Do you remember back here? I was all excited because I'd ordered some Callum Innes prints.

Well they've come and now they're up! Thanks to my friend Nicki (renowned curator..) who came to help me, my exclusive Callum Innes exhibition is now underway.

Behold...


Here's the first three (camera doesn't do them justice):

and the last two:

To be honest I'm chuffed to bits! I obviously need to redecorate (or move!) but they are here and I love them.

I'm just back from watching the Olympic ice hockey final in the pub. If not quite as intense as watching Canada win the gold in the Maple Leaf, Covent Garden, in 2002 it was still a memorable afternoon.

For instance I don't think I'll ever be in a London pub singing "Jere Lehtinen" to the tune of Where's your papa gone? (try it!) again. I went to the Famous Three Kings in West Kensington and it was packed to the rafters with Scandis! To my surprise there were twice as many Finns as Swedes and that may explain why we watched the Finnish TV coverage. I can't say I understood any of the commentary but it was rather exciting. Finnish is meant to be a difficult language to learn but it turns out to be quite fun to listen to: a stream of vowel sounds and no breathing.

It was a great game I thought but alas the Finns couldn't take their winning streak any further and the Swedes took the gold. It's so tough in team games at the olympics. You can loose a semi-final and then try and WIN a bronze. But you can only LOOSE the silver medal while watching the winners celebrate gold. I like to think that in future they will look at that silver medal and realise how well they did, but right now it must suck!

I could tell from our trip to the games that the Finns looked really good. They are a team without massive stars, and with their 3rd choice goalie but they played fantastically well as a team: fast, hard working and disciplined. The game we saw against the Czechs was storming. And having a stadium full of fans from two hard-drinking nations guaranteed a great atmosphere. I was hoping for a Saku Koivu hat-trick and in fact he bagged a hat-trick of assists and a goal so he certainly delivered on the night.

The Canada vs Germany game wasn't brilliant but I was so excited to see the Canadian players in the flesh that it didn't really matter. Canada won 5-1 but it was a stuttering performance: unlike the Finns they weren't getting it together as a team. I thought they would find their mojo later in the tournament but they never did and lost in the quarter-finals.

Expectations in Canada were massive before the tournament and it was just like watching a typical England world cup performance with the press going from reckless confidence to blaming over-payed players, incompetent coaches and management and the state of the pitch/ice. I'm expecting something similar this summer with the football. Except this year, of course, we ARE going to win the World Cup....

Alice observed that the Canadians must be the most nationally branded people in the world. You'd seen them all around town and it was quite amazing, every man-jack (and jill) of them was head to toe maple leaf paraphenalia, in multiple layers they could deploy according to the ambient temparature.

A final memory of the hockey at Turin was the efforts of the Palasport Olympico organist who did his best to keep the fans entertained during breaks in play. He was quite fond of one particular tune and I had to laugh when I realised he was playing Talk, by Coldplay. Cold play at the ice rink. Nice

The London Tube Map is a wonderful thing. And this site makes it wonderfuller.

Safely back from Torino. It was fantastic! No time to write it up properly just now. But I've put some pics on flickr to give you a taste.

I can scarcely believe it but I'm going away to the Winter Olympics on Thursday! Woo hoo! I've got tickets to see some ice hockey and we hope to catch our defending champion curling team as well. Bring it on.

First up is Canada vs Germany on Thursday evening. I can't quite get my head around seeing all my favourite players in one go but it's going to happen. Joe Sakic, Jarome Iginla, Rob Blake and more all on one team :) Even more mind bending is the thought that I will be in the same building, AT THE SAME TIME, as Wayne Gretzky the offical all-time-number-one-best-ever-player-to-lace-up-skates. Jeepers.

I've noticed that CBC.ca have followed the pioneering work of the Guardian and found a innovative way of keeping office-bound Canadians away from work (whilst AT work) and up with the hockey. They are offering hockey blogs reminiscent of the fabulous over-by-over commentary that reached it's peak this summer with the Ashes. The concept is the same but worryingly focused on the actual game in hand rather than musings on the OC or ways of getting a date with that girl from accounts that readers email in. Admittedly test cricket does lend itself to those kind of musings more than ice hockey. But it's clear that the commentator's instincts are in the right place:

Second intermission
As Canada leads 6-2 after two periods, some lingering question about Muzzatti: first, what exactly is on his goalie mask? It looks like he has the Virgin Mary on one side and the Pope on the other. Is that John Paul II or the new guy? And how about Muzzatti's pads? He's wearing an ugly brown pair that looks to have been bought at Jim Craig's garage sale.

and

Third period | 16:53
As Canada continues to lead 7-2, CBC cameras show us an interesting addition that Torino Games organizers have made to hockey: cheerleaders in the stands. It seems like a good idea, but the girls look a bit awkward standing in the aisles doing cheers. Also, it appears they're not supporting a particular team but rather trying to bring a sort of general cheeriness to the event. That can't be easy. I, for one, salute their vigour.

And sir - I salute yours.

The other game is on Saturday, Finland vs Czech Republic. That should be a cracking match and Finland are my second favourite team so I'm hoping they win big (ideally on the back of a Saku Koivu hat-trick!)

On Friday we are hoping to catch the British [or Scottish if they loose :)] curling team in action. Try and catch it on TV because I'll be the guy in the crowd with the Belle and Sebastian Industrial Map of Scotland tea towel. If that doesn't get Hazel Irvine going, what will?

