Students and Water

At this time of year Torquay, in common with lots of sea side towns, gets an influx of foreign language students all here to improve their English. I like the idea, the more Europeans who learn English the better. I means when I wander in to some foreign bar in some sun drenched Mediterranean resort and ask the person behind the bar, "Do you speak English?"; they are more likely to say,"Yes."With a Devon accent. Saves me learning Spanish. One English custom I would like the Language schools to instill in their pupils is the idea that in England we queue for the bus, we don't just walk up to the bus and get on ignoring the 20 people already waiting. Maybe they do and the students get forgetful. They get reminded very quickly if they try and jump the queue to get on my bus.

I had had a fairly busy day to day and was on the last trip from Brixham to Newton when the water alarm went off. Now some of our buses do have a problem with the water in the radiators, it doesn't seem to want to stay there. I'm not sure what the problem is but I know it isn't just our depot that has this problem. Anyway, I got on the radio and explained to control who said I should continue to Paignton Bus Station and change the bus when I got there. He also said he would phone the fueler who works there each evening and have him get a bus ready. There must have been a failure in communications because when I got to Paignton there was no new bus waiting and the fueler just said, "There is a watering can in the garage." and walked away. Great help he was. Three watering cans later the radiator was full and the bus back on the road but it all took 10 minutes which wasn't fair on the 50 people sat on the bus while I lugged a watering can full with 10 litres water back and forth 3 times.

One of the things I missed while I was one holiday was the Smoking Ban in pubs which came into force on the 1st of July. Now if you want a smoke with your pint you have to nip outside and hope no one has nicked your pint, or your seat, while you have been feeding your addiction. A couple of questions here, the pub I drink in, the Cider Press in Fleet Walk must have had at least 25 ash trays. Some pubs would have had more, some less but there are 50 000 pubs, bars restaurants etc in the country. That's a lot of redundant ash trays, the bottom must have fallen out of the used ashtray trade recently. Is there now a European Union ashtray mountain some where that we haven't been told about? Can it be seen from space? And, slightly more seriously,what about all those firms that made ashtrays for the pub trade, how many people are now out of work and have the government made provision for them? Bet they haven't.