: Droitwich.
Droitwich was known as Saltwich in several charters drawn up in the eighth century, which gives you an idea of why it mattered so much. With fridges a bit of a distant prospect, the Saxons (and everyone else) relied on salt to keep food fresh - or at least edible - and Droitwich was one of the best inland sources, since it contains brine pits matched only by the Dead Sea.
Today the only living reminder of this is the Brine Baths in which you can take a dip, the last brine extraction pumps having shut up shop back in the 1920s. But at the time of King Offa, Droitwich would have been awash with salt and money. The early medieval church invested heavily in the saltworks and would have earned quite a bit of cash from salt, as did the king, probably via tolls and tariffs. Saltways radiated out from Droitwich, special paths for carrying the goods all over England.
So it's a bit odd to find that it's now a quiet little backwater just outside Worcester, with a Waitrose by far the most dominant feature of the town centre - except the lovely church of St Augustine perched on top of the hill, overlooking Saltwich of old. There's been a church here certainly since Norman times and possibly even earlier, since the site was once a Roman fort if you go even further back in time. Augustine himself was a Roman monk who introduced Christianity (or at least, the Pope's version) to England via Kent in the year 597. It's fitting he is commemorated with a beautiful church in this, the home of Saxon industry.
I rocked up in Tamworth, round the M42 and up a bit to the east of Birmingham, at about 4pm, just in time to get inside Tamworth Castle before it shut for the day. The castle was built by the Normans but like so many things, it sits on top of an earlier Saxon settlement - a burh, in other words a village surrounded by wooden ramparts of a sort, designed to keep out the Vikings. Which it singularly failed to do. Twice. (Doubly failed to do?)
King Offa had his royal palace here, although by "palace" we really mean slightly larger hut than everybody else's. Tamworth is a bit more impressive than the Northumbrian equivalent, Yeavering, which is now just a field full of sheep, but there's still not much Saxon influence left. By far the best building is St Editha's Church, proudly basking in the afternoon sun in the middle of Tamworth town centre. The stonework dates from Norman times onwards but Editha herself was the wife of King Athelstan, a tenth-century Saxon king who is probably the first man you could accurately describe as king of a united English people. (Helps when you've got Danes to fight.)
I find it funny that we don't care more about places like these. The people who do care, like the Friends of Tamworth Castle and the Offa's Dyke Association, do a fantastic job. But it continues to mystify me why people give a rat's backside about the Tudors, Stuarts and all that gumph, when the Saxon past of this country is so much more lively and interesting. Sod Blenheim Palace next time you want a family day out, and go and walk a bit of the Offa's Dyke Trail. I promise you won't regret it.
(By the way, I should acknowledge that my university tutor, Dr Maddicott, opened my eyes to quite how important salt was to the Saxons, especially at Droitwich. He gave me a draft of his article on Droitwich to read before it was published, and the town's unlikely history has stuck with me ever since.)
Compare these two videos. The first one is a few minutes long so, if you're not keen on the band OK Go or their music, just dip in and out to get a flavour. Then watch the second one, an advert for Berocca, and tell me if you notice anything.
As you will have seen (or, if you've not had the time to watch, you'll have to trust me), the 30-second Berocca ad clearly lifts the idea of a treadmill dance routine from OK Go's video.
That much is obvious without delving into any case history, but it turns out the ad agency behind Berocca's segment contacted OK Go asking to use the treadmill idea (which won the band a Grammy in 2006), didn't get a positive response, then went ahead and used it anyway.
To me that seems a little like open thievery, but according to an interesting piece on a site calling itself the Copyright Blog, the band may struggle to put their case. It starts off by quoting another article from The Scotsman:
An issue of copyright infringement could be determined by comparison of the videos' individual dance moves.
A source close to the band claims: "There was extensive negotiation to use Ok Go (by the JWT advertising agency on behalf of Berocca's manufacturer Bayer] but this didn't bear fruit."
The source says JWT had no authorisation to reproduce the choreography. JWT and Bayer have, thus far, ignored all requests for a statement.
The Copyright Blog, by a gent named William Patry, concludes:
One would be hard pressed to find any copying of expression, although the conceptual copying is obvious.
Then, in the comments, the argument is extended a little.