Shamefully this will be my first ever trip to Italy. So in the spirit of the 18th century Grand Tour I will be taking with me one Dr Alice Ferrebe, Lecturer in English at Liverpool John Moores University. Alice will be advising me on topics such as the portrayal of masculinity in contemporary ice hockey, the psycho-sexual implications of the broom in women's curling and which is best: chocolate or coffee ice cream. It's gonna be great!

On Saturday I was back in Oxford sorting out another couple of rooms. In the guest bedroom we've got a large cupboard and I was aware the drawers were full of envelopes with various family papers in. Again it proved to be quite a treasure trove.

I think the most exciting thing I found was a marvellous set of Victorian photographs of my great-grandfather's family. It's odd but seeing photographs, rather than drawings, seems to make them all more real to me. I look at them and see pictures of my family, just like I would at a picture I'd taken on my digital camera and printed out at home, but these are over 100 years old.

My favourite picture shows my grandfather, John Foster Crace (aged 9 and dressed in a sailor's suit), his father John Dibblee Crace (bald head and large beard) and his father John Gregory Crace (white haired and magnificently be-whiskered as a Victorian patriarch should be). It's dated May 1887 and printed on stiff card with the logo of "Brown, Barnes and Bell. Art Photographers and Portait Painters, Photographers to her majesty the Queen".

Another great picture shows J.D.Crace's family. My grandfather is again in his sailor's suit although this is dated 18th August 1884. I think it's a souvenir of a family outing because the blurb on the back reads:

I've seen 3 episodes of My Name is Earl and the IT Crowd. It's no contest. MNIE is warm, original, well produced and funny. ITC is erm, not. But I didn't hate this weeks episode as much as I thought so maybe we are on an upward trend

I'm becoming a Science and Engineering Ambassador! This may seem like an odd course of events for someone with:

• A degree in History
• A fear of Mathematics

But somehow I've blagged myself a career in IT and it turns out that's good enough. I'm totally sticking it to C.P. Snow!

Anyhow, yesterday was our SEA induction at the Institute of Physics (aka Party Central). I turned up and was trying to find the right room when a head appeared from behind the door

"Are you here for the Ambassadors' reception?"

I was and I went inside to be offered coffee, tea and biscuits. No Ferrero Rocher I noticed. So I piped up

"Has anyone made the obvious joke about the Ferrero Rocher and the Ambassadors' reception?"

I got a bit of a laugh (this is the Insitute of Physics remember - they are begging for laughs, to be honest). It was only later that I realised I'd cracked my first meta-joke - a joke about jokes, and taken my first step down the road of post-modern comedy.

Where will this road lead? Jokes about the funny faces people make telling jokes about the funny faces people make while having sex? Material like "Have you ever noticed... the way comedians only need to make a vague allusion to smoking and then "having the munchies" for an audience to collapse in fits of laughter at the dangerous shared-reference to recreational drugs?"

Then again my wise friend James Crawford once told me that you can replace the words "post-modern" in any sentence with the words "a bit crap" and always get a bit closer to the truth.

So maybe not.

After my mini-rant about the IT crowd I found this wise piece by Armando Iannuci in the Observer.

And I ought to stick up for British sitcoms having treated myself to series 1 & 2 of Early Doors for Christmas. Absolutely cracking.

Nuff respect to the bloke who dressed up as a suicide bomber and then said sorry. This whole Danish cartoons thing is madness gone mad but the case of Mr Khayam points out that the real answer is learning about (as Snowmail said) "how we offend each other." If only some Danish editor/journo hadn't been so desperate to prove how macho he was (and does anyone think it's not a HE here?)....

Anyway the only reason I'm posting is because anytime I see the name Omar Khayam come up it puts me in mind of this slice of pure Onion-gold.

Now THIS is a story about proper geeks. Amazing.

I told myself I wasn't going to pass judgement the IT Crowd on Channel 4 until I'd seen 3 episodes. Today I saw the first 2. It's the product of some people with a fantastic track record: Chris Morris is in it, Graham Linehan wrote it and Ash Atalla produced it so the prospect was apetising. The trailers I've been seeing weren't so tasty but lets not rush to judgement I thought. Which is just as well because right now I really want to slag it off. I probably wouldn't want to write it off so quickly if I hadn't stayed tuned to Channel 4 and watched My Name is Earl imediately afterwards. It was the first episode I'd seen and it just blew it's predecessor out of the water. It's original and there's no inane laugh track telling you what's funny. It's just funny and get this - you supply your own laughs. Why can't some of our best comedy actors, writers and producers come up with something even half as good as this? Is it budget?? Surely throwing money at the show can't make it funnier.

Maybe I got lucky. Perhaps that was a good episode and the rest will also feature an actor phoning in a pantomime performance of a crass stereotype. Once I've seen 3 of each I'll decide.

I filled in the forms today to switch my electricity supplier to Ecotricity. Apparently "it's the biggest difference you can make", and all from the comfort of my sumptuous Shepherds Bush bachelor pad. That's my kind of difference.

I'll let you know if I experience:

a) blackouts when the wind stops blowing
b) karmic benefits from doing my bit for momma nature

Come on b!

Another reason everyone should get Snowmail...

Coretta Scott King, the widow of MLK has died. An amazing woman she stayed the course. I once bumped into her on a cruise ship that Ophra Winfrey had hired for Maya Angelou's 70th birthday bash… I have no other black heroine names left to drop! I'm still waiting for Toni Morrison!!