Its day 9....

In the Mexican Big Brother house. Simon and SWMBO are on the beach, Jackie and Mark are snorkeling and Dave and Lesley are going for their lunch.

So far Big Brother has not evicted any of the housemates, although it was a close run thing on day 4 when SWMBO fell during the dressing up task and broke her elbow.

The BB medical team patched her up and she was straight back into the fray.

Simon was called to the diary room and warned that any more high jinks would result in him being asked to be official sun cream application monitor for the group, and be banned from the gym.

The anticipated hurricane passed to the West of the BB house so the excited American residents have returned to the beach from their shelters.

Tomorrow Big Brother has arranged drinking games in Playa Del Carmen for the residents, we can't wait.

Its day 1 in the big brother house

Actually its day 6, but as I sneaked back to London last week after four days up North, this is really the first full week.

The big challenge with integrating two houses is the amount of double bubble you have....three extra beds, two extra sofas, clothes, pots, pans, cutlery, glasses, pictures, books and other ephemera, my collection of menus from restaurants around the world being one such.....

So we have a bedroom full of stuff, which needs to be carefully sorted into piles. E-bay, tip and office are the three easiest clasifications to decide upon. Storage or usage are the trickiest. SWMBO has had sole storage rights for a number of years so her space needs to be protected as well.

So far the futon has gone to Emma and Lees spare room, the dressing table has replaced the falling apart MFI one, and most of the clothes have found a way into a wardrobe or three. Emma's bedroom has become the library, but there are still masses of books looking for homes, and just how many dictonaries does one need for practical purposes?

E-bay will take a hammering this week, and Chiswick Auction House has already disposed of some of the lesser art work we will fail to put on the wall....storage items are next.

Guess what though, just as we finish the sorting process we will find a flat in London and start the ' why did we throw that out debate' all over again....c'est la vie.

Calling a spade a spade

I notice that Big Brother has removed a contestant for using a racist word in conversation with another member of the house.

I have no reason to judge the decision to remove her, but it does raise this whole area of political correctness once again.

I am reminded of Mike Newell, the Luton football manager, indicating the use of a female linesman was , quote, "tokenism - for the politically-correct idiots, we have a problem in this country with political correctness and bringing women into the game is not the way to improve refereeing and officialdom.

In this case had he referred to the situation as positive discrimination, rather than political correctness, he may well have found more support for his tirade.

With regard to language, however, I feel we old 'uns are discriminated against, as many of the words we traditionally used , have been deemed as potentially offensive or been given alternative meanings.......nobody ever sits on a poof anymore, and 'gay day' now represents a festival for the pink pound brigade. I remember getting a serious ticking off from the RFU for referring to the Bank of England rugby team, which was largely populated with South Africans, as Kaffirs. In my day Kaffirs was the term used in the City to refer to Krugerrands, so I thought it quite apt. Apparently the word is now banned in South Africa as it is highly offensive.

It is also interesting that youngsters are regularly inventing new language which is often community or age group specific and is considered part of the natural evolution of communication. The flowery language of the 50's and 60's is now consigned to Wikipedia and other such language repositories.

Plus ca change