Stormy Monday

The storm...

...came and went. The lights flickered a bit, and there were a couple of short power cuts during the night, but then we have overhead power lines, which means that if a sheep farts in the wrong direction we're getting out the candles and torches, and dusting off the board games and packs of cards.

I was in “where's the charger for that gone” panic for a while on Sunday. Everything seems to want to be plugged in for a few hours to be at its best, and everything seems to have a different charger adaptor. Even when things have the same adaptor at the end, the gadgets are fussy about the quality or quantity of power they're getting. I was baffled when I stuck the right end of an in-car Blackberry charger in the fag lighter outlet, and the other end up the Blackberry's bottom, only to find it still nagging about the battery being too low for use as a phone (what else am I going to use it for?) after a two hour drive. Google had the answer, apparently not all chargers are equal, and having the right ends plugged into the right outlet and socket isn't enough. Only certain chargers will do.

There was an advanced driving spokesman on the radio. He said “use your fog lights if there's enough spray to reduce visibility to under fifty metres” and he said “only drive if you absolutely have to” (did you get that, tractor-man?) and he said “don't do anything really, truly, absolutely stupid like driving down to the sea to watch the big waves crashing in”. Whoops. I need to withdraw my 'good ideas for windy days' suggestion number one. But then I thought the advanced driving bloke may have been a little unfair. Watching huge waves pounding the shore is fantastic and invigorating and brain-cobweb removing, and spectacular, and it isn't as if everyone who had the idea was suggesting getting as close as possible to the point of no return and not taking a backward step until you make the acquaintance of Davy Jones or the local coastguard. Just popping down to the coast for a safe look. Maybe he's from that health and safety brigade that deny the existence of anything between cotton wool wrapped security and certain death.

I was also quite looking forward to a long night reading my book, unable to sleep with the windows and doors ratting in their frames and farm animals flying past at first floor level. Disappointingly I slept through the whole affair and made little progress with 'The Kills'.

Even D the Dog, not known for his undisturbed nights (lately there's been regular small hours barking as the foxes turn on the security light and have a romp in what D the Dog considers to be his garden), wasn't too disturbed.

The O2 advert...

...with the dog, with a song in his heart. That's great.

“Music, sport, gaming...all the things that make your heart sing”.

Good on you O2.

Media, take note. All the stuff on the back pages. That's what makes hearts sing. Not politics, not economics, not none of that dead boring stuff that dominates Radio 4 in the early morning hours.

Art, music, film, food, literature, football, rugby, cricket. The rest makes hearts sink, not sing.