Pain

I spent some of last night practicing a talk I have to give this afternoon. I think it is safe to say that I feel very unconfident about this talk. What is the golden rule of public speaking? Know your material. There is no substitute for it. The problem is that this is such a wide ranging talk that I have had to ask several people for contributions and don’t really know the material well enough myself to talk about it really confidently. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll give it a good go, but talks are always much better if you really relate to the material and understand the context of what you are talking about and I just don’t. let’s hope they don’t ask too many questions…

I also seem to have a pain in my back at the moment. If I do anything that stretches my back including hiccupping it really hurts. I think I must have strained myself over the weekend, but I have no idea how. Sitting on the sofa is obviously the only cure for this though.

Last night I watched the programme on the McCanns that was on ITV. As the programme unfolded I was just struck by how inappropriate it seemed for them to be showing that programme at this time. They can get away with it because Madeleine McCann didn’t go missing in the UK, but to all intents and purposes they are commenting on a live investigation. Personally I don’t think they did it, but even so I just think it was really inappropriate to show that programme, they are attempting to try the case before the Portuguese have even made a decision on what to do next – and it did still have that feeling about it of the “stupid Portuguese police” and how differently we would have done it. I really do hope that the truth comes out soon in this investigation and they find out what happened to that little girl but programmes like that are unhelpful, particularly as none of the people involved were actually involved directly in the investigation. Trial by media indeed, but it is the Portuguese police that are being scrutinised more than anyone else. For some reason this case seems to have captured so many people and everything seems to be fair game.