For the last 5 days I’ve been about as sick as I think I’ve ever been. It started out late last week as what felt like a cold, then progressed to flu-like symptoms over the weekend before being diagnosed on Monday as a nasty bacterial URTI. Basically I haven’t slept but have been stuck in bed for about 5 days and am only just now starting to respond to antibiotics.

There are of course upsides to being ill. One of the big bonuses (if you can call it that) of having a fever and not being able to sleep at night, especially if you’ve got a TV tuner in the computer at the foot of your bed is that during those long, sweaty, shivery, achey, smelly, coughy and delirious nights you can at least distract yourself from reality somewhat with a bout of “whatever’s on”. Fortunately for me, this last week has been smack bang in the middle of the Olympics.

Now, some of the things I’ve noticed about the Olympics this year. Hardly anything is actually live, telecasts finish at 2am, Joanna bloody Griggs has to be the most annoying commentator/personality ever, and perhaps most infuriatingly the poor habits that Channel 7 have picked up – cutting to ads at awful moments, crossing to other events just as the previous one just got interesting, or flogging to death minor triumphs like that Silver we got in the 100m Hurdles a couple of nights ago. I missed the race live, but I reckon I watched it about 6 times yesterday (not counting news reports), in everything from slow motion to soft focus to arty, over-exposed montages. What ever happened to playing out a full event or going to ads at a logical break in the flow of the sport?

This isn’t an upside of being sick at all. It’s a curse. A curse of poorly organised Olympic television.

Pete