The Glass Box is the place where you can comment on what you heard on PM, interact with other listeners and get responses from the people who make the programme.
Unfortunately there is no programme on a Sunday. So instead, why not review the hour you spent between 5 and 6 pm today - whatever you did? Then a PM editor will comment on it later, and possibly criticise what you did.
Please be ready to justify all your activity.
Also on the right, you'll find FAQ: try it.
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Eric, you are taking this blog waaaay too seriously!
Now, put down your coffee, grab a glass of something yard-army, and hie thee to the Beach where plans are afoot for a weekend's froggy revelry (and a few rude songs, knowing me..) not a hop-skip-stagger from London.
Remember to bring the Sony.......
Fifi
(planning to spend the PM hour loafing in the gazebo, pretending it's warmer than it really is)
OK, it's 5pm and the news is on.
I am sitting up straight in the gazebo, trying to decide if it's too early for a glass of... the usual. You know.
And starting to look at some frankly over-wordy PPT presentations supposed to help people with M.E.
Much more of this unnecessary verbiage and I'll have the symptoms of M.E. myself!
That settles it: cab sav shiraz for Fifi.....
Fifi
An hour of sport for me - armchair sport that is! Cheering on Nadal in the final of the French Open, and then hoping Lewis Hamilton can stay in front for the Canadian GP.
It's now 5.25 p.m. and about halfway through my Sunday PM Hour.
To date, I've wiped about 2mm of dust from some suitcases under the bed, sorted through their contents, and been listening to File on Four about C02 emissions trading.
All pretty productive, but now I'm taking a break.
It's hot today, guys!
(for what it's worth ..... I had a lovely lazy lunch with friends earlier today, sitting by a cool stream in the garden of a wellknown pub at the foot of the South Downs. And wishing fellow froggers could have shared the moment.)
Hope you're enjoying your weekend, Eric!
17:40 and I'm still here, patiently weeding out bad design, cluttered wording, boggy detail and other rubbish from this presentation.
Some people just shouldn't be allowed near PowerPoint (other over-whizzy presentation packages are available, more's the pity). Use flip-charts! Just TALK!
The cab sav shiraz is proving popular with the presenter, and a wood pigeon has pooped on the gazebo roof.
So far, the hour is going well.
Fifi
At 5pm I stopped unpacking and made a cup of Red Bush* tea; opened emails (with difficulty) -- heard from a friend that Eddie had set up a Sunday Glass Box so wandered over to have look; took a couple of phone calls on the way; thought how handsome and lovely Eddie Mair is.
Blimey, that took me an hour?!?! Better get back to the unpacking!
*Naughty Corner plesae Gossipmistress!
18:28 and the post-hour Glass Box meeting is underway.
The editorial verdict is that we passed the hour constructively and in keeping with the ethics of the 91Èȱ¬ Constitution.
Across the nation boxes have been unpacked, suitcases dusted, presentations kicked into shape, carbon trading shown to be a blinking moneygrabbing distraction from climate change, and assorted beverages consumed.
Another successful Sunday! Well done everyone.
Daisy T Cat occupies the Producer's chair across the desk from the presenter. We owe it all to her.
Fifi
Finished an arrangement of an obscure Gershwin song for vocal group (ended up in seven parts, whcih is a bit optimistic) piano and bass.
Allocated 10% of right ear to cricket commentary.
Time now for a glass of wine.
Feeling bored were you, Eddie? As Fifi said, you are in danger of taking this and all of us far too seriously - or are you just out to increase the workload of PM editors (perish the thought).
O.K. so there being no PM to drag me indoors, I was in the garden finishing off planting out my trophies from yesterday's village fete. Great plants and you know that if they grew in someone's garden in the village they will probably grow in mine. Just before six I came in to remind SO that he was due to pick up members of son's band, who rehearse on a Sunday, and redistribute them across Derby. Now he's back and I must go and see to supper and listen to the Archers.
That enough detail for the editors?
Husband off to down south to work,a day early.Spent from 5 to twenty past listening to him rant about weekend people driving slowly and showing signs of maybe having fun. I agreed that it was disgraceful.Spent rest of hour ordering something beautiful for daughter's birthday. It needed 4 batteries but the system would only allow me to order one pack of two as opposed to two packs of two. Cat now asleep with head on part of keyboard. Have to lift her ear if I want to press y or t or h. Six o'clock whiskey and lemonade because I'm worth it
Between five and six I listened a CD my colleague made me. I fell in love with a song called Our Lips are Sealed by Fun Boy Three.