Kasi Hill commented: "OK Go could have a successful claim here if a judge determined that Bayer used a significant portion of the group's work. While the group probably can't reasonably have a monopoly on the idea of dancing on treadmills, Bayer did seem to copy some of the groups specific moves. The group's video won a Grammy, so Bayer's advertising/research department, with its significant resources, can't legitimately claim ignorance here. If it is true that Bayer had negotiated to use the group's work before releasing the commericial, I would think Bayer is out of luck."
William Patry commented: "Kasi, I think OK Go would be hard pressed to show that it was the originator of specific moves or that the two videos as a whole are substantially similar in the copyright sense; the fact that Bayer's ad agency tried to negotiate a deal is bad atmospherics, but in the end irrelevant." Read more: The Patry Copyright Blog - Advertising and the copying of concepts
If I were OK Go, I'd be mighty pissed off if an ad agency could come along, nick the moves, and frankly cheapen the whole creative process by turning a music video masterpiece into an advert with one of the worst tag lines I've ever heard: "Berocca - you, but on a really good day".
2. How to discover if your BBC colleagues are creative types
I filled out my BBC staff questionnaire yesterday. Much fanfare around this, essentially pleading us to take the time to bother with it, as though we were being asked to dip our extremities in hydrochloric acid for the good of the corporation. It took five minutes and was painless.
Several questions asked me what I thought of creativity - mine, my colleagues', the corporation's. Turns out there's a much better way to find out who's feeling alive and creative, and who's stuck behind their desk quietly seething: send a vast number of people an email by accident.
No, I'm not the culprit. That was a lady named Patsy, who wrote an email trying to discover how much it cost to install a broadband line in somebody's home. The email accidentally found its way to a distribution list which seems to cover thousands of BBC staff in all walks of working life.
When I logged in to check my email just now, I had around 50 replies to this mass email. Of those, there is roughly a fifty-fifty split between people having great fun with this, and people so annoyed at getting all these mass replies that they send another one demanding that everybody stop.
"What's happened here?" Asks a studio manager in one of the first replies. "The world and his wife have got this email!"
"My wife's feeling left out, she didn't get it," replied a waggish Radio Stoke journalist - only for an implementation manager to chip in with: "It's okay, I just sent it to her."
"Hello everyone, hope you have a lovely Thursday, love from everyone at RedBee," was the contribution of one department, while a Radio One producer added: "I wasn't on this original email, but my colleagues are so intrigued I felt I was missing out, please add me to any further correspondence."
Not everybody was enjoying the email tennis though. A senior broadcast journalist in the West Midlands who complained she was being "bombarded" found herself chastised by a colleague in Television Centre's drama building, who implored her not to "spoil the fun".
Among others who failed to see the irony in pressing "reply-all" then begging people not to reply were journalists from BBC Scotland, Wales, the World Service and BBC Swahili, alongside a series producer, a purchasing assistant, and a BBC Wales production executive who even said he'd complained to human resources!
To all these emails imploring us not to respond further, one systems and infrastructure specialist wittily and defiantly replied: "Definitely." A reporter for the Asian Network capped the whole thing off by announcing, "I've got it too," an observation which suggests they may not be the first to every story.
Now if I had things my way, I'd be hauling in those who complained via reply-all and giving them the creativity spiel...
After all the brouhaha about the BBC website over the past few weeks, am I allowed to have a tiny whinge at it myself?
Why we can't embed the shiny new flash videos - or at least the ones which have been rights-cleared - is beyond me.
So instead I'm going to have to tell you to click here and watch a very nice quick guide to the process by which coins are minted, on the 25th anniversary of the pound coin.
If the video editing gods are with me, there'll be a special St George's Day post tomorrow.
In the meantime, and on the subject of national traditions whose passing is now mourned, our old glory nicked by people who have appropriated the whole concept, let's talk cricket and India.
There's a couple of really good articles on the BBC site from the past couple of days. We do quite well out of this story because we have a bureau in India but those journalists are still BBC staff, so they're looking at it from a slightly different point of view to the local reporters in India, but not in quite the same way as the sports hacks back in Blighty.
