Useless

OK - the time has come to say it - the entire system of organising the sale and purchase of residential property in the UK is well and truly broken.

Utterly useless, and a total shambles.

Now I'm really pissed off!

Mind reader

The BBC has been coming in for rather a lot of stick recently, with a DG who lasted less than two months as a combination of scandal and mistake snowballed around him.

And yet, for me, the BBC is still today what it was yesterday, and I remain confident in its ability to deliver what I expect, and to be our flagship national broadcaster, of which we can be proud all around the world.

Now, that's not to downplay in any way some of the awful things that have come to light in recent months. We've discovered that someone we thought was a national treasure was actually a despicable individual who conned and deceived us all for his entire life. Mistakes were made - obviously at the time when those terrible events took place, and also in the later investigations and reporting.

It would be nice to think that society and the world at large has changed in the last generation or so, and that it would be impossible for anyone to get away with it now. Maybe that's a naive view, but even if it is, hopefully lessons are being learnt.

Anyway, the BBC can still deliver remarkable broadcasting, and it did so tonight with Fergus Walsh's film "The Mind Reader: Unlocking My Voice" which told the story of a number of patients who have suffered brain injury, and who had been diagnosed as being in a vegetative state.

A new scanning technique has been developed to assess these patients, and for a minority of them, it is being discovered that despite all of the conclusions and diagnoses previously drawn, it is actually possible to communicate with them and for them to demonstrate consciousness and understanding of the world around them by asking them questions and gauging their responses through the patterns of their brain activity.

An awesome and inspiring story, told well. Thank you Fergus, and thank you BBC.

A summary of the story can be found here, and (presumably for a limited time only) the programme is on iplayer.

Beacon

A day in Crawley, dinner at the Beacon pub near Tunbridge Wells, and tonight at Myhotel.

A walk in the woods

Walking the dog in the Autumn sunshine:

Nearly there

I think it gets a mention each year when first spotted (in fact, having done a little blog rummaging, here is the 2011 reference!) but those Coca Cola lorries have been seen on the TV, and this can mean only one thing.

Holidays are coming!

(In fact for some of us, the holidays come in 5 weeks and 6 days from now!)

Nothing

And so another week comes to an end, and whilst it seems to have gone by fairly quickly, we don't feel like we've moved a whole lot forward either. No exchange, no sign of a completion date.

More Pooh

Blogging from the iPad this evening, and I've finally broken my duck in terms of reading books on the iPad.

Last week, after finishing The House of Silk I decided that I should be reading some Conan Doyle. Having read some of his stories before, but once again not remembering which ones, the best thing to do is to start again at the beginning, and so I downloaded A Study in Scarlet (for free) and read Holmes' first adventure.

Then this week, having been inspired by the Piglet quote a few days ago I decided I should really read Winnie the Pooh (possibly again, possibly not - not sure) and I remembered that there was an illustrated version on my iBooks bookshelf - I think it came free with the App.

And so today, traveling up and down on the Ebbsfleet train I've been reading of the bear of very little brain.