Media Diet Weeks 16/17

Press: swanning off to Cyprus in the middle of last week meant I had almost no news between Tuesday 5 April and Thursday 24th. I was given a free copy of the Manchester Evening News at the airport, which I promptly thrust in my hand luggage. It remained unread for 5 days, at which point I discovered Bez from Happy Mondays had made the front page for being made bankrupt again. Er, right. Scintillating stuff. (Not.) Surely a city of Manchester's size and stature could produce a bigger story than that? But apparently not. You can see why I didn't miss the news...

Blogs: not much to report here. I logged into Bloglines once while I was away, felt overwhelmed at the sight of 90-odd unread feeds that had clocked up in just a couple of days and promptly logged out again. Sally at Getting Ink wrote a very thoughtful post on the elusive work/life balance. Her post and the subsequent comments apply whether or not you have spawn. I don't, but still struggle to separate work and personal stuff at times and it's a particular issue for freelances. Something to muse on this weekend.

TV/radio: I tuned into Radio 2 bright and early this morning to learn that the great Humphrey Littleton has left us. He always made me cry with laughter on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. I'm sure I'm at the end of a very long queue of people who will miss his splendid wit and musical talent. I didn't miss the TV much while away - it was easy to catch up with EastEnders and The Archers by reading the web synopses and iPlayer will come in handy this afternoon to catch up on last Saturday's Doctor Who episode, the only programme I really felt deprived of. Hotel telly is never much cop. As usual, the main offering was BBC World, which is just about tolerable for global headlines but little else. This channel only seems to produce about one documentary a week, which is then repeated endlessly and plugged even more. I started to go crazy after 2 days of adverts for a programme on trafficked Nepali women, which seemed to be shown every 15 minutes between the headlines and weather. While I feel for the plight of these women, the relentless plugging only served to turn me off watching. Make of that what you will, Aunty...

Books: I just managed to finish Martin Edwards' The Cipher Garden before my trip and am not sure whether to be cross or pleased that he managed to mislead me so wonderfully over the ID of the murderer. I took Tom Reynolds' Blood, Sweat and Tea away with me for a holiday read as it was both light-hearted and thought-provoking. And now I've just started Blitzed! by Steve Strange, for yet another take on the events of my misspent youth.