Waiting in the rain.

　

The first part of this post happened a few days ago on the sea front. Imagine you are driving a number 12 towards Newton Abbot. A little way in front of you is an other number 12 also heading for Newton Abbot. The 12 in front indicates it is going to stop at the next bus stop, you on the other hand don't have to stop. You also know the bus in front isn't anywhere near full. So do you, A) stop behind the other bus at the stop and wait until it fills up and then follow it down the road and possibly do the same at the next bus stop or B) go past the other bus and continue down the road there by picking the people waiting at the next bus stop a minute to two sooner. A) is OK but b) is better.

Now change the situation slightly. The bus in front of you isn't a number 12. It isn't even the same bus company. It's a number X80 and it is indicating it's intention to stop at the next stop. There are people waiting at the stop, they could want the X80 but more likely they are waiting for the number 12. The X80 only goes as far as Torquay Harbour but the 12 goes to the top of town and then onto Newton. Also the people at the stop are more likely to have Stagecoach return or day tickets and therefore less likely to wont the X80 than your number 12. So what do you do? A) Stop behind the other bus or B) go past the other bus and continue down the road there by picking the people waiting at the next bus stop a minute to two sooner.

When you are the poor sod stood at the bus stop in the wind and the rain waiting for a bus to Newton Abbot in the first scenario you don't really care but in the second scenario you can get very upset when the bus driver chooses B.

　

The second part of the post happened in the early hours of this morning when

British Summer Time ended, hopefully we will never see it again. Right now we are working on Greenwich Mean Time and will continue with that until the spring. Then we should go onto British Standard Time which is the same as British Summer Time but without the inconvenience of changing back to Greenwich Mean Time next October. There is a move a foot to scrap the changing of the clocks in winter so we get lighter evenings at the expense of darker mornings. As I tend to get up late in the morning I know which I prefer.

Save the Lobster

You might have read the story about the Emperor being shot. No not some foreign country's head of state but a red deer that for the last 12 years has been running wild on Exmoor. He was believed by some to be the biggest wild land animal in the UK. He was 9 feet tall and had been photographed many times in his long life. Twelve is a good age for a wild deer. The name was given to him by one of the people who photographed him though it is doubtful the stag actually answered to his name. And the claim to be the biggest is in some doubt as well. Anyway he was shot, probably by a trophy hunter, right in the middle of the rutting season which was a bit unsporting if you ask me and people are up in arms about it. Him being shot that is. Now I should point out a couple or three things; if his name had been Snotty of Exmoor or Breaks Wind Easily of Exmoor no one would have heard a thing about his death. Shooting deer is an everyday thing. Thousands are shot every year, either for trophies or for culling. With out culling we would have the sight of elderly deer starving to death in quiet corners of moor land Britain. Deer, once they get beyond a certain age and their teeth wear down, don't have an NHS to look after then, younger deer don't take pity on them. They don't think, "That could be my dad", or "There but for the grace of God", and chew grass till it is nice and soft and mushy and walk up to the old deer and feed then mouth to mouth. Nature isn't like that, nature used to provide predators like wolves and bears to come along and 'take care' of the sick, lame and old. But we, people that is, got rid of the wolves and bears so we have to do the job, either in the form of trophy hunters or gamekeepers.

An other thing to think about if the shooting of the Emperor bothers you, when you drive down a country lane and see a herd of cattle or sheep, do you point to one of the cows and say to the kids "Look, there's Daisy. One day soon we could be eating part of her. in the meanwhile who fancies a Big Mac?" No, we don't think twice (well vegetarians do) about eating beef, chicken, lamb, pork or fish. We just do it. And why not? We'd soon run out of interesting things to eat otherwise.

If you want to get all gooey about one animal that is killed regularly but isn't on the diet of most people because a) it's too expensive and b) it's hardly worth eating for it's nutritional value then spare a thought for the poor lobster. Eaten mostly in expensive restaurants as a 'show off' dish but lobsters can easily live for well over 100 years. I mean would you go to the Galapagos Islands and eat a tortoise that could well have meet Charles Darwin? No. But people eat lobsters. Could it be because they aren't so well connected.

PS To those few who came across The Emperor of Exmoor regularly I can understand why you are sorry he is dead. If you get to know an animal quiet well it is always sad when they go. But all the rest who have just heard about it on the news; sorry I don't understand what all the fuss is about.

Any one got £130 million to spare.

