Stuff

I bought a copy of "They F*** You Up" (yes that is it's title, asterisks and all) by Oliver James which had been reduced as sommat weird going on with the last few pages and the way they were cut. Title taken from that most memorable of Philip Larkin poems. It's a nice hard back book, I've been reading it and it's quite interesting. His idea in this book is that the way your parents related to you due to various factors (gender, birth order, whether you were a favoured/unfavoured child, the state of family fortunes at the time you were born, etc - you get the idea) has a lot more influence on your personality than most people believe. He says of nature/nurture it's 50/50, but traits that we see as inherent as part of of our character he says are to do with the way we have learned to behave as we have grown up. For example, he suggests that firstborns are more likely to endorse their parent's sense of morality than are lastborns who must learn individuality to gain their parents' attention. Also says that "genius" children are almost always hothoused, and it is this hothousing that brings out that level of exceptional-ness. And similarly with negativity. I won't go on any more. but you get the idea. Quite interesting. I'm about a quarter of the way through. And am still reading Catch 22, though have kind of stopped in order to read this.

Big Brother, I have really lost interest. But as E4 is now on Freeview. I have been watching a bit of that. At the moment is seems to be all Friends, Sex and the City, The OC and Hollyoaks. First three fine, last one not fine; actually I don't know whether the last one is anygood as i haven't watched it since I was at school as it got very annoying and depressing, it used to be a very light, silly once or twice a week thing now I think it's C4 have thrusted soap status on it after the demise of Brookside. Oh and Big brother of course. Oh and of course there is a lot of Big Brother on E4.

Springwatch with Bill Oddie on BBC2 has been great. lots of newborn birds to watch, and their parents. On yesterday's programme there were many ducks. Including the eider duck. No mallards though.