Things to do in Edinburgh When You're Dizzy.

There are things that many of us take for granted which become highly treasured when they are temporarily taken away.

For me one of these things, as I discovered last week, is my sense of balance. A rather unfriendly virus decided to set up camp in my inner ear, thus depriving me of my already somewhat ropey balance. Needless to say, there isn't much you can do when you have this affliction, mainly because most things involve moving your head too much.

Here are some handy suggestions based on my experience of the past week:

• Watch DVDs - Obvious, really. Try to go for sets that comprise a whole TV series as this tends to kill much more time and you can also break it into chunks nicely. I recommend Family Guy (almost as good as the Simpsons) and The Day Today (as long as you never want to be able to watch the news with a straight face again).
• Avoid daytime TV - I have come to the conclusion that there are only about five TV executives in the UK at the moment. And they are all very very drunk.
• Learn about sport - thanks to the BBC's marvellous olympic coverage I now understand the points scoring of judo and badminton, and have more knowlege of olympic swimming than I could ever desire.
• Have Friends Round - I think I would have gone insane if it weren't for ther steady stream of mates coming to make me cups of tea and give me sympathy (and run around after me in general). They are spendid people one and all.
  
• Sleep - I have seized the opportunity to do some training for the 2008 olympics, where sleeping will be introduced as an olympic sport. I think I stand a good medal chance.
• Listen to lots of music, obviously - No different to any other time, really, but here's a few of the albums I've re-discovered in the past week:
  
  • Ben Folds Five - Ben Folds Five I realised whilst listening to this that I'm the only Ben Folds fan I know that hasn't at some point in their life had piano lessons. Nevertheless, this is a fantastic collection of clever indie pop, and it makes me want to play 'air piano'.
  • Snow Patrol - When It's All Over We Still Have To Clear Up Now that they've sold a squillion copies of their new album Final Straw I can only hope that more people discover this, their second and best album. Although slightly less polished than its sucessor, When It's... has a warmth and sincerity that hasnt been matched by their newer stuff.
  • The Cinematic Orchestra - Man With The Movie Camera Unlike many other artists of their ilk, the cinematics weren't content with making soundtracks to imaginary movies so they found some Russian cinema 'Classic' to make tunes for. Mostly consisting of stripped down versions of the stuff on 'Every Day' it has an excellent live feel to it. And not too 'Jazz Club - Nice' either.
  • Buck 65 - Talkin' Honky Blues Possibly the worlds least conventional hip-hop artist, Buck eschews the usual violence, mysogeny and general language of rap to produce something far more refreshing. There are stories ranging from madcap road journeys to the life of a shoe shine, all underpinned with some superb beats crafted from both samples and proper instruments. Everyone should be forced to listen to this, ESPECIALLY if they think hip-hop is rubbish.
  • Explosions In The Sky - The Earth Is Not A Cold, Dead Place There's no point in going on about this album. It's quite simply beautiful, and if you don't agree with me then you have no soul.
• Fall Over - The effect of using a lift when you have vertigo can be quite interesting. My thanks go the the Edinburgh Uni Health Service for scraping my shivering sweaty body off the floor of the lift and treating me nicely until my taxi came.
• Get Better - Possibly the most fun thing I've done is recover. The ability to walk about and do stuff after a week of inactivity makes me feel invincible. Hooray for that.

Ah well. At least I didn't miss any good weather. Heheh.