Well, Ginger Nut has left home now, which is sad but also a bit of a relief. Four kittens is just too many by the time they're eight weeks old and not properly litter-trained. Sparks went to Lily's on Saturday but came straight home because the cat they already have couldn't cope. We're hoping that a neighbour will be taking Sparks and Pusscat soon. Things will be much easier once we know who to blame for the accidents.

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Hanna sent me a link to this site about Germany's bicycle capital, Muenster.

I advised her to look in Hill's in Muswell Hill for a second-hand bike. They didn't have one, so she said to Mr. Hill that she might be better buying one in Germany. he replied:

'Oh yes, they are much better there, everything is better in Germany, they should have won the war, then we would have all the good stuff here!'

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From the point of view of the Lecture List, there was an interesting article by the pianist Susan Tomes in Saturday's Guardian.

She talks about the pros and cons of musicians and conductors discussing a piece before performing it. The main con is that it's difficult for the performers. The main pro is that audiences like it and seem to enjoy the performance more for having had an introduction. She says:

Sometimes it was almost galling to be told what a difference one's spoken words had made. Clearly, it did cause the audience to see us as real people rather than... well, I still don't know what the alternative is: frightfully posh people who inhabit a different world altogether?

The main thing I take from it is that audiences are really keen to have an encounter with the performers that's more direct than just watching them perform. Which is kind of what the whole Lecture List thing is about.

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Had another busy weekend starting with the school summer fair on Saturday, preceded as is now traditional (well, they did it last year) with the procession of the fish. The route was a bit longer this year, so I'm still hopeful that this could be the start of something big.

Yesterday we went to Kenwood to see the Haringey Picnic Concert with a huge number of music groups, including Apoa's guitar group, playing and dancing in a huge number of different styles. It wasn't Glastonbury but it was good fun. And a lot easier to recover from.

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Kiloh can't decide whether she's more into Diana Ross or Avril Lavigne.

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Well, Silvio Berlusconi has gone further than most in celebrating the legacy of Orwell. It looks like he really did describe himself as 'more equal than others' before getting the courts to agree that they can't do anything about his bribery charges while he's running the country. What a guy

I'm enjoying all the Orwell stuff on the BBC just now. George Orwell: My Life In Pictures was really enjoyable, although the choices they'd made about how to tell the story were really up front, and there was something a bit simplistic about the main component of the narrative, which was 'bullied for bedwetting at 8 years old leads to lifelong commitment to fighting totalitarianism' (or is it my interpretation that's simplistic?)

It seems particularly relevant today when parliament is trying to work out the size of the lies that led to the war in Iraq. I'm still not totally sure what I think about the Iraq thing but I know the way our government got us there was wrong.

I'm also enjoying the essays being read every day on radio 4.

Today's started with 'Confessions of a book reviewer' which is very funny and also relevant since I've just been reading Jonathan's review of two books that some editor thought would 'go well together'

That was followed by a discussion of borrowings in English, which was amusing and opinionated. He mentioned a few borrowings from German which followed the war. 'Schadenfreude' wasn't one of them, though.

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They're not some ironic postmodern comment on blogging or anything. We've got them all back from Devon now. I joined in for the last few days and enjoyed a combination of swimming, football, park-visiting and lying around in the sun.

Yesterday, I took Jazzy to the vet to be spayed. The vet advised keeping her away from the kittens overnight to protect the stitch, and keeping her inside for ten days until the stitch comes out. We felt really guilty locking her up in the bathroom overnight. But when we got up in the morning she was outside. She'd jumped to the very top of a sash window and squeezed through a tiny gap.

Anyway, she seems to be recovering well. Hope the hair grows back quickly. Without it, you can see just how skinny breastfeeding has made her.

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Last night, Ohna drove to Devon in the dark with a car full of stuff, including two kids and five cats. My mum wants me to write a poem about it based on the one about going to St. Ives.

Meanwhile, I have finally managed to clean the kitchen floor.

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This, on the other hand, is exactly my kind of programme. I think my favourite piece of advice was 'when even the non-smoking guests are sneaking out to join the smokers on the terrace, it's time to change the subject'

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Phew, this makes me glad I didn't sit through Dale's Wedding

It really was an incomprehensible show. The premise wasn't funny, none of the individual bits were funny and no-one made much effort to disguise the fact that they were pretending. Why did they do it?