Neil Heathcote filed a look at the IPL from the business side of things for BBC World's India Business Report. He's discovered that although the IPL is already awash with cash in some respects, it is the teams - not the league - who face the real battle to raise cash:
if the IPL has been tough in negotiating deals, it is the teams themselves that are now under most pressure to bring in the cash.
The new team owners are a curious mix of construction and media companies, power and entertainment firms. They are Boom India's new elite - the people making enough profits in the new economy to take a sizeable bet on the future of cricket.
They have already bid millions to sign up their players. So how are they planning to recoup their money?
They too are looking to sign up sponsors, strike franchising deals and maximise ticket sales. But despite all the hoopla, success is far from guaranteed. R Balachandram, who manages the costliest of the eight teams auctioned, the Mumbai Indians, insists that the whole project will be financially viable - but it'll take time.
"This is not a business that's going to be made or unmade in one year," he says. "We, as Reliance, are in it for the long haul. That's the most important thing."
At the end of the day, the critical question is; how many people will actually watch? India may be a nation of cricket lovers, but it has no real tradition of city teams battling each other. That local team spirit will have to be built from scratch over the weeks ahead, but the IPL itself is philosophical. India is home to a billion people, it points out, and they are wealthier now than they have ever been.
"We believe that cricket will increase in value and the Indian premier league will accelerate that process," says Raman. "Will we reach the heights of football? We'd certainly like to not only reach there, but probably better it."
My favourite part of the report is a line at the bottom of the page - "India Business Report is broadcast repeatedly every Sunday on BBC World."
Not sure we should be sounding quite so tired of our own programme on our website! "Broadcast several times," perhaps?
The business side of the IPL is making headlines but the IPL would far rather the cricket started doing that. I'm sure their top execs sleep easier at night knowing I'm hooked - but BBC reporter Soutik Biswas hits explores the possibility that sideshows like Bollywood celebs and cheerleaders might detract from the main event:
Purists fear that in this quest for offering entertainment to woo crowds, the dividing line between entertainment - read Bollywood- and cricket is becoming precariously thin. The result is very few are actually watching the game at all.
In a Mumbai weekend game, Bollywood's Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapur, and Anil Kapur ran along the ground sporting the team's jerseys emblazoned with the name of their upcoming film in a brazen marketing push.
In Delhi, another actor, Akshay Kumar, known for his daredevil and comic acts on screen, found himself suspended from a cable midway through the act, and had to be unclipped and let down. A Hyderabad team commercial showed the captain VVS Laxman teaching a rather sheepish looking local film star to play cricket.
Analysts say cricket and the cult of celebrity are feeding off each other at the competition.
"The cricket uses celebrities to feel good about itself; the celebrities use the cricket to stay in the headlines. It's a symbiosis of a particularly cynical kind," says cricket writer Lawrence Booth.
Meanwhile, as Bollywood stars dance and cheerleading girls do the jig, electronic scorecards are yet not working in many stadia, and at the weekend match in Calcutta, there was no drinking water available for over 70,000 spectators. Also, a floodlight blew its fuse stopping the game for half an hour and the dustbowl cricket pitch invited the wrath of players and analysts alike.
Clearly, there is nothing revolutionary about all this, and how it will change the game - for the better - is unclear.
The best bit is that I know Soutik's been to at least one game to research this piece (deservedly one of the big hitters on the day's "most read stories" panel), because I've had updates from him straight into my inbox.
See, the South Asia bureau - like India in its entirety - is mad on its cricket, to the point where its editor is always on at us to make sure we're covering relevant cricket stories from the subcontinent.
On Friday night that reached the point where Television Centre's sports reporters were all getting near-hourly updates from Soutik, via his editor, letting us know what was happening inside the ground at the IPL's grand opener. It may even be Soutik's colourful updates which subconsciously prodded me in the direction of the live IPL on telly.
I'm not entirely sure my enthusiasm, or Soutik's, has rubbed off on too many people I know. I'm certainly the only one who's watched any IPL on the box. But then maybe the theme of all these things - the cricket, the BBC redesigns - is that people take time to adjust to change. In four years' time, I suspect you swines will all have booked your tickets for Mumbai, and I'll still be watching Setanta...
Right then. No point me leading you through the new-look BBC News - by which we mean both the bulletins and the channel, now it's no longer "News 24" - when the corporation themselves have done a fine, embedded-stuff-laden job of it here.
