Two nice moments at the Macedonians’ independence day reception last night.

First off, I found myself in conversation with the Bosnian Ambassador to the EU (a Croat), the Serbian Ambassador to NATO (a Serb from the Sandzak region) and the Bosnian Ambassador to NATO (who is Jewish). the atmospherics were warm and affable, and they were deep in discussion of matters of mutual interest. Given that there is a lot of diappointment currently being expressed about where the Balkans are, ten years on from the Dayton Agreement, it was just rather nice to stand back for a moment and look at these people from previously warring background getting on well with each other, and getting on with the job for their countries.

A bit later, I was chatting to a Lithuanian and an Austrian diplomat. The Lithuanian looked at his watch and said, “Sorry, I have to go to a special meeting of COREPER to sort out Turkey.” “You’re voting to let the talks start, I hope?” I asked. The Lithuanian nodded vigorously, and departed. I turned to the Austrian and told him that I was glad to see that he was staying, given that the Austrians are known to be opposed to Turkish membership. But he replied that since they are a larger country than Lithuania, they had enough diplomats to cover both COREPER and the Macedonians’ reception simultaneously! (I’m glad to see that COREPER made the right decision though.)

Puts me more or less in the middle of the field of avowed Democrat voters from the last election (quelle surprise)…

You are a Social Liberal (78% permissive) and an… Economic Liberal (31% permissive) You are best described as a: Strong Democrat Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid

Now, here’s a sensible idea. I’m signed up to a number of sf review site mailing lists, and never have the time to go and read the reviews; heck, I barely have time to read the notifications. Most of my non-work on-line reading is either LiveJournal, and the RSS feeds I have syndicated to my lj friends list, or personal emails. So I’m really glad to see that Strange Horizons’ new reviews editor has set up an RSS feed, syndicated to livejournal as , for their reviews.

And they’ve started with an excellent piece by on this year’s Doctor Who, “Take Me To The Fantastic Place“. Full of spoilers, so only read it if you don’t mind that kind of thing. Great lines like:

There was also a certain amount of fan muttering about whether [Russell T Davies] was trying to bring a “gay agenda” to the show—which is a lot like Catholics muttering about the new Pope bringing a “wearing robes” agenda to the Church.

And a concluding paragraph that’s worth quoting at length:

You can make a case that this new series of Doctor Who has spent thirteen weeks circling the word “fantastic”. Not just because it was the Doctor’s perpetual exclamation whenever danger threatened. And not just, also, because the dying Eccleston’s last words were a reflection on how “fantastic” Rose has been as a companion—and, indeed, on how fantastic he has been too. And not just because so many of the stories set up a contrast between the science fictional and the mundane, arguing for the thrill and delight of the Doctor’s and Rose’s explorations. (The contrast is set out visually, between the grey council estate Rose comes from and the saturated colour look established for the future in “The End of the World” and carried on from there.) You can see the loop that the series is taking Rose on—the same loop as Sam Gamgee’s. She starts as someone so thoroughly immersed in the mundane that she thinks the stories she’s told are impossible dreams that she’ll never experience. She then goes on a journey and has some extraordinary experiences, becoming adept in her own way at dealing with them, and enabling us to share her wonder at the sights she’s granted. One day, maybe, she’ll come home and see that leading a fantastic life is something that can only be done, that has to be done, in and with and for the world we’re given.

Last seen here.

After seeing this, post a poem you like on your own journal.

WE are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world’s great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

I once played percussion for the Elgar setting of this; great stuff.

Listening to “A World In Your Ear”, as recommended by someone on my f-list, I fell to wondering where the capsules from the various manned space flights physically are now. It’s odd to think that it’s over 30 years now since the last splashdown, of the US astronauts from the Apollo-Soyuz mission in July 1975. Since then, Russian and Chinese flights have come down on land, and the Space Shuttles are of course in continuous circulation (apart, sadly, from Columbia and Challenger).