Did anybody watch that programme about Dale Winton's Wedding last night? It was weird. It was purporting to be a documentary about Dale getting married and thus shocking the nation by turning out not to be gay after all. It seemed to be a joke as everything in it was acted and there were weird stories about women throwing themselves on him and him switching from Mr. Ladykiller to Mr. Camp when he was on air. The one thing that made us think it might not be a joke was that it wasn't funny. Intrigued though we were, we got too bored after twenty minutes to watch it to the end. Somehow, the central question wasn't quite as pressing as all the stuff about interest rates and currency management on the other channels. Can anyone fill us in?

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Simon told me about this interesting programme on BBC4 about Saatchi, Parker, Puttnam et al and their advertising work in the 60's. It's on tonight as part of the 'BBC4 on 2' thing.

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Had a nice lunch with Jonathan, Jennifer and Lawrence yesterday. I was surprised to discover that Jennifer hadn't heard the expression 'gi wa ti Buckie n buy baps'. Always glad to pass on new data to a linguist (Jennifer is an expert on the Buckie dialect and is currently having some of her work 'squeezed into a minimalist framework')

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Ohna, Apoa and Kiloh are off camping this weekend while I stay at home to do a big pile of external examining and to try to keep on top of the cat piss which the kittens are trying to flood the kitchen with.

I just spent half an hour panicking when I popped into the kitchen to find only three kittens instead of four. After searching most places I could think of and speculating about various possibilities (Sparks is pretty nimble - could he have actually jumped out through the cat flap?) I put my hand to the back of a shelf full of jigsaws and felt something fluffy.

The experience reminded me of when Apoa was 2 and she ran away in Selfridges, in a huff because we wouldn't buy her one of those little coloured plastic things you put on yale keys. We eventually found her hiding behind a tv.

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Brilliant piece by Simon Singh in today's Telegraph on Derren Brown. Here's an extract:

Derren Brown is one of the biggest TV sensations of the year, and now he is bringing his amazing mind control to the West End. But is he a genius of psychology or merely a skilled magician?

I don't like to think of myself as a spoilsport. I wouldn't dare question the veracity of Father Christmas, the Tooth Fairy or even the Easter Bunny. But I draw the line at Derren Brown.

I'll let you know if they put it online.

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Lot of taping today. Eastenders, obviously, but also:

Lawrence's lesbian vampire play with an amazing cast, including David Warner, Celia Imrie, Kenneth Cranham and Jacqueline Pearce aka Servalan, and:

Secret History featuring yet another media appearance for Bessie and Ted.

Oh, and some of you might also be interested in Alternative Servalan

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And here is another great example of diplomacy from another of Bush 2's mates.

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What can you say about this ? I suppose it's good that someone is just admitting what's really going on for once.

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Bessie and Ted are in the media spotlight again. Read all about it here

I guess this is what it must be like to have Posh and Becks as parents. Maybe I should offer Brooklyn and Romeo some tips?

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Remember Oli and his tale of what the 'dudes 'n' chicks are up to? The poor boy is seriously and serially savaged in this week's london by london, including various Nazi comparisons. But one voice came to his defence:

Just before the inevitable festival of abuse starts about Oli's comments last issue, I'd just like to point out that I remember when I was that irritating and, given the fullness of time, I turned out to be alright. If you think hard enough, you'll remember that you were that irritating when you were 16 too. Any suspicions you have that you weren't that irritating are entirely false and should therefore be disregarded. You were. Leave the poor boy alone. Anyway. As you were.

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Just got a message from London by London which said, among other things, that:

London is an amazing city. A city of culture, history and diversity. A city with a mayor who collects newts. A city with a huge Ferris wheel. A city where the clubs and bars stay open 'til three at the weekend... But a city that's an absolute nightmare to get home from after midnight.

We're creating a petition to be sent to both The Mayor and Transport For London - the two bodies who together control London Underground - demanding that the Tube be kept running until at least 3am on Friday and Saturday nights.

The petition is here

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Mhairi wrote to say:

Hiya there Billy.....u don't know me but i was doin a search on Yahoo for Cremola Foam and it came up with a reference to ur page. What im lookin for is: Is it still available and where can i buy it? I am livin in Hampshire now (originally from Edinburgh) and no-one down here has ever heard of it. If u have any ideas then please e- mail me back.