As usual, writing about a set of changes on a BBC blog is like waving a big sign in the air entitled "Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough".
Responses so far range from the non-committal...
"Well, the new branding has completely failed to upset or scandalise me, so I guess that's a good thing."
... to the worldly wise ...
I give it 10 minutes before we get the usual staple ingredients - slipped-in accusations of BBC's apparent left wing culture and political correctness, comparisons with other popular "fiascos" like Terminal 5 or the 2012 logo, and general "outrage".
... to the slightly confused ...
The worst thing I'm seeing is no closing p tags in the html of the stories. This is html 101 and really should be fixed.
(Do keep up, the bully-the-web-team session was last week, this week it's bully-the-telly-bods.) And finally, the usual quota of appalled, enraged and upset members of the public, innocent victims of a mindless cull of the "way things were":
The name changes are pretty unforgiveable.
...
Gill Sans does not make a welcome return, it's really not that suitable anymore for 24 hour news.
...
The background to the new News looks like a vandalised scratched plastic window on a bus shelter.
...
Are you in this century? My builder's homemade website is more technologically sound. Are you portraying ironic retro? or just plain lazy.
Right. What follows is an entirely unofficial and personal response. In fact, a response more as a fellow human being than anything else.
For God's sake, people!
The name change - will this really affect you? No. It's a name. If it was called BBC Squirrel Munching News Orgy, you'd get used to it after a while. It does what it says on the tin - it's news, it's from the BBC, you're watching BBC News. Bosh. Sorted.
The font. My God, the font. Can you read it? Good. (Don't try to be clever with me, sonny, I know you can read it.) The basic theme of this redesign appears to have been to inject a clearer, lighter look to the channels and bulletins, and that it has done. Personally I'm finding it much easier to read things like astons and the ticker.
I actually rather like the background, too. Glassy, classy, bus shelter my arsey. (Or, for those pronouncing the first two words in a northern accent, bus shelter my ass-ey.) I'm finding it hard to describe precisely why it chimes with my eyesight, but it looks less tired than the old design, and gives the set a more expansive feel.
And your builder's home-made website probably doesn't have to deal with quite the same logistics, does it? These fellas have to produce a set which stands up to the rigour of umpteen different channels, screen sizes and what-not - including fairly unlikely venues like the little monitors on the Heathrow Express. Ditto the poor website designers, who have so many different demands on their technology that it's a little difficult to do anything overly dramatic without six billion people picking a decent-sized rock to throw at them.
Sadly, the vast majority of people who will have sat down with their sarnies in front of the news, briefly thought, "Ooh, that looks a bit different," then watched the news and got on with their lives, won't have commented beneath poor Peter Horrocks' post. But it was ever thus.
Yesterday, I had to call the RAC out for my car. I had been sitting for around 10mins with the engine off and the stereo and fan on. This was sufficient to drain the battery. The electrics cut out. And the car effectively died.
Now, why was I sitting for around 10mins with the engine off and the stereo and fan on? Well, I was assessing a Silver DofE expedition over the weekend and I was waiting for my team to reach their checkpoint. I was sitting on a single-track road, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by fields. Now, when the car "died" I called some people who were in the area and we attempted to bump-start the car. This failed. I then called the RAC. The conversation went something like this:
RAC Operator: Where are you?
Me: Well, that's a little complicated. I'm North East of Elham, in Kent
RAC Operator: Do you have a post code for that?
Me: No, I'm on a single-track road
RAC Operator: Oh, well, does the road have a name?
Me: No, it's a country lane
RAC Operator: Well, can you see anything around you?
Me: Fields. I am in the middle of fields.
RAC Operator: So you don't know where you are?
Me: I know exactly where I am - I can give you an 8 figure grid reference and tell you were I am to the nearest 10 metres, probably less, but I just can't give you a road name or a post code.
RAC Operator: Oh. Well, you'll just have to give me directions from the centre of Elham.
Me: *provides directions for 4km of country roads*
For goodness sake! It seems that outside of so-called "wild country" they operate on a post code or road name basis, and not on grid refs. or GPRS etc. Now, thankfully, the battery gained some life and I was able to drive the vehicle to a more convenient location and then re-phone the RAC. The chap was a little miffed, once again, I couldn't provide a post code, but at least he found us easily.
