Mid-term report

So we find ourselves at New Year's Eve, and I do wonder where the time went.  But then I remember that we had the outlaws over for Christmas, illness in the ranks, a visit to the theatre to see a pantomine (Aladdin, more of a song-and-dance show than an oh-no-you-didn't, with Lilly Savage, who held the show together), and to the cinema to see a film (latest Narnia pic, in 3D, and it was least good of the three, and I am starting to see Mark Kermode's point on 3D, coz it was just a film where now and then the 3D sort of looked good, but the price to pay was at other times it looked a bit odd.  And don't get me started on the Michael Cain glasses).  We also fitted in a visit up North to see Brad and Angelina, along with our other friends whose pseudonym I always forget, so let's call them David and Samantha.  Lovely evening, and I even stayed awake until nearly midnight.

New Year I have just been told that we are in fact going out tonight after all, to David and Samantha's, which is nice.  To be honest, this period is for me a couple of set pieces that do not quite live up to expectations, with a lot of lovely relaxed time in between, so I am setting my sights low, not because of any expectations of inadequacy, but more so that it is better than I expected, which is always the best way to be.

We are very much looking forward to 2011, which already has some good things to which we can look forward.  By Easter we should have our extension completed, for which we can barely wait.  We are visiting Taff and being visited by Bass-boy and Teacher, and after Easter we are off to Center Parcs with Brad and Angelina, where me and Maggot 1 hope to try out our little fishing kits, Christmas presents from GG.  We are also going to Glastonbury with Brad and Angelina in June.  Much discussion about what we are wearing, and how we will cope with what will be, frankly, hardships around basic living to which we don't generally expose ourselves.  I am very much looking forward to it, and can only hope that the weather does us a favour, and it only rains up North somewhere (I hear Manchester likes a lot of rain).

As for New Year's Resolutions, this year I have vowed not to have any, but rather remind myself of the Big Rules of Life, one's which I should live at any time of the year.  More on these another time.

Have a good New Year's Eve, and see you next year.

Charity begins with giving

Seeing the recent comment from Gorse Fox regarding charitable giving, I felt compelled to write a blog on the subject, because I think he makes a good point.

It is interesting how the US and UK differ in their approach to charity.  I know there are UK folks who do a lot and/or give a lot*, but the US really do seem to have a consistent approach to the "attitude of gratitude" whereby they make their money, then they structure their charitable giving accordingly.  There are the headline givers like Gates and those he has inspired, but it does seem that the famous and wealthy, or just the wealthy, do have a healthy sense of charity.  

Talking of Gates, I remember seeing an interesting documentary on Mr and Mrs Gates, and they talked about their charitable foundation, and that they planned to fund it with an initial thirty five billion dollars.  Now that is a bit more than a pocket full of loose change.

I had reason to ponder charity and the sacrifices some people people make to help others recently when I had a Friends Reunited note from a guy I used to go to school with in the eighties.  Let's call him Stan.  The main thing I remember about Stan is that he once did two thousand sit ups for a sponsored event.  Needless to say he was fit and strong, but that didn't stop him walking round bent double for half a week afterwards.  Anyway, I got a little note from Stan to say that he is now a Catholic priest working with the poor in the Philippines.  Yikes.  That reminds me of one of my favourite slights that Fraser used.  "In a University in Switzerland, there is a microscope so powerful that it can see the gap between two molecules, yet even that is not strong enough to see the interest I have in your story."  I imagine this would also not be enough to see my charitable work when compared against Stan's. 

So this got me to thinking about charity, and what I do and don't do, and the answer is not much.  I used to have a monthly direct debit for a charity, but I cancelled that during the "hard times", and I have to say that I was never entirely sure that that really hit the mark in terms of charitable giving.  I know it does give the money to the charity of my choice, but it is very sterile and it does feel a bit like "I gave £20 to Live Aid so I have done my bit for world hunger" or some such thing.

So then I got to thinking about selfishness, and concluded I was at least partly selfish.  It is so easy to get wrapped up in our own lives, especially when it is so busy we don't know whether we are coming or going, and you dig your little trench so fervently that you cannot see over the top to get a sense of the world around you.  Would I be prepared to give up a lot of what I have, and go and work with the poor in the Philippines?  Unfortunately the answer is "no".

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* I did read an article leading up th Christmas about some UK folks who were giving up to 30% of their salaries, which again is a very fine thing to do and I admire their dedication to doing what they see as the right thing.

