±«Óãtv

A number of people have wondered if I've fallen off the edge of the planet. Rest assured; I'm still alive and kicking -- though kicking against a pretty hectic schedule this month as it turns out. I know that's a pretty lame excuse for not blogging as much as I might; and it's not far from my typical excuse for not attending gym as often as I should. I both cases, my friends say the same thing: you need to build your blog, and your gym, into your daily schedule so that it's just one of those things you do -- rain, hail, or snow (-ed under). My friends say helpful things like that all the time, and they always make perfect sense while they're saying them.

I spent half the morning filming for a new television documentary and I'm not even allowed to tell you the location because that would give away the nature of the documentary immediately and the ±«Óãtv press office are keen to keep it under wraps until nearer the transmission date.

Then I went back to the studios in Broadcasting House to record a discussion about Paul Muldoon's new poetry collection, , and Leonard Cohen's There's been a lot of poetry in my life lately (not often you get to write a sentence like that): I've been filming some interviews with poets for this year's ±«Óãtv coverage of the Belfast Festival at Queen's -- and to mark the publication of The Blackbird's Nest, an anthology celebrating the relationship between Queen's University and poetry. When I interviewed Medbh McGuckian yesterday afternoon, the producer, Siobhan Savage, arranged for us to meet and talk in the Lanyon Building's main quad. That went very well: Medbh talked about her passion and vocation as a poet and her long association with Queen's since 1968 when she matriculated as an undergraduate. Then we thought it would be fun to film Medbh reading one of her poems. But every time she started to read, a flurry of students rushing between classes and buildings created an unbroadcastable racket and we had to start again. We got it in the end, thanks to Medbh's patience and the crew's persistence.

I was at The Big Rates Debate in the Ulster Hall -- you may have heard the broadcast version this morning on The Stephen Nolan Show. The economist John Simpson and the direct rule minister David Hanson, MP, were practically alone in the Hall in making the case for the new capital valuation system.

One member of the audience addressed the minister as "David Ransom" -- whether that was a Freudian Slip or entirely deliberate, the crowd loved it. Nevertheless, the Hanson/Simpson double-act was pretty formidable.

My favourite moment was when a now-retired businesswoman stood up to complain that the government's proposed relief system would only assist those with personal savings of less than £15,000. They audience was fully behind her until her concluding rhetorical flourish, when she declaimed, "I ask you, who in this room has savings in the bank of less than fifteen thousand pounds?" Oh dear.