It turns out my battery was "less than 5% healthy" (according to the RAC man's fancy gadget) hence the rapid draining. I had the battery changed on the spot and all is well.
That's it, though. New car. Here I come. I've been fussing around for a while now. Well, that's it. Decision made.
Did you see the nail-biting final-over finish to the cricket earlier?
Now, there are three possible responses to that question. By far the most likely is, "Bollocks to the cricket, I couldn't care less and was doing something else."
But if you're a cricket fan, or channel hopped until you landed on a cricket game, there are two options:
a) "Yes, great fightback by Durham to stop Yorkshire nicking it," or
b) "Yes, Royal Challengers really turned it on to get past Mumbai right at the end."
See, Durham's 40-over game against Yorkshire in the UK's Friends Provident Trophy was being broadcast at the same time as one of the first games in India's brand new, all-singing, all-dancing Premier League (IPL) - a version of Twenty20 populated with some of the world's top stars, all bought in an auction held before the season started.
Sky had the Durham game, whereas Setanta had the IPL game between Mumbai Indians and Bangalore Royal Challengers. Watching the final half hour of both games, I found myself flicking between the two, as they finished mere moments apart, each building to a climactic finish.
But aside from similar nervy finales in Mumbai and Durham, the contrast could not have been more different.
Two of South Africa's finest world-class stars, Mark Boucher and Jacques Kallis, battered the Mumbai bowlers to reach a 50 partnership off just 28 deliveries, as Royal Challengers - with Chanderpaul and Dravid, also legends of the game, opening the batting - squeaked a win over Mumbai, themselves replete with Harbhajan Singh as captain and the likes of Pollock and Jayasuriya in their ranks.
Six after six soared up, away into the floodlights, thundering into the thousands upon thousands of baying fans packed into the arena.
If the IPL is cricket's new palace of glitz and entertainment, drizzle-soaked Durham shows English domestic cricket to be a case of rising damp.
Has ever a new season been met with such an abject lack of giving a toss?
True, the game itself went to the final over, Durham bowlers Neil Killeen and Steve Harmison dispatched all over the park before their skipper Dale Benkenstein took the winning catch.
But where Mumbai has massed ranks of supporters generating a clamour almost unknown to cricket under the glare of world television, Durham had a few hundred soggy spectators perched beneath umbrellas in the same old rickety little stands, the rotting gloom permeating anything bordering on celebration.
Mike Atherton came out to the post-match "presentations", but rattled through the formalities as he remarked that it was "freezing" and the players would be wanting a hot bath. And that was that. Some fanfare for the defending champions starting their new season with a bang. The world could not give two hoots.
Cricket is at a point where it needs to start attracting fair weather fans, in more sense than one. I'm a prime example of the species. Football is my first love and I have adopted ice hockey as my second sport. I play a bit of golf, used to be semi-decent at cricket, and enjoy the occasional game of tennis and the like. My sporting enthusiasm is up for grabs to the people who provide me with the best value for my time and money.
If I watched channel 430 this afternoon, I got razzmatazz, glorious boundary-laced adrenaline-junkie cricket, and enough stars of the international game to tide me over til the next feast - tomorrow.
If I watched channel 402, I got a moist clash between the same old counties in the same godforsakenly old, tired, dead-for-a-decade format, played by home-grown non-entities or foreign players too rubbish to warrant a berth in the IPL.
It is not difficult to decide which of the two I'd rather watch, rather care about, rather go into work shouting about. I've never been to Bangalore in my life but I'm ten times as much a Royal Challengers fan as I am a supporter of any English county side. I make no apologies for that, either. When it comes to cricket my allegiance, like that of many others, will be bought by the team I see playing the best, most exciting stuff. Seven hours of English sludge cannot compete with three hours of Indian explosion.
The IPL is not without its problems. The official website is ramshackle, the marketing could be better (why can't you buy shirts for most of the teams taking part?), and they have taken some bizarre publicity decisions - for example, all but banning world-class website CricInfo.
But you can forgive these teething problems when the end product is bloody exciting cricket featuring all the game's finest, popped in an easily digested three-hour televisual meal, pumped into my living room.