Two more sleeps

This is the counting system of choice in the Scobi household.  It works well for most people under the age of ten, or over thirty five, but not for those who enjoy an afternoon nap, for whom the counting system seems to double the speed of time passing, a bit like dog years*. 

Another counting system of which I have become recently aware of is the PM.  This is the counting system used by City Bankers (sorry for the obscenity Mrs Trellis) to size their bonus.  The unit is the annual salary of the PM, around £150k, so a bonus of 5 PMs would equate to seven hundred and fifty thousand of our finest, tax-payer pound notes.  

This was learnt during an episode** of Panarama, which looked at City bonuses, whether banks had learnt anything from the crash and whether the regulations the present and previous governments have attempted to put in place to teach them a lesson, or rein them in, or something like that, actually made any difference.  The conclusion of the show** was that pretty much nothing had changed.  Some of the more sensitive souls didn't actually slap the reporter about the chops with a bundle of Ayrton Sennas***, but mostly the talk was of the taxes they pay, the money they make for the country and the great rate of return for the tax billions invested in their businesses.  With such selfless souls running our banking system we should all feel a little more comfortable in our beds tonight.  To be honest, the worst aspect of this was the acceptance that all things are cyclical, including stupidity and greed.  This recession is so deep that it will take a generation to get out of it, and those in the know know that the unit of recessionary cycle is the generation, in that it takes the next generation of chinless wonders to reach the upper echelons before we can be guaranteed that the same mistakes are made again.

Sorry for pinning my colours so firmly to the mast.  It could put a chap off his sherry.  Normal service will resume tomorrow****.

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* Before Mrs Trellis writes in again, I do realise that dog years are seven times human years, not double, so in fact sleeps are nothing like dog years.
** Is that the right term?

*** tenners, as if you didn't know you closet cockney

**** i.e. vacuous, empty, void-ridden vacuums with not a trace of any interest or content. 

Three more days to go

We find ourselves arriving at Wednesday, which gives me three more working days before breaking for Christmas.  The rest of the family are spending their days doing nothing, due to a combination of illness, bad weather and UTTER BONE IDLENESS.  I on the other had am slavishly applying myself to work matters to enable me to provide for myself, my family and my new shed.  To say that I would rather be doing most anything else is to inquire as to the ablution habits of bears etc etc but needs must, and maybe there is no point running up the rhododendron tree until the rats have fled, so onwards I march.

What I am trying to do, in case you were not sure, is to use up my 750 words and yet say absolutely nothing.  My mailbag is testament to that.  As Mrs Trellis of North Wales said just last week:

Dear Mr Humphries,

I was appalled on tuning in this morning to hear a torrent of blatant filth, with terms such as 'Big Bang', 'Large Firm Success', 'Satisfying Performance', and worst of all, 'Job Blows'. It was the most disgusting edition of the Today Programme's Business Report ever!

Yours faithfully,

Mrs. Trellis
Maybe if we both just agree it was about 750 words, we can call it quits now and get on with something more interesting

Back to basics

Had I given it just a shred more thought, I could have come up with a better title, but hey ho, it does set the scene I guess.

I am off to the Chiropractor today, for my first back session through Starfleet's medical insurance cover to get some bones cracking in my back and neck.  I have friends who work in the NHS, with pride, so I tend to mention that in very hushed tones.  Me, I guess the softening of older years has moved me a bit to the right on the political spectrum, not in all things, but for the idea that being detached from the government is a good thing.  I like the idea that I depend on the government for very little these days.  Or course I need the NHS infrastructure, however I can declare a modicum of independence from that, and child benefit will soon be gone and I expect nothing on the pension front from the big team.  This I find I like.  Government is very fickle, and the idea that our contact points are few is to my liking.  Of course they have to deal with the little big stuff - they empty my bins, and they also sweep the streets and all that stuff.  The also deal with the big big stuff, such as banking, world peace and financial prudence and all that other stuff, although to be honest a chap would be forgiven for starting to lose a bit of faith in their abilities on that front.  Will the bluey-yellow team do better than the red team?  Only time will tell.  I do get the distinct impression that some of the red legacy is not to my liking.  There.  I nearly expressed a political opinion.  Enough before I go all gooey and say I love you or something.

On other fronts, the shed continues to dominate the garden.  It is a truly magnificent structure, and merely saying that out loud says a lot about me, and not so much about the shed.  Nuff said.

