STILL not quite well, so this time it's ice dancing.

I wanted to ignore the ice dancing. For me it is one of those almost-sports, like synchronised swimming. Don't misunderstand me, I've swum in synchronicity, and it's bloody hard work, but it's the poor cousin of both swimming and gymnastics, just as ice dance is the bastard child of figure skating.

Noel Streatfield is to blame for me thinking this. In White Boots one of the girls is not as committed as the other, and is told she needn't fret, there's always exhibition skating to console herself with, even if she knows it's not real skating. Quite.

So ignore I would. Except that then I read my flist and saw 'OMG! SO GOOD!' on several posts. Clearly ice dancing had gone up a level since previous Olympics (always excepting Torvill and Dean, who were not naff the first time I saw that routine. Fairly poxy by rendition 428, though.) All right, I decided, I would watch, and take it seriously.

Because I am a cautious woman, I taped it. And in the end, I could only take it half seriously.

And because Australia's Channel 9 EXCELS at ineptitude, we have only a few of the couples, out of order, and with long sections of crap and men's aerials in between. So half of the insanity that follows I blame on the middle ear infection that has knocked me flat this last week, the other half on the fact that no one can follow anything with coverage this bad.

( This would all have been so much better with alcohol ... )

STILL not quite well, so this time it's ice dancing.

I wanted to ignore the ice dancing. For me it is one of those almost-sports, like synchronised swimming. Don't misunderstand me, I've swum in synchronicity, and it's bloody hard work, but it's the poor cousin of both swimming and gymnastics, just as ice dance is the bastard child of figure skating.

Noel Streatfield is to blame for me thinking this. In White Boots one of the girls is not as committed as the other, and is told she needn't fret, there's always exhibition skating to console herself with, even if she knows it's not real skating. Quite.

So ignore I would. Except that then I read my flist and saw 'OMG! SO GOOD!' on several posts. Clearly ice dancing had gone up a level since previous Olympics (always excepting Torvill and Dean, who were not naff the first time I saw that routine. Fairly poxy by rendition 428, though.) All right, I decided, I would watch, and take it seriously.

Because I am a cautious woman, I taped it. And in the end, I could only take it half seriously.

And because Australia's Channel 9 EXCELS at ineptitude, we have only a few of the couples, out of order, and with long sections of crap and men's aerials in between. So half of the insanity that follows I blame on the middle ear infection that has knocked me flat this last week, the other half on the fact that no one can follow anything with coverage this bad.

( This would all have been so much better with alcohol ... )