Anyway, I couldn’t find any information on-line about what happened to the Russian or Chinese manned spacecraft capsules after landing. For the 31 American ones, their current resting place is as follows:

Apollo command modules (15)
Apollo-Soyuz: Kennedy Space Centre, Cape Canaveral, Florida
Skylab 4: National Air and Space Museum (Smithsonian Institution), Washington, DC
Skylab 3: NASA Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio
Skylab 2: Naval Aviation Museum, Pensacola, Florida
Apollo 17: Johnson Space Centre, Houston, Texas
Apollo 16: US Space and Rocket Center, Huntsville, Alabama
Apollo 15: National Museum of the US Air Force, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio
Apollo 14: National Air and Space Museum (Smithsonian Institution), Washington, DC
Apollo 13: Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center, Hutchinson, Kansas
Apollo 12: Virginia Air and Space Center (NASA Langley Visitor’s Center), Hampton, Virginia
Apollo 11: National Air and Space Museum (Smithsonian Institution), Washington, DC
Apollo 10: Science Museum, London, U.K.
Apollo 9: Michigan Space Center, Jackson, Michigan
Apollo 8: Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, Illinois
Apollo 7: Museum of Science and Technology, Ottawa, Canada

Gemini capsules (10)
Gemini 12: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
Gemini 11: California Museum of Science and Industry, Los Angeles, California
Gemini 10: Norwegian Technical Museum, Oslo, Norway
Gemini 9: Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida
Gemini 8: Neil Armstrong Museum, Wapakoneta, Ohio
Gemini 7: National Air and Space Museum (Smithsonian Institution), Washington, DC
Gemini 6: McDonnell Planetarium, Saint Louis, Missouri
Gemini 5: Space Center Houston (NASA Johnson Space Center’s Visitor Center), Houston, Texas
Gemini 4: National Air and Space Museum (Smithsonian Institution), Washington, DC
Gemini 3: Grissom Memorial Museum, Mitchell, Indiana

Mercury capsules (6)
Mercury 9 (Faith 7): Space Center Houston (NASA Johnson Space Center’s Visitor Center), Houston, Texas
Mercury 8 (Sigma 7): Astronaut Hall of Fame, Titusville, Florida
Mercury 7 (Aurora 7): Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, Illinois
Mercury 6 (Friendship 7): National Air and Space Museum (Smithsonian Institution), Washington, DC
Mercury MR 4 (Liberty Bell 7): Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center, Hutchinson, Kansas*
Mercury MR-3 (Freedom 7): U.S. Naval Academy, College of Medicine, Anapolis, Maryland
* The Liberty Bell 7 capsule spent 38 years at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

Not very surprising that six of the 31 are in the Smithsonian (though I think only three on display); and three at the Johnson Space Centre in Texas. There are two at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, two at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and another two (including the recovered Liberty Bell 7) in the gloriously named “Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center” of Hutchinson, Kansas. Only three are outside the United States – Ottawa and London are fairly obvious locations, but I was surprised to find that the farthest-flung of the US capsules has found its final resting place in Oslo.

Back when I was a lad, the Armagh Planetarium had something which claimed to have been a capsule from the Gemini program. It obviously wasn’t a real one, though I have no difficulty in imagining that Patrick Moore, the Planetarium’s first director, managed to persuade NASA to let him have some old training equipment. I see the Planetarium is being refurbished at the moment; I guess they’ll throw it out, if they haven’t already.

There’s probably a paper in there somewhere, but I’m not going to write it.

3) Sandman: The Dream Hunters, by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano

Obviously a bit of a spin-off from the original Sandman series, but pretty beautiful in its own right; Gaiman retells an old Japanese story, as prose rather than script, with beautiful illustrations by Amano, and manages to keep the tone consistent throughout, with a somewhat ambiguous ending that pulls us smoothly out of the Japanese environment and into Gaiman’s own mythos.

Oooh, Library Thing. This is going to be one of those relationships. I’ve put in over 400 of my books already

An interesting coda to our recent discussion from, of all people, veteran socialist Eamonn McCann. See also subsequent discussion on Slugger O’Toole.

Just finished watching a Thunderbirds video with F, which reminded me that I never properly wrote up two other Doctor Who stories I watched last month.

Remembrance of the Daleks (video)

I eventually worked out that I had seen this before, not at the time of first transmission in 1988 but probably not too long thereafter. It didn’t much impress me then, and doesn’t much impress me now. A particular gripe is the total failure to make the setting look like it’s November 1963, leaving the story feel curiously cut adrift in time. The Daleks are OK, and the Special Weapons Dalek pretty good, but I didn’t feel the rest of the cast (except the little girl) had their hearts in it.