I am also looking to present a clean work-stack to the Christmas season, although a number of leader activities have taken me away from my day job, and that means there are a number of loose threads on which I really need to concentrate lest they get away from me.  Hopefully, like Bad Man, I will get a chance to wind down just a bit leading up to Friday.  I have to say this working up to the end of Christmas Eve is definitely not to my liking, and it does mean that Christmas Day is on top of me before I know it, but again, hey ho, that is life, I will just have to go double rations on the mince pies to get me in the mood.

I do have a chance to get into a bit of the spirit of things on Thursday evening as we have been invited to the yearly drinks evening at friends.  These friends have just had an extension completed so I am excited to see the work, and to discuss the finer details of three months of dust.  We will also get to meet a bunch of our other extended friend network over a few drinks, nibbles and chat.  That should start me off nicely.

Until we speak again.

What a wopper!

The shed has arrived, and it is quite big.

The home stretch

Ever since my days working at a construction company, which closed for two weeks of Christmas, the thought of working between Christmas and New Year has been an anathema for me, so I find myself in the final week before some well-deserved time off. 

To be honest, the construction company spoilt me, as the truth is that my three to four days of holiday usually get me much less than two weeks.  This year I get nine days off, which is really just a week off with a weekend each end, but let's not split the cracker before the turkey is basted.

This final week will be pretty busy, since it makes sense for everyone if I can close down as many actions as possible before the break, since a week off and as many mince pies as I can eat will rot even the most sturdy of brains down to something resembling mince pie filling.  The trick is of course to write down last thing Friday everything I will need to do for the first couple of days back at work.  If only I didn't also lose the power to read, they would come in very useful.

Other news in the Scobi household is that the weather is getting right on my wotsits.  I am meant to be having a new shed erected Tuesday, something I will chase today to see the likelihood of it actually happening.  I would also desperately like to be giving my new door frame an undercoat, and making good the render on the outside, but both activities really need to be done in temperatures ten degrees centigrade or higher, and the prospect of the thermometer reaching that heady number are about as likely as the trains running on time.

Finally, spare a thought for my relics.  They flew from Spain (twenty degrees, rained twice last month) to the UK (minus wotever, snowing constantly) last Tuesday, having had to re-arrange their flight from two weeks earlier, which was cancelled due to snow.  They were due to return on Saturday, so on Friday night they stayed at a Gatwick hotel ready for their 0620 flight Saturday morning.  They were on the Easyjet plane, but due to the cold, the rear doors could not be fully closed, and by the time the engineers had finished their full English and attended to said door, the snow was thickly falling and they were returned to the terminal.  They bought a flight from Monarch, and got to 1800 hours before being told the flight was going nowhere, to arrive back home at 2330 hours.  The next Easyjet flight is not until Christmas Eve, so they have gone Monarch whose prices have mysteriously doubled in the intervening day, for this coming Tuesday.  Let's hope the snow stays away and the airport schedule returns to something like normal so their low-priority flight can get off the ground.  Needless to say they may well not come back to the UK half way through their six months next year.

It's snowing

As I sit here, with both maggots ill since the previous day, and the prospect of a very long day, I stare out on to a very white vista.  The snow is about 3 inches thick and falling fast, so I think we can expect to be stuck in all day.  I fear a severe bout of cabin fever.  We are invited to a party tonight, and the maggots were meant to be having a sleep-over at the outlaws, but with illness and snow thwarting our plans, the cabin fever may well extend long in to the evening.

And now, the time is near...

It is Friday afternoon, and I am "attending" a weekly review call that requires about 15% attention, thus leaving me with 85% to put to blog writing. 

My business life is full of TLAs (three letter abbreviations), and just a random selection from my current call:

• SLA
• GDF
• MTD
• RAG

There were others but, to be honest, I dozed off, so the only SLAs were ZZZ. 

Did you hear the one about....?

Gnome: Doctor, Doctor! I keep seeing pink and green spots in front of my eyes!
Doctor: Good gracious! Have you seen an optician?
Gnome: No... just pink and green spots!
Doctor: I mean, have you ever had your eyes checked?
Gnome: No. They've always been blue!

To be honest, it could have been worse.  Google returned 24.8 million hits for "Christmas Jokes" and, as a social experiment, I decided to go to the last page, and find the last joke on that page.  And here it is.