The inability of England's own stars to take part, and the defiant but toe-curlingly embarrassing, spluttering start of the English domestic season alongside the IPL, is a tragedy for the sport in this country.
Ice hockey should not be winning my favour over cricket. It's a sport struggling to survive in the UK, imported from North American and European climes. Cricket has had its talons deeply embedded within English and British culture for decades, centuries. It should not have sunk to a position whereby watching the NHL on telly beats the cricket hands down unless it's the Ashes.
Now the chance presents itself for cricket to be reinvented. Do away with this ridiculous, plodding 40-over nonsense, which even an internal report recommended be allowed to slip into long-overdue, peaceful slumber. Get us on board with this IPL lark - send all our top players over there to take part (only one has so far done so), hell, even get us a team or two (one for London, one for Manchester, sorted) and see if they'll play a few games over here as well. Or make our own league up and compete with the Indians for players, who knows.
Either way, the future of cricket is in the offing and the best English fans are getting is a bunch of nobodies taking an eternity in a poxy, empty ground with crap weather.
Three of those things we can change. World-class stars in a thrilling encounter in a packed stadium - in crap weather - I would take.
This must be some of the most incredibly foolish legislation I have seen in a long time:
A system giving students extra marks if they have suffered personal trauma is being defended by an exams authority.
GCSE and A-level pupils in England are given 5% more if a parent dies close to exam day or 4% for a distant relative.
They get 2% more if a pet dies or 1% if they get a headache. Critics say the system panders to an "excuse for everything" attitude.
Read more here - the article is almost three years old so this is nothing new, but has returned to the news with the national teaching union's demand for stricter guidelines on how this policy is applied.
I'll confess I had not, until now, realised these things were given specific percentages. You'd have to be insane not to try to pull some sort of trick in an exam as a result.
Let's say I reckon I'm getting a healthy - but unspectacular - 60 to 70 per cent in my maths GCSE.
I can immediately stick an extra per cent onto that by feigning a headache during the exam, so that's a start.
I do have an uncle but only vaguely know him and haven't spoken for a fair old while so, without wishing him any ill, it'd be remiss of me not to fake his death for an extra four per cent, so let's add that on too. (It's what he would have wanted. Were he dead.)
Pretending a parent has bought the proverbial may be a stretch too far even for the most cynical student, but imagine the legions of kids lining up to offer dead pets for inspection!
It's got to be worth setting up a pet shop to cater for demand. Special offer: hamsters five quid a pop, peacefully suffocate the little fella overnight, present him in a diddy little wooden coffin (£2) the following day and an extra two per cent is all yours. Alternatively take advantage of our three-for-two offer and get a full six per cent on top of your normal mark!
Now, Dayorama in no way condones murdering small animals for extra marks in exams. But - given most of the population thinks nothing of bumping off an animal to put in its lunchtime sarnies - it'd be the height of hypocrisy to have a go at anyone who sacrifices the family cat for the sake of their future career...
What's this big stink about a big stink then? All the afternoon freesheets are harping on about the 'stench from the French' (inspired sub-editing) but I've not caught a whiff.
It seems like it's been far too long since we had a really good mass-participation smell going. Does Noel's late-90s attempt at smell-o-vision count? Maybe Buncefield belched out a good pong? Or were the good old peasoupers the last great nostril nasties inflicted upon mankind?
It will surprise few students of history that the fundamentally infragrant French are responsible for this. We are told 'freak weather' or, on closer examination, 'the wind blowing the other way' is the root cause, carrying all manner of particulates over the Channel into our yawning gobs.
Back in the late nineteenth century things were much the same. If you've studied much late Victorian continental urban landscaping and sewer design - loved my degree, I did - then you'll know that the Paris sewers were famous for their city-encompassing smell. Redesigning the plumbing to keep the rot under wraps was possibly the single best thing the Parisians did all century (and let's face it, they even built a bloody big tower to try to escape the noxious air).
Perhaps this is all revenge for us getting the Olympics, or Waterloo, or Agincourt or something. Maybe we can wait for our more usual westerly to be restored, then all fart as one at the British mouth of the Chunnel. Or maybe it was all an accident. I for one, pooh-pooh the notion.
