Hard news

It's not a good time if, like me, you're bored with news stories about the snow (yes, we all know its record breaking weather, pipes are freezing, blah, blah blah) and stupid comments peeps at the US State Department have managed to amass. Where have all the cutsie stories about animals being rescued from burning buildings and donkeys raising pigs gone?

Had to be happy with this fluff instead today:

Japanese use Mozart to ripen bananas

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/848555-fruit-company-plays-mozart-to-bananas

Blindingly good sex can literally happen

http://bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/11/30/5553391-blindingly-good-sex-it-literally-can-happen

60 day Spud-a-thon draws to an end

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/40424707/ns/today-today_health/

Roll on silly season stories...

PS sorry but link connection thingy is broken so unable to do a direct link to the above news feeds. I hate Macs

How to win a GrandSlam

As a journalist, I've written about everything from politics and financial markets to interiors, fashion and travel. But only once have I strayed into rugby writing territory, and that was when I was a baby scribe on a provincial paper and the regular writer was too hung-over to get out of bed. As the office junior, I drew the short straw. Let's just say I ended up getting the photographer to re-write most of my crappy scrawl, and draw a veil over the whole sorry experience.

No surprise then that I'm not going to offer a searing dissection of the All Black's brilliant win against Wales, of Hosea Gear's two tries, Daniel Braid's red card or of my homie, Nonu, taking to the paddock at the rump end of the second half.

It's enough to know that we had a brilliant time with Sarah and Grant, who came to stay with us from London - even if it was the coldest November night in Cardiff for 89 years. Much fun was had post-match before stumbling home on the last train. Also ran into a Kiwi friend I hadn't seen for years and made some new Welsh ones.

The 37-25 result, and winning the GrandSlam, was nothing to sniff at either...

Frostbite, anyone?

It’s taken two weeks, but I’ve finally stopped coughing up viscous hunks of nastiness from the back of my throat.

So at lunchtime I took advantage of the watery winter sun and headed out for a run. I was wearing two polyprops, thick socks and gloves – and I still couldn’t feel my fingers. They reckon it is going to snow later tonight or over the weekend, the earliest cold snap for 17 years.

Tomorrow we head to Cardiff to watch the All Blacks prove their dominance over those woosie Northern Hemisphere lads. It’s a 5.15pm kick-off and they’re predicting a low of minus six degrees. The god of warm weather hates me.

New Zealand's darkest hour

Today I finished an article about the lack of infrastructure in India highlighted by the recent Commonwealth Games, interviewed a futures analyst in Italy about European food trends for 2011, and tried to justify my presence at a conference in Paris by setting up a raft of interviews.

I also returned a library book, unsuccessfully bought a beret and successfully purchased a pumpkin for a Soup Off we're having at work. Tonight I'm going for a few drinks at a 16th Century pub with friends.

On the hour, and every half hour, the BBC radio station we have playing at work reminded me that the 29 Kiwi miners trapped in the West Coast's Pike River mine had perished after a second blast this morning.

It's New Zealand's worst single loss of life since the Erebus air disaster and, like every Kiwi in every corner of the planet, it brought tears to my eyes. Being so far away from home and going about one's daily business, it's easy to feel removed from the horror of the event. I can't imagine how those families feel, especially with Christmas so near, but I hope they know that the world mourns with them. Rest in Peace...

I've always fancied living in Scotland

Before you lick the stamp of your hate mail, just passing on something that caught my attention today.

Apparently there is a new settlement in Nairn, deep in the Scottish highlands, where properties prohibit the keeping of ducks, rabbits, pigeons, bees and, rather gloriously, children. You are, however, allowed to keep one dog.

To own a house in Firhall, you also have to be over 45 years and, obviously, this side of sensible.

Bandy about phrases like ‘child hating ogres’ all you want, but if you’d seen the spoiled little brat who put on a remarkable display of vocal gymnastics in Sainsbury's last night (including biting his hopeless mother who seemed oblivious to the waves of hate everyone was sending her way), you too might think fondly of a world without noise, the Wiggles or Justin Bieber.

For feline freaks

I can't understand it either, but turns out some of you prefer cats to dogs (yeah, I know).

A few weeks back I posted a UK advert featuring an impossibly gorgeous woofer called Harvey. Some of you emailed to ask for a feline equivalent.

Never let it be said I don't cater to my readers. Here is a UK advert for Ikea, filmed at their Wembley store, which shows what happens when 100 cats are let loose one night after closing. The results are too, too cute.

Ikea's furniture is frustratingly impossible to construct and shopping there at the weekend is like entering the seven circles of hell, but their advertising sure knows how to push one's happy buttons.

Enjoy...

I need to lie down...

There's a scene in the movie, 'As Good as it Gets', where Jack Nicholson's character says: "Go sell crazy somewhere else; we're all filled up here".

Jack could well have been talking about Bristol.

Today, on a crisp but sunny Friday, the following crazy-ass things happened to me:

1. Just after 8.00am, while walking to work, I saw a drug deal going down. And no, I'm not imaginging the bag of white powder that changed hands – I was stopped at the traffic lights for a good few minutes where anyone with a functioning pair of retinas would have witnessed it.

2. I had to swerve to avoid a used condom, two piles of vomit and a junkie beggar whose efforts at elicting cash were severely disadvantaged by the fact that his eyes kept rolling back into his head.

3. On a lunchtime mission to seek solace for a hacking cough, two window cleaners invited me into their white van, promising it would be “the best hour I'd spend this week”.

4. On the way home, I saw a man drive his car into a concrete pole, back it up and do it again.

5. But perhaps the biggest surprise of the day was getting home to find that the bitch landlady had laid new carpet – and it wasn't totally heinous.

There's only so much excitement a girl can handle.