Sunday's TV Viewing

[or the catholic verging on none-at-all tastes of two pesky ravens]

Watched the South Bank Show: Melvyn Bragg talking to Philip Pullman.* Umm. So? Well, it was very pretty, but not so much so that someone who knows what Oxford colleges' quads look like (though not in great detail, tho' the same goes for Cambridge colleges' courts) couldn't just as easily have treated it as a radio broadcast. I'm not sure it said much new, either, tho' at least Clockwork was mentioned as well as the inevitable/obvious/necessary His Dark Materials. The usual debate over Pullman's dislike of organised religion, the Peter Hitchens comments (apparently verbatim reproduction here) were covered but not much more. Altogether rather disappointing**: we expect Melv to be more probing, more rigourous. There was nothing wrong, just not much meat.

The GP, however, would have had us jumping up and down and shouting, had we viewed it live.*** We'd almost written DC off, having loyally cheered him on since his debut (rather him than Damon [who now, incidentally, looks increasingly like the Robin of Sherwood era Michael Praed and has therefore shot up in our "estimation"]). So the first place was a pleasant surprise: we've always believed he races better when starting lower down the grid and having to fight that little bit harder. Poor Rubens, though, even if the never-to-be-taken penalty of a pit lane drive-thru' was clearly deserved (do these/should these penalties carry forward to the next race?). At least the wheel stayed attached and didn't go bouncing onto someone's head. Sometimes the safety improvements do work quite impressively.

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* Every time the ravens see or hear PP on radio or TV we feel vaguely creepy. Odd that.Despite the fact that we rank His Dark Materials ahead of Lemony Snickett's books and way, way ahead of Harry Potter.

** Was going to say "obscurely disappointed", but we're clearly less than impressed.

*** There are only two ways of watching F1 on TV: screaming at the drivers or dozing between the start, where a great deal of the excitement occurs, and the finish, where you get to, generally, curse Schumi. Watching live at the circuit's a different matter and from our limited experience mainly involves trying to stay dry or untoasted.

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Found on The Routes of English web pages: Only presidents, editors and people with tapeworm have the right to use the editorial 'we'.- MARK TWAIN

Time for an anthelmintic? We think not.

And (Not Something We'd Expect to Say) Hooray for Anne

I'LL RESIGN' SAYS MP IN WAR THREAT