I really like discovering new music.
I also had an aural hallucination where I thought someone was calling my name. I ate a Fry's turkish delight. It wasn't full of eastern promise but was really sweet and made me feel a bit addled.
Update on the PM Hour: after logging the earlier entry, I wandered outside to survey the garden. Global warming makes for very tall nettles, all of which had grown in the last week, so on with the gloves and a therapeutic half hour of nettle pulling, complete with tingly arms.
Now, at 8 p.m., my arms are still tingling, but I know nettle stings have benefits too so will not complain. And, after chopping some mean chillies for an evening curry, my fingers are also tingling ......
If you're single
And you tingle
Do you suffer in your bed?
Or if married
And you're harried
Do you glow a lot instead?
Can't think why that came into my head. Must be time for a drink.
Big Sister - a bit of tingling never goes amiss, I find. And nor does your preferred antidote.
. . 'Shearsh!'
Fifi
My hour was mainly spent watching Mom and Dad Robin who were tirelessly catching flies, perching on fence, watching our cat, and disappearing into thick ivy, where I can neither see nor hear any signs of a nest or chicks. I fear the little ones will not be as well protected once they leave their nest. My cat is old and lazy, and does not actively go out hunting, but I can't see her turning her nose up at a chick which happens to drop at her feet ;o(
It's not me that's malicious......it's the cat! That's my first comment of the day!
Mostly I sat and watched 2 swans and 8 cygnets, in the river running by my back garden.
(I'd attach a picture if I knew how!)
Utterly unjustifiable, if you were to ask, but most enjoyable none the less.
nikki
Dick Hobbs - what an interesting way to spend a Sunday, arranging Gershwin for 7 voices!
Sounds like you might enjoy my friend Chris's blog ...
... or even have things in common?
Fifi
Well I was in Studland and Fifi was in her gazebo --
Eddie may even have a picture to prove it!
I was asleap from 4:45 until 5:45, recovering from over exertion wandering around garden centres looking for a specific type of implement that I have no clue how to use.
The final 15 minutes of the hour were spent recovering from the sleep, bleary eyed, wondering why I forgot to buy some hayfever tablets this morning.
And I still probably heard as much of PM as I manage on an average weekday :-( I really really really must get a DAB radio that has a programme recorder built in so I can listen to it at bedtime rather than listen to the rub....err the excellent programming that is on at that time.
Pinkle (11): Ah, the memories of the Fun Boy Three. I once bought that song for someone special - it was out around the same time as True by Spandau Ballet if I remember correctly...I think I bought her both. 1983. I was 17, she was 18, we married two years later and divorced twelve years after that.
(Adopts Paul Whitehouse voice from The Fast Show) Ain't romance brill-yant?
Typical Moz ( 3 ) I mean the PM team spends the best part of six days trying its level best to make sure the world sport doesn't get a look in between 5 & 6 ( Wimbledon excepted ) and the minute our backs are turned, what do we get - an hour of sport! An hour. Otherwise, I get the feeling that far too much of the Sunday PM audience was spent either in the garden - or drinking or possibly both. I confess I am now worried that someone in a black polo neck might come up with the not so bright idea of a real Sunday PM. Please, for the sake of my kids...
Nikki - email your picture to PM! We all want to see your lovely cygnets!!!
Fifi
Between 5 and 6 I would assess my performance as *sluggish* (although it didn't involve eating any hostas or lettuce). I was still at work in a building hot enough to fry a camel.
The haematology machine had given up *Out of operative temperature range* and I knew how it felt. I wondered about sticking the same message to my forehead.
From 8.30am they had poured in (2 by 2 in their 4 by 4's?) and it seems that someone was out last night causing acutely sore legs which magically got better by the time they got to the surgery. And the others were all really sick ones needing blood samples which the machine happily rejected saying 'overheated! overheated!'.
And all the inpatients were on drips which we'd go round unblocking and as soon as we'd finished they'd stop and we had to start unblocking all over again.....
Apart from that it was a really lovely day.
Can I get out of this glass box now please, it's awfully hot in here........
I have to say - nikki's cygnets *would* be more exciting than Fifi's Gazebo :-) and maybe my beach!
nikki - right click on you pic - then click send as email and email it to
pm@bbc(dot)co(dot)uk
Obviously dot's are .