The Ark in Space (DVD)

This is a different matter. Harry is a bit annoying, but it’s every bit as good as I thought I remembered from when I was seven (I admit I watched the updated CGI version rather than the one with the original model shots, so the only really wobbly bit was the march of the Wirrn over the hull in the last episode). Of course, Ian Marter’s novelisation was even more fun, but there’s lots to like here – particularly pleasing are the characterisation of Tom Baker’s Doctor (only his second story broadcast, though of course the third to be filmed), the first episode with nobody other than the Doctor and companions, and the banter between minor characters Rogin and Lycett. DVD extras are OK, including an interview with Tom Baker in Wookey Hole filmed while making Revenge of the Cybermen.

Thunderbirds: Trapped in the Sky/Pit of Peril (video)

Picked this up at the dorpfeest two weeks ago – the first two episodes ever of Thunderbirds, from 1964. In the first episode, the team rescues a plane which has had a bomb attached to its landing gear through the sinister intervention of The Hood; in the second episode, they pull a damaged US Army vehicle called the Sidewinder (clearly an ancestor of the Imperial walkers from The Empire Strikes Back) out of a blazing pit into which it has fallen. All great fun. Lady Penelope is disconcertingly ruthless with her rocket missiles in the first episode! And F and I are still wondering when we will see Thunderbird 3 and Thunderbird 4 put through their paces. But basically I will have to buy the DVD now.

Incidentally, I suppose that Neil Gaiman’s idea of the Endless contacting each other through their portraits in Sandman was inspired by the Thunderbirds’ control room, where the Tracy brothers’ pictures turn into video connections? Or is there an earlier inspiration?

Ooooh, …. I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for introducing me to the delights of Library Thing. I’m just not sure what to do; I input two whole shelves, then I started doing the books I’ve reviewed on-line, then my Bujold and Zelazny colections. It’s going to be a long slow process, and it’s all your fault!

Story here.

All together now, Awwwwwwww, how sweet!!!

According to Reuters:

Croatia has launched a new reality show on the Internet, starring sheep instead of people.

The winner of the 10-day Stado (herd) show, which closes on September 17, will receive poetry in its honour instead of money.

Those voted out of the seven-member herd might be eaten, the Večernji List daily reported on Wednesday.

The show can be followed 24 hours a day on website www.stado.org, where visitors can see how the sheep feed and interact with each other.

They can then choose which sheep to vote out.

The show drew anger from human rights groups who reported animal abuse to local veterinary inspectors.

“I am not an insensitive bastard who abuses animals. We’ve called a vet for those sheep that were in poorer shape,” organiser Siniša Labrović told the daily.

He said the aim of the project was to show that “more and more people, especially those who take part in reality shows, are made to look like sheep in every situation”.

The most interesting thing I did at work all week was to speak at an internal EU meeting on the Balkans on Wednesday. I’m posting this on Sunday, but backdating to Wednesday so that it will be correctly filed in my archives. Sorry if this looks weird on your friends pages.

In the warren of European Union institutions there are a number of committees that bring together representatives of the 25 member states, the European Commission and since May the Romanians and Bulgarians to discuss whatever the committee’s topic is. I was brought in for the meeting of COWEB, the working group on the Western Balkans, on Wednesday as a guest speaker, along with three other external speakers, Carl Bildt, Goran Svilanović and Ivan Krastev (aka Иван Кръстев). The other three had all been members of a big international commission on the Balkans which reported back in April. I was a bit irritated that only Bildt and Svilanović were named on the provisional agenda, but the British diplomat in charge assured me that I would get equal time with them at the meeting (and in fairness, I have to admit that I am neither a former Swedish prime minister not a former Balkan foreign minister). I noticed that on the final version of the agenda no guest speakers were named at all, so perhaps my pathetic protests had some effect.

The meeting room in the Justus Lipsius building (the big pink thing on Rondpoint Schumann) was much narrower and smaller than the one for the ambassadors’ meeting I attended in July. Each country had only one person at the front, in most cases someone fairly senior from the foreign ministry who had flown in specially from the capital, with the European Commission getting a block of three seats at the far end of the room, and a large number of people jammed into two rows of seats behind us main speakers. I had brought along three of my younger work colleagues to distribute our most recent reports on the Balkans, including one which had been published only the day before, and to our gratified surprise the authorities had provided name plates for all three of them, so that in fact they were the only people sitting in the back row with name plates, jammed in beside the lads from the Austrian and Finnish permanent representations to the EU (next two EU presidencies). I was sitting between Ivan and Svilanović; the British chairman had great problems with both of their names, Ivan being pronouced “Eye-van” rather than Иван (which I’m sure he’s used to) and poor Svilanović becoming “Slanovitch”. Everybody spoke in English, except for one Mediterranean country.

