Yesterday I did another one of these gender sensitivity training workshops. Today had two 2-hour lectures with an hour's break in between. I found that using microphones doesn't really make any difference to throat well-being, though. I still use the same volume mic or no mic. Which is a bit nuts. Today, I tried to speak softly, into the mic, but my softened voice creeped me out. It sounded as if I was... trying to... I don't know, cast a spell or do something witchy and bizarre to my audience. So the end result is now I've got that Rage Against the Machine tune in my head all evening..... only that I've creatively reworked the lyrics to express my current sufferings "....tis what you just can't understand... that my throat is a-killing me!"

So Led Zeppelin is going to play a reunion gig. Some 500 million people applied online for tickets and just about blocked up the whole of interwebstrosphere. What moves people? The LedZep moves people. It's scientifically proven.

Other musical notes, recent purchases include "Thank you for being you" - a mish mash of tracks from scottish indie labels 1980-2000. It's a bit of a rip off really but it is the kind of thing I buy out of a sense of obligation more than anything else. And Future Pilot A.K.A.'s "Secrets from teh Clockhouse", which is very mellow, not really my type of music but I quite likey. Especially the part where Alaisdair Gray (if you don't know who he is, well basically he is a dirty old man, also a writer of books, one particularly brilliant one called Lanark if you really are so inclined) does word association.