I've been enjoying watching snippets of the Winter Olympics over the last few days. There's the thrill of the down-hill skiing, the elegance of the figure-skating, the fun of the half-pipe snowboarding, the speed of the luge.

And then, of course, there's curling.

In which player A slides a coffee-jug-like object down the ice, and players B and C eagerly dash after it with brooms and frantically scrub the ice ahead of it as it slides along. All players shout things like 'Hup!' and 'Easy! Easy!' and 'Go. Go. Go.'

Inexplicably, as well as the four competing players - 'Lead', 'Second', 'Third', and 'Skip' - each team also has an 'Alternate' player - a type of substitute I presume.

I don't suppose the Alternate player gets to play much. Hard to imagine too many serious sweeping injuries.

I did quite like the look of the brooms. A sort of a cross between a mop and a broom actually. Might be just the job for whipping around my kitchen floor.