Bildt and Svilanović kicked off with a recapitulation of the main points of their report, demanding more rapid European integration for the Balkan countries. I chipped in with a couple of short points on Bosnia and on visas, and Ivan had a brief word, and then the countries started talking; about half of them said something at least. I was given to understand that it was pretty unusual to have a brainstorming meeting of this committee, which usually deals with more technical aspects of the EU’s relations with the Balkan countries. Perhaps for that reason, the contributions of the diplomats were a bit variable, with the Dutch guy (who I knew anyway from meetings in the Hague) much the best. One large member state was conspicuously silent; we were told that they had objected to having outside speakers there at all.

I was then asked to make my main presentation. I’d arrived at the meeting expecting to be a main presenter immediately after Bildt and Svilanović to talk about the situation in general, and was then told that in fact I would have the floor only a bit over halfway through the meeting, for a full-length presentation on Kosovo, so I’d spent much of the first hour, while others were talking, rewriting my speaking notes. Luckily this only meant chucking aside the relatively short bits I had planned to say on Croatia, and on Macedonian and Albanian indigenous politics – I’d already had my say on Bosnia, and talking about Kosovo more or less demands addressing Montenegro, Serbia, and the knock-on effects on Macedonia and Albania.

My colleagues, observing in the back row, seemed to think it went fairly well. I simply presented the facts as experienced on a daily basis by our team on the ground, including some of the juicier stories that do not always make it into wider circulation, and my mind was reasonably concentrated, since we had had a report published on Kosovo the day before. I drew some (courteous enough) disagreement from some of the member states (including the one who spoke in French), but in general they seemed to be taking in what I said.

And all too soon the meeting was over, and we headed off for lunch at one of the usual Italian restaurants in the European district, courtesy of the British, with the Austrians, Finns and European Commission. Actually it ended up with them on their own, as we guest speakers dwindled one by one – Bildt almost before we had started as he was flying to Zagreb (from where he posted a blog entry that evening), then Ivan off to meet our mutual friend the Bulgarian ambassador to the EU (who wrote a paper with me, shortly before he got his present job), and then I ended up giving Svilanović a lift through the rain to his next meeting. I don’t often have ex-foreign ministers in the front of my car… he has a reputation for being grumpy but was pleasant enough company. Bildt, for my curious Swedish readers, was as ever clear and thoughtful, and personally engaging though not exactly warm. I am aware that he’s not the most popular man in Sweden (given that he won one election by the skin of his teeth, lost two, and still seems to be sulking about it) but he’s been a pretty good thing for the Balkans.

So there we are. Had meant to write this up sooner, but somehow it didn’t quite happen. If you have been, thanks for reading.

No doubt in response to ‘s recent post on the subject, the winning contestant on Mastermind this evening chose “Dad’s Army” as his special subject, and scored more in the first round than any of the other contestants managed in both rounds put together!

The guy who chose “European Nobility of the 18th Century” was obviously on a hiding to nothing, but even my hardened heart felt a twinge of sympathy when he managed only three points in the first round. Especially since the eventual winner had 16.

After my Sunday whinge, y’all deserve an update.

Anne was completely recovered by yesterday morning. It wasn’t even a twenty-four hour bug, more a six-hour one. I’ll be caredul about the mussels in future.

The neighbour cleared away all the stones today. It took all day. Not surprising. Anne plans to cover the mud with turf tomorrow.

Fergal’s off school for the rest of the week, but basically fine. He explained to me in great detail how he plans to deploy his nasal decongestant spray. (Only for the purpose for which it was designed, I’m glad to say.)

And Ursula, well, her sleeping patterns are still not what we would like them to be – my attempt to lull her while typing this and simultaneously listening to Pink Floyd’s performance at Live 8 was not successful – she is still very delightful, and we take one day at a time.

