Ups and downs 2

Spent the day at Edgbaston today watching the Second Test, courtesey of Beloved's boss. Beautiful weather and the cricket, in which I usually have little to no interest, was oddly compelling. It helped that we saw 13 wickets fall in 6 hours, 10 of which weren't English ones.

Day off packing tomorrow, then off to the Scillies. Looks like the weather should be reasonable :-)

Party invites out. If you don't have one, it's probably because your email address has changed. Either that or you are a complete stranger.

Odd week this one. Beer n Pretzels last weekend was as usual fun, if slightly lacking in "must have that" games. I must be getting old- too many of them look like their predecessors. Thurn und Taxis was fun though, so I'll be looking out for a copy. And now I know all about the rather bizarre Thurn und Taxis family.

Tues didn't go to work, because world was very odd. Went for long walk around Solihull's rather surprising nature reserve instead and pestered an elderly couple in the tea shop. Wed I slept most of the day, which seemed to right the worst of it. Now slightly oddly cheerful but otherwise fine. Wish I could keep this state, I rather like it and it is actually productive at work (when I'm not updating blog entries).

Son is inconsolable about the fact that Cities has fallen over, which, added to the continuing saga of his broken computer (now returned to Mesh- glad we paid extra for onsite service) has plunged him into gloom. But I made him watch the Eurovision Song Contest semi finals (half of them- other half was House) last night while playing Clans so I'm sure that did him good.

Trying to catch up on maths before we go camping end of next week- next essay due three days after we get back and I haven't finished the basic reading yet. Tutorial tomorrow morning in Birmingham. I have done one of the two essays required- on Proposition 9 of Billingsleys English translation of Euclid's Elements, if any one is interested.

Tomorrow afternoon I shall go canoeing again if I get back in time; getting quite hooked despite the cold and wet aspects.

Thanks to the BBC's inability to make their programmes run on time I have seen the first 35 minutes of last week's Dr Who. Hopefully I'll get it off BBC3 tonight, although as we are off to a meal to mark one of Paul's colleague's leaving it will only happen if I remember to set up everything before I go.

No more news. Just over a week until we are happily ensconced in a tent in the middle of the wind and rain. Hopefully there will be puffins, which will make everything worth while.

Apparently here in Solihull we now have a BNP councillor. Which rather confirms my opinion of Solihull. Admittedly it is in north Solihull, an area more akin to the more deprived areas of Birmingham than the leafy suburb bits of Solihull, but even so.

I've just spent a couple of days hanging around the House of Commons, and more particularly the entrance to the Chamber, so I have been in close proximity to virtually every MP I'm likely to recognise (except Mr Blair of course, who avoids the place like the plague.) Fun, if somewhat stressful- played a rather more active part in our democratic process than I had anticipated. Still reckon being an MP would be a rather nice job- being a Minister considerably less so.

As a contrast I spent yesterday invigilating SATs exams at Son's school. I don't really approve of SATs but I don't do anything much for the school and I had the day free. Another lot next Wed- modern foreign language orals that time. The advantage to not being a teacher is that you can sidestep the rules- I had a classroom full of special needs 14 year olds doing a paper on Shakespeare (they weren't impressed with this concept and I have to admit that I wasn't either) and half were due to finish some time before the rest. The approved behaviour is to sit facing the front with arms folded for however long the exam is meant to last. I ended up suggesting to one pupil that he might like a piece of paper to write on (he was trying to write on his stomach at the time) and ended up handing out paper galore. For easily distractable teens they were all quite happy with their piece of paper for the rest of the exam time- who needs technology?

Got today off too, although Son may be back after his last exam- he's not too well.

Why was Keith Richards in a palm tree? Still not got to the bottom of this one.

Doctor Who- Russell blows the mind again. I wonder whether the BBC had any idea what he would do with it when they entrusted the poor Doctor to his care? Still trying to decide whether it's one huge retcon or not, and if so whether it matters. The Doctor- Love Rat is a great idea.

It was pretty clear from about halfway through the first series that the problem was going to be with keeping the two leads apart. The conventional method in these situations is to have a confrontational relationship with the sexual tension underneath allowed out occasionally. The hints of that at the beginning moved on to something else, which was welcome- the last thing we needed was another Mulder and Scully. But if you allow your characters to get close and you want to keep a dynamic relationship you either have to get rid of one of them, bring someone else in, or otherwise create problems between them (pick any example you like from Joss). It clearly wasn't going to be enough to bring Mickey on board while the other two were so enamoured, but give Rose a valid reason to doubt the entire basis of the relationship and we're up and running again. I like the idea that the Doctor hasn't changed- just our view of him. Rose really is just another assistant- all the other assistants (or some of them at least) were in the same situation.

Was anyone else struck with the Highlander contrast?

Stephen Moffat (writer) in next week's Radio Times; "I think that his asexual nature was perhaps read into the series by its more asexual fans,"

Ouch.



My birthday in 3 days. I shall be older.