I'm really cold right now. I've been in for around 40mins and I've many layers on and a mug of hot chocolate, but I got cold walking home and I haven't warmed up yet.
Anyway, the above is icidental; I'm simply complaining. I picked up my post on the way home and received three envelopes. So that's three separate envelopes, with three separate sets of contents and tree separate trees felled to provide the paper:
1. "An attractive offer you won't want to miss" - the offer of a secured loan from Barclaycard of up to £100,000;
2. "Cash in just 4 working days" - a personal loan from Barclaycard of up to £25,000; and
3. "For you, from us, for nothing" - treats picked "especially for [me]" from Barclaycard.
Why was it necessary for them to send me three separate lettes? Why was it necessary for them to send me any of this stuff, anyway? If I wanted a loan then I'd simply ask for one. And as for the offers "especially for [me]" then I'm not sure how the promise of a complimentary tie or set of cufflinks will induce me to spend £150 in Thomas Pink or that the thought of £7 off will encourage me to spend £30 at firebox.com. Barclaycard well know that I'm a Charles Trywhitt and Amazon girl, respecitvely. Absolutely ridiculous. Just lower interest rates or something, stop sending me useless mail. Or email me these offers instead. It can't be that hard.
Take a good, long look at that banana. I don't think, at first glance, you've appreciated quite how large it is.
It's a real banana, fished out of the BBC canteen for 41 pence. And if you look, it dwarfs the phone - which is, being a phone, roughly the length of a human head. It is the largest banana I have seen in my life, by some considerable distance.
And my God, how hilarious I found it.
When I spotted it I had to have it, so I bought it that very moment, stifling a grin as I did so. But the banana's true, grotesque size only really set in when I began to escort it along the four corridors and three floors back to my desk.
Every time we (for it was practically sentient) walked past somebody, I had to make a painfully obvious attempt to suppress the manic grin etched across my face. Even its weight made me giddy with power. Here I was, in the middle of the building, wielding my foot-long weapon in the face of all comers.
I returned to my colleagues as their King, having plucked my off-yellow Sword from the Stone, and all yielded in terror before me. The admin team collapsed in laughter on catching a glimpse through a window; my boss, walking in poised to launch into a speech, found herself disarmed and agog under the banana's spell. I took my seat, banana resting on my TV like a sleeping dragon.
It took me three hours to build up the courage to eat it - in many ways it felt like betraying an old friend by the time I eventually inched back the yellow dragon's scales to expose its fleshy underbelly. I have never had so much banana in my life. It was a meal in its own right.
Lord only knows what cocktail of drugs, hormones and stimulants produced this monster. But if they bottled the lot, I'd buy a lifetime's supply tomorrow.
"Indira had a hole in her nose, and less hair. her number is, while in ecuador, now 092724918 plus ecuador dialling code (at start) which i cant be arsed to look up."
And that status message, along with this profile picture, is how Indira Swann (above left) will be remembered to the world forever.
She was one of the five British victims of the bus crash in Ecuador, which has been extensively reported over the last 24 hours.
Eighteen months ago I wrote about my old school friend Will who, having spent much of his life quite unwell, died after catching a virus on holiday:
Perhaps the most strange sensation is seeing Will's profile on social networking website Facebook. It's a snapshot which, for better or worse, will never fade.
It's well over a year since Will died, but still he appears on my list of Facebook friends from time to time. You can still read his profile, frozen in time. His friend Tom still earnestly enquires, days before Will's death: "I did get your text, thought I'd replied?" Will is still "in a relationship".
It is quite moving in its own little way. Maybe you find it a bit weird that you can read the profile of a dead man, long after they have gone. I find it peaceful to know that some little corner of the world, digital or otherwise, is forever Will.
I bet that's how a lot of Indira's friends feel. Indira's Facebook wall - the part of a profile where friends can post messages - is full of the most moving, affectionate tributes, ranging from the memories of people who grew up with her to the condolences of people who barely knew who she was until they woke up, saw the news, and the name rang a bell.
Some friends have set up a group in her memory where others have contributed more than 40 photos of Indira from their own albums. And all the while, Indira's profile is cast in an eerie stasis, her personality from 10 April 2008 - the last day she updated it - preserved for ever more. She, too, is "in a relationship", with a boy named Harry who will have to spend months logging into Facebook only to see that staring back at him.
