Still Alive, just a bit lethargic.

Been an odd ten days, mostly with minor and a couple of major things going wrong. Here are the minor problems. First the cats, who have eaten the same cat food without a word of complaint for months both decided to stage a hunger strike. The local pet store doesn't sell the other kind of dry food I know they will eat so after watching them slowly waste away, starring at me with mournful, accusing eyes for two days I gave up and took a bus ride to Paignton for a 2 kg bag of Science Plan for old cats. Couple of spoonfuls down and they got through it like a couple of demented vacuum cleaners on speed. A result. Then a few hours later, time for next meal they both just walked away and started looking through the phone book for the phone number of the RSPCA. Now they are eating Whiskers with about 4 kg of dry food going mouldy in the cupboard.

Then my partner's phone got bust so a new phone was needed. As he is going to the US of A next year that meant a triband phone. At least the new phone, a Nokia is better than the old Samsung. But there was the setting up the ring tones and transferring the new number back to the old number and all the contacts to be entered. Then the central heating stopped working so the engineer had to come round and make those noises all heating and car repair people make exactly 15 seconds after looking at the offending machine. The hissing sound that is produced by sucking in air through the teeth. I actually know someone who was thrown out of the central heating engineering school because he couldn't make that sound.

Then I was out taking photos and I showed someone how to switch the camera to store the photos in something called RAW. I then went on and took about 40 photos still in RAW. Now taking photos in RAW and processing them on the computer is time consuming, especially when I haven't the vaguest idea how to do the processing. None of the photos was all that special so I ended up deleting them just to save my sanity.

When I go up to the West Midlands I drop off at Oldbury, Dudley, Wolverhampton, Wednesbury and Walsall and on Monday on my way back I pick up at the above in reverse order. Well this Sunday morning I had been talking to an other coach driver and he was telling me he had just come back from a trip to the Lake District. His first pick up had been in Plymouth, then Plympton, Ivybridge, South Brent, Totnes, Paignton, Torquay, Kingskerswell, Newton Abbott and Exeter. Must have taken forever. I had a good snigger at his misfortune, silly me. Now as I am going up to the W Midlands I don't know exactly where I will be picking up until I meet up with a company minibus at Frankley Services on the M5. The driver of the minibus takes some of my passengers and gives me the next day's passenger list. As well as the 5 mentioned above there were two extra, Stafford and Cannock, neither of which I had been to before. So I spent some little time Sunday evening on the coach programming the satnav to these places. The satnav doesn't have batteries but has to be plugged in. Walsall was already in the memory (big mistake). I got to Stafford on time but this meant leaving the hotel before breakfast is served, sad. Then click on Cannock and there on time as well. Click on Walsall. The mad box told me to take the 3rd exit at a roundabout. As I went round the bend I notice a sign A34 Walsall. But on my left was a petrol tanker so no sudden change of plan in that direction. Behind was a 38 tonne HGV and on my right were a line of cars about 3 cms apart all doing 50 mph and heading for the same exit as me so I couldn’t go round the roundabout and take the A34 for Walsall like common sense suggested. No, this little black box was sending me to the Walsall Bye Pass, also known as the M6 and this section of the M6 is the most crowded road in the whole of Western Europe. As it took 5 miles to get there with no way to turn round except go round the roundabout at the motorway I made my next mistake and went onto the M6. 5.6 miles to my turn of. Forty minutes it took. And people round here moan when it takes 15 minutes to get through Kingskerswell.