I had to break the bad news to her. I wonder if we should get a campaign going so they start making it again. When I was a kid, some schoolkids in Glasgow picketed a tv station (can't remember if it was BBC Scotland or STV) and persuaded them to keep showing Scooby Doo. Wonder what those young activists are doing now?

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So, it the difference between Bush/republicans and X/democrats still narrower than the difference between whatshisnameagain/Tories and Blair/Labour? I wish we could convince the people of this country to take the Lib-Dems seriously. It's hard if your government turns your stomach and you've got nowhere credible to move your support to.

Just read this interesting idea from Norman Solomon via ZNet (I've posted the whole message since you can't access it online without paying a premium subscription fee):

A Different Approach For The 2004 Campaign May 31, 2003 By Norman Solomon

Eighteen months from now, citizens will vote for president. If the 2004 campaign is anything like the last one, the election returns will mark the culmination of a depressing media spectacle.

For news watchers, the candidates and the coverage can be hard to take. Appearances on television are apt to become tedious, nauseating or worse. Campaign ads often push the limits of slick pandering. Journalists routinely seem fixated on "horseracing" the contest instead of reporting about the huge financial interests that candidates have served.

Media-driven campaigns now dominate every presidential race, badly skewed in favor of big money. And while millions of progressive- minded Americans are eager to have an impact on the political process, they often face what appears to be a choice between severe compromise and marginalization.

Remarkable transitions occur during presidential campaigns. People who are usually forthright can become evasive or even downright dishonest -- in public anyway -- when they declare themselves to be fervent supporters of a particular contender. Nuances and mixed assessments tend to go out the window.

Too often, "supporting" a candidate means lying about the candidate. Flaws rapidly disappear; virtues suddenly appear. Replicated at the grassroots, some kind of PR alchemy transforms longtime opportunists into profiles in courage and timeworn corporate flacks into champions of the common people.

This sort of dissembling was a big problem in 2000, when many left-leaning supporters of Al Gore ended up straining to portray the vice president as a steadfast foe of injustice. Under the perceived rules of the media game, they could not acknowledge Gore's sleazy aspects or the reality that he had done a lot to help move the nation's center of political gravity to the right. In countless media debates, Gore supporters tried to promote their standard-bearer as an implacable enemy of privilege -- notably unlike the actual candidate.

For a long time, many Democratic Party activists have privately bemoaned the party's subservience to corporate power while publicly extolling Democratic leaders as exemplary. The rationale for this schizoid behavior is that it's necessary for promoting a coherent media image.

There's at least one big problem: For millions of potential voters, that tactic just doesn't ring true. When they're invited to go along with a political line that lauds nominated hacks as visionaries, a lot of people would rather not vote -- or would much prefer to cast ballots for a small-party candidate who has no chance of winning but whose campaigners at least seem interested in being truthful and building an honest movement.

But what if progressive supporters of the Democratic presidential nominee tried something different next year? What if they resolved to be candid for all the world -- including all the news media -- to hear? The contrast would be striking.

Old mode: "Candidate X is an inspiring leader."

New mode: "Candidate X is rather phony, but compared to President Bush he's a knight in shining armor."

Old mode: "The record of Candidate X shows that he will return integrity to the White House."

New mode: "The record of Candidate X shows that he's a craven servant of corporate America. But I'm going to vote from him because George W. Bush is even worse."

Old mode: "Candidate X will bring balance to U.S. foreign policy."

New mode: "Candidate X is a deplorable militarist, but Bush is even more dangerous."

The new mode might sound a bit strange, even bizarre. But that ought to tell us something -- when candor seems weird and preposterous claims seem quite normal.

Such an approach could attract many progressives who want to end the Bush presidency but also want to be truthful in the process. For those who find the Democratic nominee to be odious but not as odious as George W. Bush, a new option would emerge -- what might be called "denunciatory support."

Candor during an election year may seem like a radical departure with hazy consequences. Admittedly, it's no guarantee of anything -- except more clarity and less obfuscation in American politics.

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Norman Solomon is co-author of "Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You." For an excerpt and other information, go to: www.contextbooks.com/new.h tml