The ice beam

Watching an unexceptional game of football tonight, Bolton v Marseille in the Uefa Cup (the European competition for teams not good enough to play in the Champions League), which has been enlivened by the commentators' efforts to find something interesting to talk about. In the first half, a Marseille player went down injured, and the physio treated him with a strange-looking device that caused some extensive debate between Colin Murray and Pat Nevin:

"What is that, some kind of machine gun?"
"It looks like something out of Doctor Who, doesn't it?"
"I mean, what is it, what does it look like, I've never seen anything like it before..."
"Looks a bit like one of those speed guns."
"Oh no, he's not going to get a ticket, is he?"

And so on for quite some time, even after the game had resumed. It turns out it's some sort of contraption for spraying cold stuff onto someone's injury. The Channel 5 commentators, being people who aren't good enough to get jobs on the BBC, are always fun to listen to. Tonight's game also included the disclaimer "Of course, we try not to be biased. We do want the British team to win, obviously..." Makes a dull, bad-tempered 0-0 draw quite entertaining, really.

Back in the real world, the office is nearly finished. We'll be able to move downstairs from the mezzanine level where we're occupying unfinished boardrooms and corridors, and into the actual office space soon. It looks quite pretty now, all new flatscreen monitors and shiny new phones. I don't really like open-plan offices, though, I prefer each little department to have its own little office - makes it much easier to play on the internet or have a quiet nap without anyone noticing.