In England we are in the middle of what is called "Half term" when the kids seem to get a week off. This is staggered over 2 or 3 weeks! It is clear from the dearth of people on my morning train that a large number of parents see,m to take this time off! I must say falling in the middle of February the only thing to do is go to warmer climes! However I do find it amazing that so many people take the time off. I can't ever think that apart from the usual two-week summer holiday my parents took any time off like that when I was at school. I suppose there were less holidays - we didn't get any of this half-term stuff. Also I think my parents (who both worked all during my childhood) probably only got 2 or 3 weeks off in any one year. I do think with all this coddling and the protective way we treat children and the procession of parents to school concerts, sports days and the like we are in grave danger of producing a generation of children who cannot stand on their own two feet and are independent both socially and in terms of intellect. I understand that it is important that parents take an interest in their children and in the schooling - but I think in recent times the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction!

Good News at the start of the ladies Golfing Tours, Catrin Nilsmark has accepted the invitation to be the European Solheim Cup Captain for the 2005 matches in the US. This is excellent news. I think the convention has always been that winning Captains get a chance to defend their title. It will certainly be a keen and evenly fought competition in Indiana in 18 months time. Although not yet confirmed I suspect Alison Nicholas was again be her Vice-Captain.

Things are progressing nicely with the ipod. Now loaded 1170 songs which equates to 3.2 days, 4.5Gb. I think that by the end of today I should have loaded what I want on the ipod, so the 10GB size looks as if it was a good choice for me.

I commute into London everyday, getting the 06.29am train every morning. Since we are creatures of habit I tend to sit in the same seat and carriage every day - as the train starts at my station this is fairly easy. Behind me sit a group of people, sometimes three women occasionally only two of them and sometimes also the husband of one of them. I never fail to be amazed at the truly banal conversations they have. It revolves around - the weather (and boy can they talk about this - lots of "tutting" goes on when you open a window for some ventilation and in the summer - yes you guessed it they compalin of the heat!), their health (judging by the amount of tests etc that they all seem to have they are certainly using more then their fair share of the National Health Service!), the train service, the headlines in the Sun (trashy tabloid paper), how tired they are, (all of them must be a good 10 years younger then me - what they all need is some exercise!) and the latest goings-on with respect to the current reality TV show(s). Further down the carriage are a couple, he reads the Daily Mail (thought of to be a better "class" of tabloid!) and reads out loud interesting articles to his girlfriend. It is a truly amazing surreal experience every morning. I have resisted the temptation of listening to the ipod on this journey as I would miss out on a truly English experience!

Well its arrived! In fact it arrived on Monday - but I have been so busy generally and also playing with the new "toy" that this is the first opportunity I have had to post about it! I have to report that the hype is all correct and more! Its a fabulous bit of kit and as usual from Apple fantastically sexy! I surfed around and consulted the e-bayer that I bought it from and purchased a USB2/Firewire connector, fortunately I have a PCMIA card that gives an additional two USB ports, as the ipod needs to be connected to USB 2 on a windows machine if you don't have a firewire connection. I also bought courtesy of e-bay a case - or rather as they call it a Skin - a tactile latex covering that protects the ipod. The skin arrived in 24 hours and the cable arrived along with the ipod. Despite all my fears setting it up was fairly easy. You just charge the ipod load itunes from the disk supplied and hook up! The time consuming bit is loading all your CDs. You load them onto your computer and then connect the ipod and the new songs are automatically added to the ipod along with any new playlists that you might have created. I have found that the download time from my laptop to the ipod has been fantastically quick - the firewire connection is supposed to be quicker - but I would say judging by my experience not absolutely necessary!

So far I have loaded up 644 songs - 1.7 days of listening and that takes up 2.25GB. I suspect that I am probably half way through my CD collection - so I think that proves that the 10GB will certainly have a large enough capacity for me!

I am not one of these people who normally writes letters of complaint - if I am disatisfied I just take my custom elsewhere! However I was driven to write a letter of complaint to my local commercial radio station, Essex Radio. I normally listen to this station when I get up in the morning at 5.15am, until I leave the house at 6.00am (sad or what!). Anyway for the past couple of weeks instead of having a "proper" radio show at that time they have started broadcasting what they call a "review" of the Martin and Su show which broadcasts each day from 6.00am to 10.00am. Cheap radio or what? Apart from the fact I do not care for that show because it is usually a lot of drivel from one giggly female and an opinionated right wing twit!, I think it is monstrous to cheat the early morning listeners in this way. Indeed last week they broadcast the same rubbish excerpt twice!

My real beef is that on Tuesday they broadcast a section about organ donor cards. Martin Day talked about not carrying a donor card. He said that carrying a donor would potentially influence any doctor who was treating him. In effect if there were organs to harvest they would not do all that they could to preserve his life. What a load of rubbish, and what an insult to doctors and all others in the medical profession who work tirelessly to preserve life! At a time when there is a shortage of donors that ,in my view is a crass and stupid thing to say - but what compounds the problem is that it was repeated!!, in their so called "highlights"! Surely someone at Essex Radio realised that what Martin Day said should not be repeated! I only hope that neither Martin Day nor any of his family or close friends needs an organ donation, as I am sure faced with that scenario he would be happy to accept a donated organ and would be grateful that someone, with more public spirit than he was carrying a card!

I sent an e-mail on Tuesday complaining about the excerpt, but you guessed it - no response I have now sent a letter (snail mail) today to the MD with a copy of the e-mail asking for a response - we'll see just how long it takes! I have asked for an apology to be broadcast - but I'm not holding my breath. The quality of radio presenters is just going down hill - possibly as fast as the intelligence level of those who listen? In the meantime I'm trying to find myself an alternative local station to listen to.

Rant over!

All very exciting - courtesy of ebay (one of my weaknesses!) I have just bought a ipod 10gb. I researched the MP3 market and I know there has been a lot of talk about the Apples - just as much good as bad! However when I looked I couldn't see anything that either looked as good or had such storage capacity. In my circumstances I fail to see the relevance of having a player that can only take 10 or so CD's. My Jornada can do that and I can also carry that amount with me on holiday if necessary. For me the benefit will be to be able to carry so much music in such a small package.

Anyway I have heard from various "Chat Boards" that it is not all sweetness and light setting-up the ipod so I now look forward to hours of endless frustration!!! I'll keep you informed. The one I bought is in USA so hopefully it will be here if 5 days or so!

For those of you who are either interested in ipods or have one I found a really good site called the ipod lounge - see side bar for link!