Not long ago and far away, Santa was getting ready for his annual trip...but there were problems everywhere.
Four of his elves were sick, and the trainee elves did not produce the toys as fast as the regular ones so Santa was beginning to feel the pressure of being behind schedule.

Then Mrs. Claus told Santa that her mom was coming to visit. This stressed Santa even more. When he went to harness the reindeer, he found that three of them were about to give birth and two had jumped the fence and were out, heaven knows where. More Stress. Then when he began to load the sleigh, one of the boards cracked and the toy bag fell to the ground and scattered the toys. So, frustrated, Santa went into the house for a cup of coffee and a shot of whiskey. When he went to the cupboard, he found the elves had hidden the liquor and there was nothing to drink. In his frustration, he dropped the coffee pot and it broke into hundreds of little pieces all over the he kitchen floor.

He went to get the broom and found that mice had eaten the straw it was made from.

Just then the doorbell rang and Santa cussed on his way to the door. He opened the door and there was a little angel with a great big Christmas tree. The angel said: "Where would you like to put this tree Santa?"

And that my friends, is how the little angel came to be on top of the Christmas tree.

What do you think?  Is that 24.8 million times worse than the first?  Answers via the comments, usual rules apply.   

It's all downhill from here

Since we are entering the season of televisual repeats, I fet it appropriate and easier to reuse a previous title for this blog.  But it does perfectly describe how Wednesday fits in to the working week; either the peak or the trough, depending on whether your glass is half full, half empty or you ordered it with a burger.  This does of course assume you are a five-day-a-week kind of chap (or chapess).  You may of course be a shift-worker, run a different on/off work routine (you know, the seven days on, three days off type of thing), or simply enjoy working at the weekends.  If you are any of these types of chaps (or chapesses), then please invent your own analogy for what Wednesday is in your routine.  Maybe send me a comment via the blog with your ideas.  Usual rules apply*.

Anyway, I am in the office four days this week, which means near enough four hour return trip, what with the weather and the traffic and all that.  This does wear me out slowly, but I do help make the journeys less boring with some interesting audio company.  Last week I was kept company by a number of podcasts on the old iWotsit, which included the Friday Night Comedy (Radio 4 I'm afraid), Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's film review (five stars) and also, as a one off (or five off to be precise) the short-listed stories in the BBC National Short Story Award.  I have to say I enjoyed two of them greatly.  The art is in the fact that you need to have characterisation and story in a very short format, and that does tend to separate the men from the boys (or the women from the girls).  My two favourites were:

• My Daughter the Racist by Helen Oyeyemi
• Butcher's Perfume by Sarah Hall

I urge you to download all and make your own decisions.  Needless to say that the first and second prize went to two of the others, and on reflection, I quite liked both of those as well, but would have placed them below both of the above.

That's the problem with me and my book taste.  I like what I like and it tends to be a little bit lower brow than the stuff that really gets acclaim.  My sister is a librarian and an avid reader, and she often recommends books to me and, sadly, I rarely enjoy them as much as my own books.  And I know that on any absolute level (if such a thing exists), the books my sister recommends are "better" than those I enjoy, but then books are art, and art is subjective, so hey ho it's off to work we go.  At least that's what it says in the book I am reading right now**.

Also need to say thank you to Brad and Angelina.  We visited them at the weekend and had a lovely time.  It had meant to be a meet up with other friends also, whose aliases I have sadly forgotten, so let's call them Charles and Nigella, but C&N were both very ill, so it ended up being just the four of us, plus two maggots each.  The maggots disappeared upstairs, only to reappear for food, and to do their latest show, which, thanks to a CBBC show, was a magic show this time round.  The show followed the usual routine, with Brad and Angelina's maggot 1 compering the show, and generally acting as the glue to hold it all together, with various sets done by each of the children, except for the two youngest who, at the last minute, decide they don't want to do their slot after all.  I have to say, I really have no idea how they did it. 

I hope your week is going well.  Let's catch up before the weekend.

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* No swearing, don't let the truth stand in the way of a good story, just because you can doesn't mean you should (I am talking to the Labrador in the pub on Sunday when I say this), and there are two S's in to$$er.

** Actually, I am reading a thriller right now, but, as we often say, never let the truth stand in the way of a good story.  Have I said that already?

Pot holing

I do do some silly things.  For some things that end up being silly, the thinking on it started nano seconds before, and some have had hours of thinking time and months of planning, but still end up silly.

