Patience.org

The colour changes are just my fiddling-in-progress. I’m finally learning a bit more about HTML, but as Alexander Pope once said, “A little learning is a dang’rous thing.”

It really puts into perspective the shift in media delivery mechanisms (if not ownership of the content quite yet) when you can’t see any interesting live music on American TV (why is that, is just the power of MTV?) but you can go to the BBC website and watch live and recorded feeds from Glastonbury.

Just realized that this past week marked the 10th anniversary of the first time I came to America.

How’d I remember that day? Because I arrived on the day that OJ decided to get into his Ford Bronco and take off down the highway slowwwllly.

It gave me quite a good preparation for what was to come.

A few observations so far on the Euro 2004 championships:

It’s hot in Portugal in June.

The Italians look unfit.

This looks like a fairly weak England team; questionable ‘keeper, good defence, solid if uninspiring midfield (now increasingly stretched with injuries) and one striker in form.

The netting in the goals is black and on a couple of occasions that I’ve seen it hasn’t been clear if the ball is in the net or not because you can’t see it ripple or bulge – Lampard’s goal against France a case in point if you watch Beckham’s confused reaction. Or maybe he’s just confused in general.

The BBC has some great virtual reality replay stuff on its website (one way of getting round the draconian UEFA TV licensing rights I guess), though it’s annoying that its streaming highlights are aimed at the lowest common denominator, in bandwidth terms.

BBC Radio Five is a wonderful thing.

Mick McCarthy, however, is not.

Nor is Setanta Sports.

England, despite some laudable attempts to stop them by the FA (never thought I’d give them credit for anything much) still has too many dim, myopic and xenophobic ‘supporters’ who will do anything they think will preserve the notion that England rules the waves and that the IRA cares about English football. Thankfully most of them are stuck back in their regional English towns where they can have less impact. Bless.

It should also be pointed out that the same could be said for Germany, Holland Italy and some other countries, but that doesn’t get reported as much, as England is stuck in a kind of media vortex dating back to the 70s.

The reciprocal of that is how somehow satisfying to see the amount of foreign flags on display at each game, such as English flags at Czech-Latvia game or even the Korean flag (not in Europe for those of you unsure) at the Denmark-Italy game. True football fans one & all. Mind you, they also get a Portuguese holiday out of the whole thing too, it must be said.

Things have been a little frantic over the last couple of weeks, so I’m only just getting round to posting these pictures over the first two weeks of her life.

There’s more linked from the one of the two of them below. As usual with the kid(s) pictures, you’ll have to log in to see them so if you need a user name & password then email us, then come back to the home page and click on the link below for these latest pictures.

Scarlett Patience was born today in New York City.

Scarlett and her mother are doing fine.

If you want to know more, please email us…..