I think a Sunday PM is just what we all need (ducks as a well aimed hard plastic toy flung in despair by one RA whizzes past head)
Between 5 and 6 I was speeding guests on their way back to their holiday accomodation, somewhat earlier than I had anticipated but it turned out that one was allergic, not only to cats in situ but also to anything that cats had been within 30 yards of (ok roughly 10 metres) within the last month. We have 3 cats all of whom have the run of the house so obviously she was on a loser from the moment she stepped inside the front door.
Since she had corrected me at lunchtime when one of her fellow visitors asked what was on the saucer with her coffee ( I said knowledgeably, since I live here and have lunched in the place where we were several times'that's a piece of Orkney fudge'. No it's not she said it's tablet. It's not tablet I said with my charming smile stretched rictus like over gritted teeth it's orkney fudge. No no she said it's tablet It's a scottish thing like very crystalline fudge'. )
Anyway obviously you can see why I wasn't sorry to see her go - if I can just explain this is a group of three people, one of whom I knew slightly and not the one thankfully who kept telling me I was wrong.
(It must be my face, a very loud lady from Birmingham contradicted me in very decisive fashion recently when I said that we had just switched to decaffeinated coffee and it seemed to have more flavour than the stuff with the caffeine left in. 'No it doesnt' she asserted ' it tastes exactly the same'. Well it's good to know she has such sensitive taste buds. Maybe its the water they drink in Birmingham.)
After that I settled down to watch the Canadian Grand Prix which was very exciting but since the race started at 6 it fell outside the magic PM hour.
Actually Rupert you might like to point out to your opposie number who does do the 6 o clock on Sunday that one thing that is consistently missing is the Grand Prix result. I know the 91Èȱ¬ doesn't show it, but it's curmudgeonly to pretend it doesn't even happen.
Re: Rupert - Well that 'someone' might care to address some real loopholes in the output before we question introducing another hour of PM.
Did anyone else question Sunday mornings fifty mins of wailing from Jerusalem?
Perhaps the low mono bitrate of DAB currently used on Radio 4 made it all the more awful. For us lucky ones with televisions, News 24 saved us.
Can you (Rupert) perhaps enlighten us as to why Radio 4 seems to abandon its core listeners on a Sunday morning? - or even better, alert feedback? Is this another of Mark Damazer's 'never touch it policies'?
I've tried on countless occasions to ask the question on Feedback but they are always pre-occupied with the Archers latest storyline or similar :-(
I am aware that there has been a good Rajar quarter for Radio 4 - but really! can't we do a little better between 8am - 9am on a Sunday?
PUSH!
PUSH!
PUSH!
Hrrrumppph........................|
Admin: It wasn't Gillian that spoke to you was it?
Gillian isn't normally loud - but she is from the vicinity.
By the way admin - was sitting here in the kitchen - blogging --yesterday and heard the cat flap go,(Click clack, clickety clack)
Big meaty Tabby bowls in (with a white paw) and swallows up our Harry's din dins!!!
I didn't have the heart to say anything though.
Between 5.00 pm and 6.00 pm I was listening to the cricket on the other radio 4 whilst, for the first 20 minutes, retuning a TV set. The terrestrial 91Èȱ¬1 channel had mysteriously de-tuned itself. ("Cable" is usually reliable, but one can't be too careful, I find.) Once I had accomplished this, I found that the other 4 channels had followed the example of 91Èȱ¬1 in receiving only snow - so I retuned them, too.
Shortly after I had completed this task, my wife found the instuction book.
At 5.20 pm I made a cup of tea, lit my pipe and took a recently inherited VCR (without manual) to a TV set (manufactured before the invention of the printing press) and introduced them to each other in the hope that they would communicate. By 5.45 pm they had happily bonded so I was able to watch Master L. Hamilton sitting in his motor car while I listened to the tribulations of Messrs Panesar and Sidebottom.
A productive hour, apart from the unrewarded efforts of the white clad heroes.
Master Hamilton later completed his work even more successfully than I.
jonnie (25): Completely agree re Sunday schedules. Perhaps its a public service thing? Worthy but unpopular...
By 5pm my bottle of "house red" had already been opened and my wife and I were enjoying the glorious afternoon sunshine in Northern Ireland.
I had almost completed Espresso Tales by Alexander McCall Smith (worth a read especially if you know Edinburgh) then the cows arrived.
Where we live a farmer keeps a field just behind our house as a kind of maternity unit and we currently have 1 mother and 3 week old calf and 1 mother to be.
Just prior to the arrival of the cows my wife had emerged from the kitchen with a loaf of bread (allegedly past it's sell-by date) and attempted to heave bits of the loaf into the field for the cows.
Her aim was questionable and the lumps of bread just about managed to get over the fence.