My pot-holing experience is definitely in the latter category.  Much research was done, interstitial moisture control, permeable membranes, thermal coefficients and getting my head round the building principles at the turn of the century have all had to be mastered in pursuit of my dream.  This dream involves insulating my downstairs floor.  It is stripped floor boards and, in my opinion, absolutely beautiful, however it does have one flaw.  The suspended floor includes air flow from the air bricks spaced around the building just above ground level, the purpose of which is, for those yet to Google such subjects, to ensure an airflow in the space below, which ensures that moisture does not linger on any of the wooden surfaces.  Further, the end of the beams rest on a small wall a few inches from the outside wall, and their ends also stop a few inches from the outside wall, just to ensure that it is not in contact with said wall, which may, especially in a solid wall building, present a certain level of moisture to the inside surface.  Ditto for the beam that runs parallel to the outside wall, it too is a few inches from the wall.

So, this is a well designed and simple system for maintaining structural integrity in the under floor space.  It also presents a cold draft to any crack or gap in the floor.

Any attempt to insulate must observe the basic laws on which the building was made, and this has meant some pretty specific design.  I have used lambswool insulation, which is all very eco, albeit that some people suggest that the existence of sheep is carbon negative, but I didn't go there.  The main characteristic of lambs wool is that it can absorb water and let water disperse without affecting its thermal efficiency.  Combine this with a permeable membrane and you have something that insulates and stops the drafts, but also allows moisture to move.  i.e. it won't act like a plastic bag and trap moisture, which is the devil for the wooden suspended floor.

I also need to ensure that the insulation does not bridge the gap between the outer wall and the beams.

So, that is the science.  The method of installation is where the blog title comes in.  There are a couple of ways of retro-fitting this stuff, either to lift all the boards and do it from above, or lift a couple, crawl down in to the space and do it from below.  I picked the latter option.  This meant crawling down under the floor in a space the height of the bottom of my kneecap, lying on my back to lift in insulation, then fix it in place with a sheet of permeable membrane.  Dust?  Never seen anything like it, and the whole downstairs was covered in a thin layer.

The space is basically split in to four quadrants.  There is a wall which would have supported the wall between the two rooms (long since knocked in to one), and there is also a wall that runs front to back that supports the beams half way across.  This is half way across the whole space, which includes the hallway, so appears to be off-centre for the room itself.  I did quadrant one on Friday night.  I started on quadrant two Saturday morning, but as I exposed and inspected the space, I noticed that the wall between the rooms stops at the doorway, which means that there is a hall-width space in the wall which enables me to get to quadrant three also.  This makes me happy and sad.  Happy because I can do two quadrants with one lift of boards, but sad because it really is a long way to crawl, probably five metres or so, and for a man who is very slightly claustrophobic, a bit daunting.  Nevertheless, I have finished quadrant two and three, and just need to do quadrant four, probably Friday evening.
I also need to revisit the other quadrants because I have made one mistake in my planning.  At the ends of the beam runs, I had imagined the insulation would have blocked the draft, but in fact it is still getting through, which means that the thermal efficiency is being severely impacted - moving air is not good for insulation.  So I am intending to experiment with a small square put on the end of each run, to effectively make the insulation and membrane installation an air-tight lump on the underside of the boards, but not touching the outside wall in any way.  Don't get me wrong, the room is much warming as a result of what I have done, but unfortunately the fact there is air movement will bug me for ever more, so assuming my plan works, I will need to retrofit it to the quadrants already done, since a couple of hours doing that saves years of "what if" nagging thoughts.

Other than that, I am off to the back man today, my first visit, to see if he can do anything about my various back issues.  He comes highly recommended by a friend who works at the hospital, and lots from the hospital use him, so that sounds like an endorsement to me.

Have a good weekend, and I promise not to mention insulation again.  Probably.

Resting my aching bones

I have a day off today.  I have spent the weekend "pot holing" under the floor boards of my house.  Really.  A story for another day.  Anyhow I am totally exhausted, and also suffering from a bit of a bad back as well, so all in all, a day off doing nothing but fun is exactly what the doctor ordered.

Today, I will get my haircut (rearranged from a previous Friday evening when we off 'vannin'), then lunch out with LO, and finally to watch the recording of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.  It is a subject of much debate as to how it fares now that the mighty Humphrey Lyttelton is making jazz in the sky, however I think that while he was irreplaceable, the show itself is bigger than any individual.  And that, my friends, is an oxymoron.  Just like the show.