Her favourite films, the books she enjoyed, it's all there. She belonged to Facebook's Boris Johnson Appreciation Society, enjoyed Top Gear, and even set up a group to keep in touch from Ecuador ("I thought, rather than e-mailing everyone to assure those who are worried I'm still alive, I'd just do this").
It's immensely sad, on the one hand, to see such a lively character snuffed out, in a foreign country, in the blink of an eye.
But on the other, I think if anything were ever to happen to me, I'd be consoled from whatever afterlife I find to feel that my personality lives on, incorrupt, in a corner where nobody can get to it, lose it in the sands of time, change it, remove my life essence. Under the lazily rotating banners of sheep, lighthouses and other natural curios, my thousand-odd Dayorama entries would keep watch over you lot til we're all dust and ashes - and then once you'd joined me you'd find I'd written a thousand more and kept them in a special file, just for you. An incentive to reject suicide if ever there were one.
Facebook are never going to get into the business of removing the profiles of the dead (which, in earlier days, they once did) - imagine the workload in 40 years' time if they went down that road. Nobody but the creator knows each account's password, so there Indira, and I, and you, will live on. Hole in her nose, daft but happy profile picture broadcasting joie de vivre like a beacon, friends tending to the memory, proud to maintain her in their lists of friends on their profiles.
Beats a gravestone, doesn't it? The twenty-first century preserves you not in stone, but in pixels.
I was also incredibly sad to hear that Indira's friend and fellow victim of the crash, Lizzie Pincock, had only just left Taunton School. Practically my entire childhood, from the age of two til 17, was spent at that place, and I know it's a friendly, close-knit community. My thoughts are with her family and everybody there.
I purchased some Lysterine (mouthwash) at the weekend. It's purple in colour - chosen principally because 1. aesthetically I favour purple over the alternative colours of aquamarine and green; and 2. it was on special offer / promotion. It tastes of mint. Naturally, all toothpaste / mouthwash / flossing products seem to taste of mint, albeit they may be spearmint, peppermint, or the likes of "ice-cool" mint.
Now, this seems wrong. It's purple. It should therefore taste fruity, full bodied and warm. It shouldn't taste of mint, be sharp and fresh. It simply doesn't feel right to be tasting something which is purple in colour, and yet that tastes of mint. It's rather like those lollies which are blue, and yet flavoured raspberry. They should be red or pink if they're going to taste of raspberry. Having said that if purple mouthwash did taste fruity, full bodied and warm, it would probably make your breath smell of read wine and that really would go against the logic of mouthwash in the first place. On that basis, perhaps minty fresh breath is best afterall, even if disguised in purple clothing. It still seems strange, though.
A friend and I had a pleasant wander around the Tate Modern today. I'm not sure why, but of late I've taken to buying fridge magnets. I suppose they remind me of people, places, good times. See below for the one purchased in the Tate Modern:
...
And now look at the reverse:
Since when did a fridge magnet become £3.00?!
In other news: (1) my new laptop runs on Windows Vista. It's deeply confusing; and (2) the weather in London has been particularly weird today. April showers, bright sun and rainbows.
As if there weren't enough foodstuffs out there to ruin my hips... red wine, cheese, chocolate, puddings etc., I've now discovered another. Krispy Kreme doughnuts. I know they're almost iconic, but until today (in fact, still have 1/3rd left on a plate besides me) I'd always passed up on an offer. They get placed in our pantry at work all the time, but I'd never got round to eating one before. Today however, was an exception. I thought they'd taste manufactured, stale and sickly. But... they're actually lovely. Impossible to eat more than one at once (I can actually feel my blood sugar rising, my arteries crying and a ring-shape appearing on my thighs) but delicious. I stand corrected - they're a far cry from the American trash I thought they would be.
According to an article here a village in Merseyside is, for obvious reasons, being forced to consider changing its name from Lunt to Launt. It appears that vandals have taken to crossing out the "L" and replacing it with a "C".
This strikes me as awful. Naturally, the community is divided between i) those who want to change the name in order to decrease levels of vandalism; and ii) those for whom to
