Alain de Botton on why preparing conversation is as important as preparing a good salad for our summer picnic. He questions why we put so much effort into our social encounters, but leave our conversation to chance. With examples from history and literature, he argues that it’s when there are rules to our conversation that our spirit can best be set free.

then last night I heard Douglas Edwards, who was Google’s first director of consumer marketing and brand management, on BBC Radio4′s midweek programme. He told the story of sergey brin, who would at the end of each interview ask the “Hard” question. “I’ll give you five minutes, and when I come back, I want you to tell me something you understand very well, something very complicated I don’t know anything about, and explain it to me.” His rational was even if the interview was a right off, you could learn something new from the candidate.

With all that stuff processing around my brain about conversation and how we communicate i came across this video of possibly the best conversation ever(in two parts). please watch. you deserve it.

This week “Free spirit Mark prefers surfing to DIY, but his picky girlfriend Nicola is sick of living like a student. Can Mark and his mates give Nicola the chic, grown-up flat she craves?” The key to the programme is really the drama between, Marks’ vision for the change and the way Mark attempts to work out what Nicola would let him away with. Yet this is balanced out against Nicola being encouraged to dream for herself. Quite often you see Mark have a , ‘I want this but I know I will get killed if I do it’ moment. Yet Nicola is saying “Oh I like that, He better buy me this, I love this.” In many ways the realtionship is built up unnaturally in a picture for Mark always giving and Nicola always taking. I don’t think thats an accurate portrial of a good relationship.Does he get it right? I think he does really well to be honest. Tonight had laugh out loud moments, moments of shouting no don’t do that, it is remarkably engaging.

It is good television. The guy either mostly gets it right, or is supremely over confident and over estimates what can be done on budget and in time. But you generally get a feel for the guy and and the result at the end of the programme with the girls reaction is usually bang on in relation to the picture the programme gives you about the guy. I am unsure of the programmes history but it does bear a very strong resemblance to “don’t tell the bride” also on BBC3. a programme where an engaged couple are given £12,000 to make their dream wedding, but the catch is the guy had to buy and organise everything, (dress and all). I suspect the programmes are linked. to be honest i think “Mad about the house” is a the zenith of the format.

The Family on Channel 4
I really struggle to like this programme since they played with the format.
Series one was stunning. just unedited action from the house of the Hughes family.

There is nothing like it on the TV it’s brilliant. And it was stunningly different for TV. it had no voice over, no recorded peices to camera. just voyerism. pure voyerism.
The episode which ended with Simon, the dad, getting very angry and going round the house kicking things and turning off all the cameras, one by one so he could be angry without anyone watching, was one of the scariest, most affecting pieces of TV I have ever seen.
The scenes between Jane, the mother,  and her 14 year old son, Tom,  were pure joy.
Emotional, engaging, edgy and fragile. It was real life.

Series two featured the Grewal family.
I didn’t like it as much. I couldn’t put my finger on why not but i just couldn’t get into it as much.
The family were great, life was engaging, and in many ways it was bigger and more than Hughes. The dramr was more pronounced, and the family had more obvious issues bringing weight on the relationships.
Yet i struggled to connect with it.

Series three and The Adesinas.
Tonight’s episode focuses on the female members of the family how they find their place and their relationships within this large house. It is still dramatic, and with moments of joy and fun and like all families distress and friction.

I can’t get it, yet i think i know what the problem is. The problem is the occasional talk to camera. you will see something happens. Then up pops a brother delivering a “talking head” analysis of the relationship/situation. Its totally frustrating, let us watch whats happening or give us a propre voice over. The talking head thing has ruined it for me.
The thing the first series did well was it didn’t explain the obvious. It was better for it.

So we need a solution.

We live in a valley surrounded by quite big hills so getting a TV signal is quite an issue, currently we cannot get BBC1 or 2 on digital, was can get a poor analogue signal but,
Virgin doesn’t cover our area,
BT Vision relies on a minimum broad band connection speed, (which we cannot vouch for),

there appears to be three main solutions
1 – we buy/rent the field next to us off the rich man and site a satellite dish there.
2 – we replace the entire existing Ariel system for the house
3 – we do away with broadcast media and rely solely on technology such as 4OD, BBC iplayer, STVplayer & OnDemand five.
ideally though any new system/solution would allow for accessibility cross a wireless network to varied different devices.

but we are open to hearing people’s experiences/thoughts?

any ideas? seriously answers on the back of an envelope!

Tropical Storm Agatha blows a hole in Guatemala City
Hundreds dead as torrential rain sweeps Central America. Sinkhole in Guatemala swallows three-storey building

(picture and quote from the guardian website.)

Am I the only one who appears to have missed this on the news?
the pictures are stunningly, terribly, unreal.

I didn’t like it as an idea and said no. I just don’t like it as a story/point.
Due to all the hype I know what she looks like, but like Paul Potts before her, i have missed the performance and the event totally.

Cheryl Lawrie posted this on her blog yesterday

I was as moved as anyone, but wordy, the woman just wants to sing. Do we have to make her the pin-up girl to promote all our own moral agendas? Aren’t we just using her as much as the show is itself?

I am inclined to agree with her entirely.

if i had to rate them then

1 Milton Jones – Absolutely Hilarious
2 Harry Hill – Just Beautiful
3 John Shuttleworth – every song a winner
4 Bill Bailey – good set
5 Joe fisher – Had a hard audience of youthworkers to work with. His “cuddling for the kingdom” was very funny though

anyway
on saturday we, ( and a mean a reasonably large group of us went to see mark steel at the Glasgow comedy festival.
it was quite funny. marks set was based around being radical and being over 40. Is observations about how he has changed and how how his perspective on what and how he believes politically, has changed and developed as he has grown older. it was very funny.

I did wonder how the rest of the guys I was with felt about it.
I had an idea about his Marxist background and how his politics had been very definitely left. I am not sure that many of the guys I was with were that aware of just how political the show would be. (it was a relatively gentle politics, but it did ground the majority of the set.)

Anyway the night was fun.
Most of us laughed consistently and had a good time.
where would he have come on my list above? Joint forth with Bill Bailey probably. (PS the top 4 are quite close together so forth isn’t bad at all.

you could read rich’s thoughts here

I did the same thing aged 18 with some of my welding buddies. (Only describing a complicated welding process and not a crime scene, and I didn’t swear!) If you can find it on youtube it is simply class, hilarious and weird all at the same time.

class, pure class.
I am enjoying quite alot currently.
you should try?

I have watched several foreign language films. some being delightful, some being good, some being weird but awesome.

none have got under my skin like ping-pong. it was on TV last night and it just spoke to me again.

the more i watch the film the more i want to watch the film. (small recap – the film is the story of two friends. they differ and life takes turns over the course of a year but table tennis runs a path through the friends differing paths.) There is just something about the film I love. it makes sense. I guess it is a part of me.

the film has an atmosphere which draws me in. I just like it.

Unfortunately for me the wife can’t stand it.
Fortunately for me it is usually on the TV late at night after my wife is much bothered about watching TV!

last night it was on
last night i stayed up for the entire movie.

It was good to see again.

I listened to Barack Obama’s speech on the radio. He sounded like someone confident with speaking.
When I listened to George W Bush, I didn’t get the same feeling.

The daily show clip above made the issue clearer for me.
did george bush not get a fair chance because he did not sound as confident as an orator
I don’t think he ever had a chance.

I wonder though how i judge others.
do i listen more to how things are said rather than what is said?

time to reflect I guess.