I was listening to the radio, moving through the stations trying to find something I wanted to listen to. I had to turn it off after hearing the Billy Joel song River of Dreams twice on different staions. I hadn't heard the song for ages - I don't dislike it but I think once per half hour is enough for me.

I mentioned this to 'Jack' on MSN messenger and she had the song stuck in her head for ages afterwards.

I couldn't find any decent music on the radio so I carried on moving through the stations and ended up on Radio 4 listening to Gardeners Question Time. Normally I wouldn't listen to it but as we've decided to do something with our back garden, I took an interest.

One of the subjects covered was growing parsley. Apparently the reason why curley parsley is sold more than 'flat leaf' is to avoid confusion with the poisonous 'fools parsley' which looks identical to the flat stuff...
This was relevent to us because at the weekend we bought a couple of troughs and some pots of herbs to start off our 'garden'. Apart from a small patch of gravel near the back fence, our entire garden consists of flagstones. We've decided to concentrate on edible plants rather than flowers or other merely 'decoratives' so we started with herbs and intend to plant some vegetables soon. Of course with no actual 'garden' we will have to keep things in tubs which will limit us to smaller plants but that still gives us plenty of options.

I saw 8 magpies on my way to work this morning, all within the space of about a minute. The standard magpie rhymes only go up to 7.

They weren't all together but were in small groups along the same stretch of railway line. This was slightly spooky because I was listening to last nights Mark Radcliffe show which I recorded from Radio 2 (last ever show tomorrow night although he's returning soon with a new show co-hosted with Stuart Maconie). On the show, Mark was discussing Magpies with Rick Wakeman and they were debating whether you have to see them all at once or whether you're allowed to add up magpie numbers.

I was listening to last nights Mark Radcliffe Show on my way to work this morning and he was talking to Jason Lyttle, from the band Grandaddy. One of the things they talked about was the band splitting up. The Sophtware Slump was one of my favourite albums and it was a shame to hear that the band were no more. Hopefully Jason's next project, either solo or with another band, will produce some more great albums.

On last nights Mark Radcliffe Show on Radio 2, he had Badly Drawn Boy as studio guest and coversation got onto the subject of tribute acts. It started off with the possibility of a Showaddywaddy tribute act called 'ShoddyWaddy' and soon got more surreal as listener suggestions started arriving. Somehow, it ended up with joke racist or fascist bands. Mark admitted that it was in poor taste and he probably shouldn't be doing it but went ahead anyway. Some of the funnier ones (or at least, the ones I can remember) were: Ku Klux Klannad, BNP J Harvey, Far Right Said Fred, Barry White Supremacist.

Today on Radio 2, Steve Wright interviewed a friend of ours, Ben Pridmore, currently the World Memory Champion. As well as asking him how he managed to remember things (by associating words or numbers with pictures or images), Steve read out a sequence of numbers, then later in the show asked Ben to recall them. He got most of them right, only forgetting the last 2.

Download the interview (memory.mp3 2mb)

Hats off to Ben - he's done something I'll never be able to do. I've got no chance of developing a memory like his - I keep getting 'senior moments' where I walk into a room and then forget why I went there. I've also:

• Opened the fridge door, and not remembered what I wanted
• Opened a web browser window and promptly forgotten what site I wanted to look at
• Gone to the supermarket and forgotten what I needed to buy
• yesterday forgot to bring my lunch with me to work. I went into the kitchen to empty the bin but forget to go into the fridge!

Update:
Sadly, Ben is no longer the World Memory Champion - he came 4th. As he mentioned in the interview, he didn't intend to enter this year. He was going to memorize pi but unfortunately was beaten to it by Akira Haraguchi who memorized it to over 80,000 decimal places.