Reading through Newsweek’s fascinating account of how President Bush (failed to) react to Katrina, I was struck by something I’ve written about here before: the very imperfect information flow from the field to decision-makers. Many interesting observations in the Newsweek article including:

When Hurricane Katrina struck, it appears there was no one to tell President Bush the plain truth: that the state and local governments had been overwhelmed, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was not up to the job and that the military, the only institution with the resources to cope, couldn’t act without a declaration from the president overriding all other authority… Bush’s leadership style and the bureaucratic culture combined to produce a disaster within a disaster.

Bears out my wider point about making sure that the situation on the ground, not the bureacratic instincts of potential intervention agencies, is the main driver of events.

It’s slipping off the radar screen now, but my eye was caught by this story of a Mississippi man who swore at Vice-President Cheney and got “detained” by the Secret Service as a result, even though they said he hadn’t broken any laws.

Way back in June 2001 I witnessed President Bush’s first visit to Brussels, and posted about it to Usenet. I finished my anecdote by saying,

I considered waving back but felt that if I did so with any honest indication of my feelings, I would probably be arrested

and several other readers responded that such restrictions on freedom of speech might happen in Belgium, but were impossible in the United States. Well, I see that such restrictions on freedom of speech just might be possible after all in the USA.

We were meeting with a Finnish diplomat, who politely asked my colleague what her name is.

“Anna Abrahamian,” she replied.

“My goodness, what a long name!” he exclaimed.

“I don’t think you’re in a very good position to complain,” I told him, “since your name is Petteri Vuorimäki.”

He muttered that Finnish names are much easier to pronounce. For Finns, they probably are.

Anyone else watching University Challenge find themselves yelling at the screen this evening?

Two questions which I think were answered correctly but Jeremy Paxman ruled them as being wrong:

1) if a satellite is in earth orbit, whatis being contantly changed by its acceleration due to gravity?

The answer given by the first team was “velocity” which is surely unchallengeable – acceleration is a change in velocity if it’s anything at all. But Paxman ruled it as wrong, and then accepted an answer from the other team of “change in direction” – well, yes, but velocity includes direction (and speed).

2) what characteristic of activated charcoal makes it so good at adsorbing gases?

The answer given was “its porosity” which was ruled as incorrect, Paxman declaring that the right answer is “its expanded surface area”. But the reason it has an expanded surface area is because of its porosity. Even Wikipedia writes of its “large amount of microporosity”. So porosity is not the precise answer but I would certainly have ruled it as close enough.

Not that it would have changed the result, as the Privy Council comfortably beat the Romantic Novelists for the title. But sometimes my long-neglected scientific education manifests itself.

Happy birthday today to the stellar and the stunning !

Also happy birthday recently to , and .

Anne’s feeling much better now. Obviously there was one bad mussel in the bag, and she got it; but a regime of rest and Carl Hiassen seems to have done the trick.

Thanks to everyone for your supportive comments on previous posts.

I’ve started Neil Stephenson’s The System of the World, being otherwise stuck on two much more heavy-going books, David Crystal’s The Stories of English and R Scott Bakker’s The Darkness that Comes Before. Finding it a much easier read, but I don’t think I’ll finish tonight!

Anne has spent the last hour throwing up. That will teach me to cook mussels for Sunday lunch.

An hour ago, just after 7 am, the phone rang. Oh, shit, someone’s died, I thought, scrambling to follow Anne down the stairs. But before I had got to our bedroom door, she reappeared, smiling. It was Brussels Airport: they have found my lost luggage, mislaid returning from Macedonia last week. So after my shopping of the last few days, I now have an extra suit and many more pairs of socks and underwear than I needed. But I’m awake now, so here are a couple of random thoughts:

The rapid rotation of 2003 EL61

2003 EL61 is a newly discovered planetoid, not quite as big as was first thought but still pretty big. It spins pretty fast as well – its “day” is less than once every four hours. And apparently it is cigar-shaped.

I once read, long ago, an article by the then US Consul-General in Belfast, Michael Michaud, suggesting that we should be on the lookout for large alien artifacts in the Solar System. The obvious candidate for me was always Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 1, with its distant, unusually circular orbit and its unexplained periodical outbursts of gas; decrepit space station, perhaps?

One of these days I was going to write a hard sf short story about it. Now, just as astronomers are beginning to explain Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 1’s peculiar behaviour, I have another candidate for the starring inanimate role.

