Wildebeest or warthogs?

Or 'you snooze, you lose'.

I'm on the environmental team at work and helped run a swishing event (clothes exchange, but not the kinky type, let me point out) today. People gave clothes in exchange for tokens, which they could then swap for clothes donated by colleagues. It was the first one we'd done, and we were delighted with the end result.

So the premise was simple, and the objective - preventing perfectly good clothes from ending up as landfill, while injecting a bit of the recycling culture into the company - was a good one.

As an organiser, once it was up and running, I was able to stand back and watch. And I tell you, I felt like a low-budget David Attenborough. It was fascinating. Every act of generosity was matched by someone staggering about laden down with mounds of clothes (and as each item was unique, preventing anyone else from getting near the best pieces). Worst of all, a team member had to be asked to refrain from swiping an armful of clothes before the event even opened. Dear god.

And while most people were delighted to clear space in their wardrobes without feeling the need to instantly restock them, it did make me wonder why some people are seemingly unable to resist a bargain, regardless of whether they need it, or whether they are depriving someone else of it. I hate greedy people.

Beethoven as a migraine cure

Have been a bit blog-idle this week, but am hoping to make amends over the weekend. A combination of a migraine, hot weather and too much work knocked me for six, but you can imagine my delight at discovering that Migraleve mixed with loud Beethoven seems to cure even the worst headache.

Last night saw my Cadogan Hall debut - in the audience, I hasten to add - for an Oxford Philomusica and London Symphony Chorus gig. The opening piece, 'The Big Bang and Creation of the Universe' by the either improbably or utterly appropriately named Nimrod Borenstein was rather beautiful. I'm not a fan of modern classical music (having once attended a prom where the main piece sounding like rain coming through a leaky roof), but I liked this - particularly the oboe solos and the use of pizzicato.

The main piece was Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, the Choral symphony. As a lapsed horn player, I loved the horn parts. It was a 5-man section, and they had their work cut out for them. Being right at the front in the cheap seats meant that although we probably had an accoustically warped experience overall, we were all but sitting in the horn section, with all the old South Ulster Youth Orchestra (dear god, they didn't have Myspace in my day)memories that evoked.

My concert friend was unburdened by misty-eyed memories of Saturday mornings spent butchering the classical repertoire. His verdict on the Beethoven? "It's odd that we were most moved by the slow movement. The outer movements were dross." Also sprach Zarathustra .....