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As a child I listened to the Housemartins Happy Hour relentlessly. Subsequently the beautiful South became a band responsible for several catchy tunes with the odd quirky lyric which stayed with me throughout my teenage years. Their songs seemed to have a strangely addictive quality some would describe as irritating. For what it is worth, I liked them although I guess like a lot of people the Beautiful South kind of dropped off the radar a bit and it is probably a good thing that they have decided to move on.

This is an important development. Those of us who want to use our mobiles overseas usually get fleeced with many types of calls being charged over a pound per minute. Hopefully this announcement from Three will be the first of many from the other cellular operators.

There now appears to be some doubt over whether we will get to see The Return of Kylie live in Manchester next Friday. I have had my tickets for around a month, and was encouraged by positive reviews of Kylie Minogue at the M.E.N. Arena the night before last.

While I was warming up for next week’s performance with the Showgirl Homecoming Tour on Channel 4 it would seem that the diminutive deva ran out of energy and an Ill Kylie canceled show on Saturday. Will just have to keep an eye on the M.E.N Arena website for further news. Clearly the most important thing is that Kylie is feeling well soon. And if the gig on the 19th has to be canceled for health reasons. Then so be it.

A little sad to see Pegasus Mail go. Although I guess I am as responsible as the next man as I have not used the email client in quite a few years. I guess Pmail was the first email application I really used on a regular basis in the early 1990s. I flirted briefly with Eudora, and have tried one or two others. But for the most part I have been reasonably content with various versions of Outlook since 98. Outlook does most of what I need it to do, and it synchronises well with my various mobile devices.

I appear to have satisfied my thirst for trivia, and become a regular at a weekly pub quiz hear in Worcester. These are not particularly competitive events, more about socialising and drinking as much as answering actual questions. I used to enjoy a good pub quiz up in Preston and I am glad to have found one in Worcester. In early December dolphin were joined by some of our colleagues from the US and Sweden. It would have been rude not to drag them along to a the great British pub quiz which is something of an institution! We were slightly mortified with our final score of 21 out of 40 until we learned that the winning score was 23 out of 40. I guess the questions were pretty tough that night.

But then just yesterday evening, our much depleted team managed the same score 21 out of 40. So did we really need the extra team members? Or was last night’s winning team with a victorious 32 out of 40 especially switched on? There is really no science to it at all. And it just serves to highlight how farcical quizzes and tests really are at measuring anything. That’s not to even mention the social and cultural bias of the examiner.

Anyway, more importantly we had a decent enough evening.

That’s the spicy stuff with Indian subcontinent influences, not the VJ and Podcaster Adam.

A couple of weeks before Christmas I ticked off another Worcester curry house. Ashley’s on the Tything is in my opinion just the tiniest bit soulless. It was all hard floors and European ambient music. I have nothing against a curry house trying to be modern. It doesn’t have to be flop wall paper, thick table cloths and carpets to have character. Staff with a bit more personality wouldn’t go a miss, and even if the music is modern, what’s wrong with a touch of bhangra?

I can think of 3 excellent modern curry houses I’ve been to: Shere Khan Manchester, Akbar Leeds and Shimla Pinks in Birmingham who all deliver the authentic modern curry house experience.

Ashley’s seems to fall between two stools, it seems like a curry house trying to be modern, but I was left wondering what it had been like before the refurb.

Anyway, a solid enough 6 out of 10 for me for not screwing anything up, oh and the excellent soft fluffy narn bread. But I don’t want to be organised enough for B.Y.O. I wonder how well Ashley’s would be doing were it not for Threshers with their healthy supply of Indian lager just across the street? And charging for poppadoms? What’s that all about? Last time that happened to me I was in Australia of all places.

Apart from staying up to listen to England getting a comprehensive thrashing by the Ausies on Test Match Special over the past few weeks. My usually unstable sleep patterns are now pretty settled. When I was working at home for 3 years my sleep was all over the place. So I think the regular hours are suiting me nicely.

Disturbed sleeping patterns affect a lot of blind people. There has been significant research conducted in that area. Doesn’t it have something to do with not getting enough daylight and unusually low levels of melatonin. Quite a few blind people I know take Melatonin supplements to help regulate their sleep patterns and the people who use Melatonin can’t rate it highly enough.

I have a history of dodgy sleep patterns, but if I can possibly help it I prefer not to take anything to help me sleep. In fact I have to be pretty ill before I will start hitting the medication. I have had a drop of winter flu, but I think I’m in the process of kicking that into touch. And all things considered I am in pretty rude health thank you for asking.

The Assistive Technology Industry Association annual conference is held in Florida a the end of January and I will hopefully see some of you there. I am going to see Kylie in concert at the Manchester Evening News Arena first on the 19th though.

The Monty Python musical is called Spamelot and it is currently playing the west end. With any luck I will catch it some time in February.

March is the California State University conference on disability and yours truly should be there for the first time this year.

April will mark one year working for Dolphin and living in Worcester and this will be a time to reflect.

May is the end of the English football season and with any luck Liverpool will win something!

June is always a busy time with lots of birthdays in my Calendar.

In July as well as being at more conferences including Sight Village in Birmingham in the UK. I will be featured on a Microsoft Calendar that month.

August is a strange time as it is the height of the UK media silly season.

Either in August or September I will take some holiday. Two Pints Roberts over at www.mproberts.co.uk and I are kicking around the idea of going on a distillery tour in Scotland.
October is when the European Blind Union will be holding their general assembly and I would like to be involved in some capacity. Watch this space.

By the time November gets here I’ll be 31!

And finally December brings us up to the top of the next year.

May your 2007 be heaven. Mine is shaping up to be a little belter!