Thanks to all who replied with advice on newspapers. I do… - John C. Kirk

01:36 am

Thanks to all who replied with advice on newspapers. I do occasionally read the Metro, but it's never available at the station by the time I get there (09:30), so it depends if I see one lying around on the train. I picked up a copy of the Guardian yesterday (Friday), which I found a bit dull. I guess that's to be expected, compared to "The Sun", and if I do the grown-up thing and read it for a while then I'll increase my tolerance for it. However, I think it still suffered from narrow reporting. Lots of analysis of the Iraq situation, rather than actual news - I can figure out parallels between the UN and the League of Nations on my own (and did, in fact). Similarly, although they only had one paragraph about Cheryl Tweedy (from "Girls Aloud") being arrested, as compared to a full page article in The Sun, they still devoted loads of space to the issue about Prince Charles' staff, which I don't really care about. I think I'll try the BBC website for a while. What I'd really like is something that will offer a historical retrospective, summarising the relevant facts to date. For instance, I know that the Serbian prime minister has been killed, and I know that Slobodan Milosevic used to be in charge of Yugoslavia, and that Yugoslavia no longer exists. I don't know the details of all the different countries that Yugoslavia became, what system of government each one has, etc. I haven't tried doing a Google search yet, so this isn't a specific plea for other people to do the legwork for me. It's just an example of the type of thing I'd like to see in a news service.

Today has been a pretty big day. Swimming lesson this morning, book crawl this afternoon, pub crawl this evening. The swimming lesson went ok - I think I may be getting the hang of the breathing business now, i.e. timing it while I do front crawl. The book crawl was quite successful too - wound up with 7 new novels. Mind you, two of those are each the 4th book of a trilogy... One of these days I need to get my list of books onto my Palm, so that I know what I've actually got vs what I've read in a borrowed copy. I have most of my books in an Access database at the moment, so it shouldn't be too hard. Then the pub crawl in the evening, in honour of Adam's/Billy's birthdays. That was fun - dinner at Old Orleans, followed by a couple of pubs (I missed the first couple before dinner, due to the book crawl).

One thing that came up while I was chatting to people in the evening - water parks (i.e. flumes etc.). The best one of these I've been to is Wet'n'Wild, up near Durham. Unfortunately, it's a bit too far from London for a day trip. Anyone know of any similar places in this neck of the woods, and/or fancy a group outing at some point? I did go to one in Brighton about 10 years ago, but I don't remember its name, and I haven't noticed it on my more recent visits there.