Today appears to be the day. Will we get a bypass or will we have to sort out the road between Torquay and the Penn Inn roundabout ourselves. It's 5 miles from the outskirts of Torquay through Kingskerswell to Penn Inn. From Penn Inn it is possible to drive to Glasgow and beyond on either dual carriageway or motorway, only the first 10 miles of that is non motorway driving. It's just the first or last 5 miles that causes the problem. Now lets look at that 5 miles from my experience. If I leave Torquay at 9 am on a Sunday morning I can, in a coach, be at Collumpton Services in 45 mins (33 miles). But I don't always leave at 9 am on a Sunday morning, sometimes it's 3pm on a Thursday afternoon. The longest it has ever taken me at this time is 1 hour 10mins. The extra 25 mins was spent getting through Kingskerswell. I have known it worse coming back into Torquay, sometimes an extra half hour.

Now an other journey I made last Friday. Torquay to Hatfield, Google maps said it would take 4hours 5 minutes and as I wanted to be there by 10 am at the latest I left at 5, plenty of time. Actually I got there at 9:13 but I did take a wrong turn (old-fashioned satnav, not worth the paper it was written on) and had to drive 3 miles in the wrong direction before reaching a roundabout and heading back. Getting there at that time meant I could sit down and have a cooked breakfast which was nice. At 5pm I decided it was time to leave the family gathering and head for home. With a brief stop at Bristol for fuel I got home at 10:58. Not bad. No, hang on, that's two minutes less 6 hours. What the hell had I been doing to take 2 hours longer. I tell you what I had been doing, I had been driving on the M25 at evening rush hour. Nose to tail 5 miles an hour top speed between long periods of complete inactivity. On and on like that for miles and miles, road works to the right of me , road works to the left of me, on into the road to hell I drove. Even when I reached the M4 to situation hardly altered until I was passing Reading. Hundreds of thousands, millions maybe, all trying to get home from work, many of them from London where they do proper jobs, not like us down here in Devon who try and sell ice cream and boat rides at inflated prices to luckless visitors who only want a cheap holiday.

So if Big Brother is going to spend money on road improvements will it be for us few thousand down here in remotest LibDem voting Devon or those millions of Tory voters in Middle England?

We will see, but I wouldn't hold your breath for too long if I were you.

The photo is Kingskerswell on a bad day.

 

Hi Wayne, You haven't got a hundred thousand to spare have you? I'd be most greatful.

So Wayne Rooney now 'earns' about twice as much more in a month than I will earn in my entire life. And that's even if I live to be a hundred and carry on drawing my index linked pensions for the next 34 years. Portsmouth almost went bankrupt last week. Wayne could have put the club back on a secure financial footing and not even have noticed. He could buy a house the same size as the one he is living in and pay off the mortgage in a year, it took me 20 years to pay of the mortgage in what I would describe as a discreet town house. I could visit my sisters in Australia 28 times with what he earns in day where as I how to save up for 3 years to be able to afford to go once.

What I can't understand is that people still go and watch football even though a day at a match for two people must cost a serious chunk of a weekly wage.

Once when I was selling a house I asked the estate agent how he decided what a house was worth. "What ever somebody will pay for it." was his reply. So I suppose as long as there are people out there willing to pay for their football then Wayne should be paid what ever he can get and good luck to him.

PS. I hope he starts scoring goals again soon or christians being fed to the lions will be a child's picnic in comparison.

PPS. Portsmouth are indebt to £120 million and their creditors almost pulled the plug. Man U are in debt to three quarters of a billion quid and that amount doesn't show any sign of going down. Will the day ever come when even the name Man U can not sustain that kind of debt. Think Northern Rock and other banking names before you answer.

PPPS. The total indebtedness of the Premier League and Championship League football clubs must be about 10 billion pounds. There's whole countrys out there who aren't even worth that. Is football living a little beyond it's means or is simply so far out it can never get back.

Had a day out today.

A few weeks ago, McColl's packed up, went to the wall, ceased trading, went bust, call it what you will, it meant I was out of a job and bored silly sitting at home all day long. So I emailed a couple or 3 coach firms with my very impressive CV. OK I think it's impressive. A couple of weeks went by and nothing. Then one of the companies got in touch and said they maybe able to make use of my driving skills on a part time, as needed basis. Yes said I, no problem with that, just give me a day or twos notice and I be behind a steering wheel like I had never left. I did a trial run in one of their coaches just to make sure I wasn't lying when I said I could drive a coach. Then I sat by the phone waiting.

On Monday my persistence, I can be very persistent at sitting by a phone, finally paid of and it rang and a nice voice at the other end of the phone line said, "Can you do a day out to Looe and Polperro on Wednesday." Which is why there is a photo of me up there standing in Polperro looking out to sea with the harbour behind me. Hopefully the first of many such days out over the weeks, month and years to came. One little thing I did find out is the company only insure their coaches for drivers up to the age of 70 so I can't work on for ever. Probably not a bad thing.