From Joy to to Woe

Good news from the science and physics front this morning with news that the LHC is finally working as it should do. They have started the machine running at 7TeV and have managed to keep it going for nearly four hours. A large amount of data has been collected but it will take a long time for anything to actually come out of today's events apparently. I think it's wonderful that we can have a real time feed of what is happening in Geneva and at CERN via both a live webcast and twitter.

I once again reached my 1000 word target set for the day so if I can keep this up for the rest of the week then I've taken a large chunk out of the final project and I can sleep happy knowing that I won't have to start panicking at the end of the week.

I have been watching the ITV drama series Married Single Other for the past five weeks with the final episode showing this week. What started off as a light-hearted comedy drama suddenly did a U-Turn at the end of episode three when one of the main characters was thought to have brain cancer. The next episode showed the confirmation of this and all of a sudden everything took on a more sombre tone. The end of last weeks episode saw her being rushed to hospital and let us know that she had died. Leaving behind a husband and two reasonably young children saw the final episode become the most amazing performance I've seen on TV for a long time. The scene at the wake when the widowed husband was reading out a message left by his wife was genuinely upsetting.

Until now I have always assumed that the BBC showed the best dramas on TV but seeing this has changed my mind completely. If they can keep churning out more like this then they will certainly win my vote. I was also surprised that there was no 'if you have been affected by the events in tonight's programme' announcement at the end because I think losing a parent - especially a mother (in most cases) is one of the most difficult things that can happen to anyone - especially young children. I know there would be other things like long term degenerative illnesses etc but the timescale that the whole thing happened in seemed incredible. One minute she was fine and the next minute she was dead. We don't get a huge sense of the timeline in the programme but it seemed like a matter of days or weeks rather than the months you usually associate with these things. In some ways I wish I hadn't watched it now but then on the other hand, in a weird way it was refreshing to see something so honest and believable and just goes to show the talent we have in this country, even if it does put a great bit downer on your day.