In memory of the great Humph, here are a randomly selected bunch of quotes from the man:

• Incidentally, you may be interested to know that Colin's musical influences are, in fact, Middle Eastern in origin. Yes, mainly Shiite. 
• The pioneering feminist, Emmeline Pankhurst, was born in Manchester. Starting in 1910, Pankhurst campaigned noisily for women's rights outside Parliament every day from 4 o'clock in the afternoon. She would have got there earlier but she always had a stack of ironing to get through first.  
• On with the show, and our teams tonight are undoubtedly the foremost available comedy talents in the country. [scoffs].  Something wrong there. Sorry, that should read, "The four most available comedy talents in the country". 
• Incidentally, Colin's piano playing is widely believed by faith healers to hold miraculous powers. It once made a blind man deaf.  
• Samantha nearly made it. She's been detained at the last minute in the city's Latin Quarter. An Italian gentleman friend has promised to take her out for an ice cream, and she likes nothing better than to spend the evening licking the nuts off a large Neapolitan. 
• "Nietzsche said that life was a choice between suffering and boredom. He never said anything about having to put up with both at the same time."

Not bad for a trumpet player.  Gone but not totally forgotten.

There's snow business...

If you could have seen some of the puns I rejected, you would have been a lot kinder to that title.

Anyhow, today's subject is snow.  It is occupying an awful lot of airtime and ground time, and certainly in my bit of the world, the sunny South, it is currently laying at least fifteen centimetres deep, which is six inches in old money.  The whole landscape has been bathed in a very thick duvet of snow, and it produces both a visual spectacle and an audio deadening, which makes it feel a very serene and peaceful environment.  From the warmth of my kitchen window.

As maggot 2 found out after only ten minutes of play before school, it is really very wet and very cold and not so nice when it gets down inside your wellies.  Some lessons need to be learnt the hard way, and we were half way to school before his gloves were, once again, caked in an inch of icy compacted snow.  Oh well, at least the school was warm, and open.

Talking of schools being opened, we had a bit of a thing during last year's snow.  Our school closed, along with all the other local schools, on day two or three of the snow.  One of our friends happens to work at the hospital, and happens to work with the wife of the Chief Exec of the council, and happened to mention the issue of school's closing. i.e. that that Health and Safety fears tend to panic schools in to closing, meanwhile all the working parents continue to get to their work, and therefore are suddenly presented with a childcare issue.  This was relayed back to the Chief Exec and it triggered a temporary change of policy, followed by discussions on the strategic approach.  No idea how far it went, but our school is open, so far.

So I find myself working at home unplanned for a second day.  I have to say it improves the commute, but it does rather cut one off from ones colleagues.  Sure we have all the tools to remain connected, but it is not the same as being in the same building as the team.  It is probably one of the few downsides of mobile working; while the rest of the country gives up trying to get to work, and stays at home watching Jeremy Kyle, us mobile workers are sitting at our laptops doing a day's work on the end of a wire as if nothing had happened.

I hope your day goes well, and you stay at home rather than attempting to get anywhere other than the kettle for another cup of tea.  I know how you like your tea.

Now I really think this may be the last word on sheds

At home today, snowed in and rather glad to be so.

I had to read my blog just to check that I have not already told you this.  To my surprise, I had not.  What was I thinking?

Just wanted to give you a quick update on the shed, coz I was very happy with the outcome.  £217 was the final price, bought by someone from a few miles away, and who was v. keen to come and get it on Tuesday, except I was working away on that day so had to put him off until Friday.  And then it snowed.

Hopefully it will clear by Friday, we will have a checkpoint Thursday evening, and if so, he and a friend will arrive to dismantle and take away a very good shed, and I will have some notes to go towards the base.

Result.

Only other quick mention is for I'm a Celebrity, Get me Out of Here, which myself and LO are rather addicted to.  Sure it is full of calories and has no goodness, but hey, sometimes you have just gotta feed that addiction.  So Gillian has finally left to have a colon cleanse and a chat with her agent to see what Panto's are available, and some of the true colours of the inmates are now coming through.  There is the "funny guy who is a bit arrogant really" one, and the "butter wouldn't melt toppless totty who may have a bite after all" one, and the "big man who is a bit of a wus really" one, not forgetting the "seemed really stupid but is actually quite clever and is coming across better and better" one.  All I can say is, keep it coming.  It is TV that you can watch and read a magazine at the same time, so it is definitely not time wasted.