Cinema Paradiso: Ushers With Powers of Arrest.

It's all true and right and good and must be implemented immediately for a better world.

Santa Claws

The magnificent Simon's Cat. Anyone who has or had cats knows that every frame is true.

It's a measure of the appeal of Simon's Cat that I'm happy to shill for his merchandise for free. Now that's success.

Fail Better

I caught this last night by accident, and it was serendipitous, given my own perennial fretful brainfizzings and the recent sacking of Chris Hughton.

It's screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce's talk The Joy of Failure on Radio 3's Night Waves. His thesis is that failure is not something to be fearful of, rather that progress (and Post-It Notes) depend on mistakes.

"Is this pathology-ward level cheering and waving really encouragement? Or is it a strange new morbid dread of failure? Boyce ... makes a passionate plea for the traditional enemies of happiness - error, disappointment and, above all, failure. Bad ideas have often led to great discoveries, he claims, and human knowledge is dependent on our ability to continue making mistakes."

45 minutes of thoughtful, funny and interesting.

Brian #3: Pupil Friction.

Teachers, yesterday, enjoying Brian on the internet.

The best thing about teaching, and there were so many best things, was simply filling young minds with knowledge.

Peter in America

A half hour World Service interview with novelist Peter Carey on the back of Parrot and Olivier in America.

"[Information should come from] a diverse, a great number of sources... There should be an education system that teaches it's still important to be able to read, that it's not enough to get a ten-second grab on television that's amusing. You would imagine an education system that led to an educated population that could actually read books - any books."

"I never washed my cars, which upset my father terribly. In fact, he once found a potato growing in the back seat."

Freezo, Freezas, Freezat. But Especially Freezas.

It got cold. You might have noticed. A couple of nights ago it was down to four degrees below freezing. Quite notable, at the time. It was cold. Going to bed early was the only option.

Then it dropped to minus seven.

That was cold. I mean, for Scotland - parts of Scotland, anyway, I know there's people in the Highlands who would say 'minus seven? Luxury!' if only their faces unfroze enough to speak.

Last night it started to get really cold. Icy sky, sharp, flinty stars. Really bitter. We watched the thermometer drop - well, I did. Laura sat on the sofa with a look that said 'stop opening the front door, you freakish thermo-voyeur.'

That's minus nine. And still it fell. When I finally went to bed, we'd run out of thermometer. There were no more degrees left:

At approximately twelve degrees below freezing, it fell off the bottom of the thermometer. They say it'll be warmer by the weekend. We've about a bucket and a half of coal left. I don't think I've looked forward to four degrees centigrade quite so eagerly.

And to put my photographic pretensions to shame, here's Jason Baxter, a local photographer. If all went to plan he was up this morning before dawn to hike to the top of Broad Law to take a photograph of the sunrise. I'd do the same, obviously, but, you know, I've comic stuff to draw. Important, gosh, yes. Inside. Goggles! That's what it is, I've no goggles.

Edit: well, he did it, the nutcase. Chapeau!

Brian #2: What Kind Of Party Do You Never Want To Go To?

A long agenda, the end of the day, other things to do and someone firing up a projector and PowerPoint. The perfect storm of pencil-chewing abomination.

The high point of my enthusiastic involvement (time span: one year) was being on the committee that drafted the Home-School agreement, a document which took about three months to write, went out with fanfare to parents, was solemnly signed and returned and was never referred to again.

I expressed my rage in badger form.