The Loudest Sound...

and nothing...

Perils of the gym

Gyms are really little more than 21st-century torture chambers. The weights machines are ominously reminiscent of medieval racks. People run nowhere on treadmills lining the room - that's right folks, there's no way off once you're on. (Although a man trying to escape did fall off the one behind me the other day, before standing up and trying to look nonchalant. Ha!) The world's most irritating music blots out your hearing, while the mirror opposite reflects back bright red, sweaty versions of all the people around you. Torture is the only word. But all of these trials pale into significance in comparison with, wait for it... the changing room. More particularly with the TV innocently nestled in the corner between wood-clad lockers. Now if, like me, you're in the gym before work, and you start work at 9.30am, take a deep breath. Until about 9.25am, breakfast TV bubbles along without too much bother - a weather forecast here, a fashion report there. Even the 33-stone woman who appeared on screen did little more than send a ripple of renewed motivation round the room. But at 9.25am people stop changing to try to cover their ears. Onto the TV flickers the Jeremy Kyle show. Described by ITV's website as one of Britain's 'most-loved' shows, this is a truly tortuous parody of a talk show. Somehow I've managed to insulate myself from it ever since it started three years ago; perhaps you haven't been so lucky. I dread to think what confrontational diatribe from Jeremy Kyle, what angry, broken people, and what twisted stories I've missed. Even catching five minutes of it while I blow dry my hair is torture. Please, please. No more!

Maestra

Interesting. BBC Two's Maestro features one male and two female conductors. Interesting because the proportion is almost certainly the reverse in the real world.

To blog or to clog?

This blog breaks one of the main rules of blogging: it has no theme. Well no discernible theme. In a rather solipsistic manner my blog flits from observations of the everyday to news items that have caught my attention, from pictures to poems, all the while padded out with bubble-wrap writing, which would quickly disappear into nothingness with a satisfying pop if you prodded it too much. Ah well, apologies to all. Maybe one day I'll stick to one topic and be a proper blogger, but for now I'm quite happy to be a clogger and add my tuppence worth to the ever increasing number of words on the internet.

Big Bang Day

Tomorrow is, drum roll please, 'Big Bang Day'. Under the ground in Geneva rumbles the Large Hadron Collider, which will send proton streams whizzing around a 27km race-track, blasting them together in four different locations around the ring. Here, scientists hope, the conditions just after the Big Bang will be recreated, allowing questions about the start and composition of the universe to be answered. (And it's unlikely they'll come up with the number 42. Sorry Douglas Adams.) For those who aren't so into physics, perhaps the strange beauty of the technical language involved could be of interest. Who could fail to love words and phrases such as muons, solenoid magnets,the Higgs boson,quark-gluon plasma,or the beauty quark?

South-west connections

Bristol has suddenly become a very topical place. It's twinned with Tbilisi in Georgia, in fact it's the 20th anniversary of that alliance this year. Turns out too that Bristol has the dubious distinction of being the first name of Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter. Maybe a British politician should consider bestowing an Alaskan place name on one of their children to return the favour. There are plenty of choice names to choose from: Juneau, Ketchikan, Wasilla, Bethel, Dillingham, or my personal favourite - Barrow.

Dust Motes Dancing in the Sunlight