ASYLUM

* Shuttle Contact

Two unrelated items today. Here's an article on The Space Shuttle, featuring this priceless quote:

You know you're in trouble when the Russians are adding safety features to your design

And, I've taken up Contact Juggling. This, for the uninitiated, is a form of juggling where the ball(s) always remain in contact with your body, and it's broken down into three main disciplines, of which I am learning two:

• Rolling: Making the ball move around your body in seemingly impossible ways

• Isolation: Moving your body while keeping the ball stationary, giving the illusion of it floating weightless

• Spinning: Cupping several balls in the palm of your hand (careful now!) and making them spin around each other. This is the one I can't do — I quite literally don't have the balls for it :-P

If you've seen the film Labyrinth, you know the score.

I am an utter wreck at classic 'toss' juggling, but I like 'contact' because there's less to keep track of, I can practice anywhere, and make smooth incremental progress, rather than binary can/can't juggle. So I've taken to heading down to the quiet end of Green Park at lunchtimes, to eat and flail my arms around. It's nice there because it's relatively peaceful, and I have plenty of flailing space :-) But I can also practice smaller work in the canteen, or on the way home from work.

Yes, on public transport. I've been playing games like "See how fast you can jog down the escalator with the ball balanced on the back of your fingers." Answer: Pretty fast. I've yet to drop the ball on the escalator. Of course, occasionally I do drop it — especially in moving, juddering train carriages — so I only practice small, easily-caught moves on the platforms, well away from the edge. I've been practicing in earnest since Monday evening, and only hit one person so far, a light tap on the shoe from a ball rolling slowly across the floor of a tube train. I apologised and flashed a smile, but she was too busy being moody/aloof/affronted to respond. Oh well, some people just don't know how to have fun. And I've got the thumbs-up or a nice comment from a couple of passers-by in the park.

(Contact juggling on moving, jolting trains is certainly more challenging. Especially when about four to six transport police are watching you wave the green, hand-grenade-sized ball around. Still, I've always been fairly good at tube-surfing, so I can still do the same stuff, just less reliably.)

PS Oyster Cards are a boon to the underground contact juggler...