Can I multitask? Perhaps…

Regular readers - and I think there's at least two of you :-) will know that I don't do multitasking. Talk to me (or worse still, witter) when I'm dancing and it all goes to pot and I probably won't ask you to dance again.  

But wait, at the Sidmouth Festival recently, I danced and talked with A all at the same time and it worked! And thinking about it, I've done that with her before. 

So what's going on?

Well, she's a very fine dancer. So perhaps she makes it so easy for me that my brain has the capacity for conversation? Could be. 

Another possibility is that she has the sensitivity to know when I've got the capacity to talk and listen and when I haven't.

Pretty good either way. Unfortunately, I think she has a boyfriend. Not surprising really...

The People's Republic of Hulme

BBC Radio 4 recently did a documentary on Hulme, part of Manchester. If you're quick, you can Listen Again  

It's a fascinating story of Tamil refugees, deck-access flats, squatting, demolition, a no-go area for the police and a rich alternative culture.

My connection? A few years ago, I got a day's work delivering some training to an organisation based there. In preparation, I used Multimap to plan a route. Having got a small-scale map of my approach, I zoomed in for more detail. Something went horribly wrong - the layout of the streets on the large-scale map was almost completely different. When I finally arrived, it was clear that a large part of the area had only just been rebuilt. Multimap must have used some mapping from before and after.

Here's links to some less geeky stuff:

Wikipedia on Hulme

Photos of the old Hulme