Heard

As Ellie's fifteenth birthday was being celebrated Wednesday last, and she was sitting amid heaps of discarded wrapping paper, I was rather taken aback to have the tables of yesteryear turned on me. It was standard practice when the three were tinies for 'consolation' presents to be given to the two 'Unbirthay' celebrants, and I had forgotten that I had received an IOU for a present on March 1st, my big day. So imagine my delight to have my very own consolation present pushed into my unexpectant little hands.

It was the ipod thing that I had cried out for in the midst of tribal music gym hell!

It says Walkman on it, and as monumentally out of step and bewildered by the modern world as I am, even I had a Walkman in the days of C90 tapes and worn out batteries. But this thing is smaller than the meanest biscuit, and it hasn't got any screws so one can take it apart to see how it works. All you can do is look up its arse, for that is the only orifice, other than a suspicious-looking docking mechanism guaranteed not to talk to any other contraption from the panoply of audio reproduction that we are swamped with.

However, only have bred irresponsibly to guarantee little people in the house that can operate video machines and microwave ovens, one came down from university in the nick of time and tethered this Walkman to this thing I'm typing on, and downloaded (see how infectious their newspeak is?) lots of good stuff from Radio 4, and amazing things have happened.

The first miracle was sawing three minutes off my recent record for a 6 mile run. Midweek (my favourite - Libby is a fellow trad boater) took my mind completely away from the brainless activity of running, and dulled the pain of effort. The second was going to the gymnasium and not wanting to punch anyone in the squabble over which tribal music booms out from the tinny speakers in the particularly unpleasant sweat box I attend.

Which brings me to my point of what was heard. Two soundbites, one on 'Start the Week' concerning the difference between the genders - 'There are more male geniuses, but also more male idiots' and the other was in 'From Our Own Correspondent' that asserted that America looks upon terrorism as a war whilst Europe looks upon it as criminality, and our respective reactions differ accordingly.