Fantasy Bed Time Hour

Two Valley Girls discuss Lord Foul’s Bane, in bed, four pages at a time here and also Tadhg O’Higgins here. I do wonder if it is still going? O’Higgins’ article was written in 2002, just after episode 5, and they only seem to be up to episode 28; but they’re on the TV schedules in Maine, Wisconsin and California, so I suppose it’s still going.

2) The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown

Hmm. The roots of this book are pretty obvious. Some of the basic plot lines have been done much better elsewhere. For instance: Young woman who has been educated in cryptography – Neil Stephenson’s The Diamond Age. Dubious proceedings involving a plane flight from France to London – Agatha Christie’s Death in the Clouds. Half-baked ancient lore – Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln’s Holy Blood, Holy Grail. Bad guys who are masters of disguise and preposterous conspiracies – Agatha Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence. Half-baked ancient lore combined with bad guys who are masters of disguise and preposterous conspiracies – Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, or alternately any episode of Scooby Doo.

The prose of the first couple of chapters is thunderously bad, but after that it settles into fairly routine rubbish. Some of the plot twists, like the first anagrams, the first password, the mysterious script, and the identity of the Teacher, seemed pretty blindingly obvious to me. None of it was particularly elegantly executed, and many historical details are simply wrong – as are some contemporary ones – Opus Dei members are not monks! In the book’s defence, he doesn’t overdo the mystical explanations, relying in the end on simple human explanations of his characters’ far-fetched actions. And there is a certain charm in that most of the book takes place within a single twelve-hour period. But I really don’t understand what people see in it, or why it has been so popular.

asks:

so did you watch the football the other night? were you metaphorically dancing in the streets of Belfast?

I’ve been pondering my own reaction to this a bit, balancing on the one hand the joy from the McDonald/Crowe household, with additional contributions from here and, south of the border, here, against someone else on my f-list who put in a locked entry:

I don’t really give a shit that Northern Ireland beat England. I was once asked why I don’t support NI as a football team. My answer? The blatant, disgusting bigotry that is inherent both within the team, and even more prevalently, within the community of supporters over here.

My own peak of interest in football came around the time of the 1982 World Cup when I was 15, and Northern Ireland qualified for the World Cup finals in Spain and actually made it through to the second round of matches. (They managed it again in 1986, but I was working in Germany then and it was much more difficult to follow because of the times of the matches – also they were squashed in the first round.) I have to say I cheered for them then, not having any particular reason not to; but I also have to admit that I cheered more loudly for the Ireland team in 1990 and 1994. (Checking back I see they qualified again in 2002 – I had completely forgotten.)

Sports back home reflect a peculiar distortion of the divide in society. (Rugby is, by and large, a Protestant game in Northern Ireland but has no such division in the Republic.) The Irish Football Association is based in Northern Ireland; the Football Association of Ireland in the Republic. Derry City FC has switched between the two. I suppose I was vaguely aware of this political baggage when I was a teenager, but I was also reacting a bit against the knee-jerk Republicanism of some of my class-mates, and supporting the Northern Ireland football team in matches a long way away was a low-cost way of making the point.

So, my reaction on Wednesday? On the whole I would have shrugged it off as just another football match, except that my hackles were raised by two things. The first was that my Google Alert for news stories about Northern Ireland flagged up this piece on Wednesday morning:

Northern Ireland will be lucky to get nil in this match and the only way they will score first is if they get into the brothel off that side street on Great Victoria Road [sic] before Rooney does.

Complacent bastard, I thought. That, combined with the hysteria about the cricket, a game which I simply do not understand, but which seemed to be taking over even the relatively civilised pastures of the Today programme – I cannot believe that they interviewed Mick Jagger and John Major about a game that hadn’t actually started yet! – made a little corner of my heart hope that England would lose.

Not with sufficient enthusiasm for me to find out the result on Wednesday evening. But there was a gleeful spring in my step as I went to work on Thursday.

Did anyone else find today’s Sudoku unusually difficult? It took me five attempts. Or am I just losing my edge?

Thanks to :

Full squamous lyrics here.

There was chanting in the air that night
The stars were right, Cthulhu!
You were dreaming of your destiny
Beneath the sea, Cthulhu!

Am doing a pre-recorded interview in a few minutes for BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight – so listen out after 10 pm British time, and you may be lucky enough to hear what once called my “droll Ulster Scots tones”.

[Edited to add:] Right, that’s done. As subscribers to will have guessed, it’s about our Bosnia report from earlier this week.

Happy independence day, Macedonia!