I got some wireless headphones from Kirsty for my birthday and I’ve really been enjoying them. It’s just really nice to be able to get up and wander around and still listen to whatever your were listening to. And yes I have worn them while doing the washing up, and yes you do find yourself dancing around the house more, just because ... well, you can.

Kirsty had some work stuff to do on Sunday so I settled myself down to watch the X-Men film I’d recorded the other night. This is a time when the headphones are great because although I was probably close enough to the telly to have headphones on a wire quite comfortably, the added freedom they give makes everything far more comfortable.

It was as enjoyable a super hero film as I’ve seen, strongly bolstered by the two ’lead’ roles played by Jean Luc Picard and Gandalf - plus the back story stuff with X-Men is a little bit more satisfying than most with all that mutation, fear and prejudice. In fact as usual with these things I found the back story stuff far more entertaining than when the gang had to rush off to foil Gandalf’s plan to turn the UN into sploshy water people!

It just so happened at one point that natures call coincided with an advert break and so instead of pausing the video I decided that there was time enough to perform my functions and return before the film restarted, and off I went (headphones still firmly on my head). I have to say there is nothing more strange that sitting on the toilet listening to just the noises from adverts. It makes you realise how much they really do rely on visual information for most of their message. There was a particular advert (it turned out to be for the new Nokia NGage) which was almost spooky with the strange noises and sounds it produced without ever giving any aural clues for what it was advertising.

It also made me realise how I’ve never really listened to much TV without watching it. I mean, I’ve had the TV on while doing other things, but I’ve always been able to glance up, or round, to see the screen if anything sounded interesting (or confusing). We have a mute button on most remote controls and so we’re quite used to occasionally turning off the sound and watching the picture, but there’s no button to turn off the picture and leave the sound (I can’t even think what we’d call it).

And so to the moral of this story which is (as Wolverine would tell you): Some are born with special powers, some have special powers thrust upon them, some go looking for special powers in a shop called Dixons, but what ever your special powers are don’t take them into the toilet with you.

Wolverine: Ouch!!