Cows however really like the smell of bread and so we had all three rooting around perilously near to our garden fence.
I managed to retrieve what was left of the loaf and get it somewhat further away into the field which thankfully saved the fence from the bovine heavyweights.
Danger over, I poured another glass and finished my book.
In a surprising development (though perhaps not too surprising to those who read my earlier Beach posting), all but the final 10 minutes of the slot under discussion, would have found me asleep in bed, fully clothed, with the electric blanket on.
Not normal service for a Sunday in the Val P household, but nerve-induced over-indulgence the previous evening had left me in need of tender care. An hour during the early afternoon, however, saw us (also completely uncharacteristically) at a local Sunday Market, searching for a large bag of bird nuts. We found these easily, £1.80 for 2kg, so we bought 2. However, we couldn't get out without also buying: 2 bags of Sam's fave dog treats for a great price, other dog owners will know which ones if I mention that they are 'beloved' by him; 1 pair of flip-flops which promisingly describe themeselves as anti-fatigue footwear; 1 very large steak pie for the princely sum of £2 (to serve 4 but subsequently consumed by 2, oops); 1 bush saw blade which we have been trying to source from bnq for months; 1 2nd hand drill chuck for 50p on the grounds that it had more teeth left than ours; and last, but not least, 1 phone charger for free, charmed from the kindly geordie stall-holder, because SO wished to dismantle it in the spirit of enquiry to examine the workings for a piezo electric something (it didn't).
So there we are, oh yes and I needed the electric blanket on because it is STILL GREY AND FOGGY AND DRIZZLY UP HERE. 91Èȱ¬ weather dept, please do something about this.
ps - it's now Monday morning and bad weather still applies, so I'm off to Aberdeen instead :o)
Recorded yesterday at 5.00 p.m.
It’s 17.01 and Robbie Dog enters the Diary Room
Big Brother: Hello Robbie.
Robbie Dog: Hello Big Brother.
BB: You want to talk to us Robbie, what about?
RD: I want to leave the house.
BB: Why do you want to leave the house?
RD: You haven’t kept to the guarantee that you gave me when I agreed to enter the house.
BB: What precisely do you think that we have defaulted on?
RD: It’s to do with the entrants to the house.
BB: Yes, what about them?
RD: Well I’m not unique like you said I would be.
BB: Oh, yes you are.
RD: No, I’m not.
BB: Robbie, you are the only canine in the house. That is what we guaranteed.
RD: No. You said that I would be the only dog in the house.
BB: Robbie, Big Brother will get back to you.
I would like to know why there isn’t one of these on Saturday.
Re Jason -- Sunday service, very witty as always!
I'd rather some change in the sheduling, perhaps the service could be brought up later in the day and swop places with Paddy? or Desert Island?
It's just so wrong where it is.
What was I doing between 5pm and 6pm? I was enjoying a glass of vino collapso pronto, whilst watching a DVD. I hope I don't get criticised too much!
Well what fun it's been reading this thread on Monday morning. I couldn't read it yesterday because unlike anyone else except GM, I was working. 150 miles away in beautiful Leominster Priory. The only time I've been there when it hasn't been absolutely freezing. It was glorious, the only inconvenience being that I was stuck inside for the 3 best hours of the afternoon (apart from the 3 hour car journey, obviously) at the rehearsal.
You want a breakdown of the last hour of rehearsal? Well I nearly had one, for a start. 4 of the trickiest pieces in the orchestral repertoire. 2 of which I hadn't played for 20 years. Put it together on the day, it'll be fine...
Capriccio Espagnole (loud). Death & Transfiguration (slow, thank goodness, more time to read the millions of notes). Don Juan (loud & fast, apart from the slow bit in the middle) Firebird Suite (slow, quiet, bars in 12 - I can barely count to 6 in a bar's rest, never mind 12...then loud & fast).
One string broke in rehearsal, another started to unwind & had to be changed. Must be the heat.
Just time to bolt down warm egg sandwich I'd brought from home before concert started. Sandwich wasn't warm when I left home but had spent 8 hours in hot car. Spent concert worrying I might have food poisoning. Didn't.
91Èȱ¬ at midnight, too tired to look at blog. Now THAT is tired!!
Zzzzzzzzzzz... Zzzzzz...
I spent my hour cooking for my tired family (we spent the day down by the river in Richmond - the North Yorkshire one), who were all sitting quietly at the table doing Sudoku puzzles from the paper. Except the little one, who was reading his library books. French doors opened onto the garden, and a bottle of white in the fridge.
A good hour all round. And a lot less exhausting than Annasee's!
Seconding Rupert @ 20...
While we do all *love* our jobs tremendously, and value *every minute* of being in the PM office, a Sunday PM might - how do I put this tactfully - test the patience of our otherwise stoic family and friends. And my sanity.
Jonnie (27) How very dare you! I have never let a drop of decaf pass my lips! ;o)
And is there really place called Studland? Does it live up to its name?
Between 5 and 6 I was dosing on the couch while half-watching an old Steve Martin film. After that, I woke up and went to sleep.
jonnie, in the interests of peace and harmony, no it wasn't Gillian unless she has recently taken a holiday in Orkney and been dumped by what must be a very long suffering husband at a card demonstration/class. which seems unlikely somehow.
I was going to get so much done this morning, Monday being my one totally clear day but have been interrupted by almost constant phone calls. My norwegian homework is suffering badly from scheduling slippage.
Marc and Rupe might have lives, but Eddie clearly doesn't have enough to do on a Sunday.
5 pm saw us all returning home from Stowfest - a worthy, if curiously unatmospheric, attempt to bring live music to the people of Mid Suffolk.
And then, sadly, it was an hour of domestic the usual domestic chaos. First, sorting clean washing and placing it in kids rooms where it will lurk, without being put away, until either it gets worn again or falls on the floor to merge with the dirty washing already there. Then, returning to the kitchen, note with alarm that 12-year-old is making chocolate scones to his own recipe. Kitchen filled with a haze of flour and cocoa powder that would probably have exploded if we'd lit a match.
While packing PE kits, discovered that middle child's yellow swimming hat is missing. Send youngest to bottom of swimming pool to retrieve it and rescue a little frog that has fallen in during the day. Put frog in veg patch to eat nasty slugs and pick some broad beans for tea.
Rachel - you've trained the little frog to pick broad beans for you?
Must have been very grateful to be rescued I suppose.
In the PM hour I was:
Hacking down 6' tall stinging nettles in a spot of the garden that last year was under a tree
Cutting down the suckers of said tree and a few others that are trying to regrow after being cut down last year
Tried, and eventually succeed in getting a juvenile Blackbird out of the garden shed that it had flown into while I was hacking away.
A glass of wine was still several hours away at this stage.
Presumably some of the many who failed to give us a glimpse of what they were up to were up to prcisely what one presumes some of those same many are up to at five o'clock on a Sunday afternoon.
I wonder what I can be thinking of.
PS What was Eddie doing, I wonder?
Yes, indeed, very dextrous little froggy. Sorry about that. Got rather carried away with my domestic bliss and distracted by the sex ed. policy I'm supposed to be editing.
Rupert @ 20
Who told you I'm wearing a black polo neck..?
...anyway, I've had a word with your kids who say (contrary to what you indicate) that they'd be grateful (I'm not using their exact terminology you understand..) if it could be arranged for you to be involved in a Sunday PM programme. In addition to your existing rota of duties. Of course.
Why, Rupert, you should feel this is a "...not so bright idea..." I can't think. I found the children to be intelligent and concise; putting forward a very good case on their/your behalf...
So, suggestion seconded.
Admin Annie (42) I have to admit it......yes, my husband is very long-suffering ;o(
Re Gillian (40) Yes there is a place called Studland near Poole harbour in Dorset although I have never made use of the beach there! Honest! Never!!! Why won't you believe me?!?
As to whether it lives up to its name it quite possibly does. You will have to ask someone who has actually spent some time there rather than just driven through. You still do not believe me, do you?
H.
Well, between 5 and 6 yesterday I was walking the streets with a pram, trying to rock my little boy to sleep.
And it worked... unitl I got back home, and then he woke up 5 minutes later.
Hi guys. Been too busy to frog or go down to the beach for ages. Must do something about that. Like retire. Well, I am working on it ;P
In the PM hour me and my lady wife were properly cropping our strawbs for the very first time, having shared the single ripe one on Saturday. What a thrill! How absolutely screamingly delicious!!
Then we planted our main crop potatoes and watered all the tomatoes, peppers, chillis, cucumbers and aubergines.
How did we do? I get the feeling we should have been sitting in the garden with a bottle of nicely chilled Viognier or Rueda?
Happy Birthday to one and all.
Re: Humph - after Highlighting that link, I think I should point out that I was on the seafront - looking toward the Isle of Wight and sporting a pair of speedo's - just in case anyone may have the wrong idea.