Speed

So there I stood…with the convicted….well sort of……..About forty of us stood in a queue giving our licenses in to check us off the list to make sure who we were …yes I was on a speed awareness course.

Around me I could see that most were older than me….I was scanning the conversations and I could hear

"Well it's not really speeding is it 34 in a 30?"
"wonder how much money they are making out of this?"
"Waste of my time"



I wanted to shout out loud ……."we were speeding!....deal with it….we are here cos we don't want points on the license !!!!!!!!!!!"

Quite a few of the group were a bit subdued doing the walk of shame into the building ..a bit like being voted off the weekest link ….all that was needed was a plaque around the neck saying …."I am a sinner" or "Speeder" Then there was the fat jovial bloke……who anounced that there was no need for them to look at his license as he had been here before….(which technically can't happen within three years ) He was so proud that he was there …hey why not go the whole hog and gett a conviction for drink driving as well ….. There was of course the obligatory big head……won't change him this course……he had been driving for 100 years and never got a ticket…..he was a good driver and was just unlucky……..hmmm but you were speeding big head! The stereotypical rich lady from the country she was there too.She never ever speeds but got caught out as the speed limit suddenly changed from 50 to 30 mph….don't you just hate it it when it does that…boof as if by magic!……….maybe she should try looking further than her bonnet!!!!!!!! Lift your vision me lady!!!!!!…...

The crux of it all is everyone does go a little or a bit over the speed limit at times……inadvertantly or not. I have had further driving training (I didn't admit to this on the course and my anonymity was intact for it) and I reckon (in fact I know)I can drive safely at speeds better than your average bear but you there is no excuse….even if as was my case a smidgin over 30, we were all guilty of speeding…..

So has it changed my driving? ……well the video footages of the difference in stopping time between 35 mph and 30 mph and what it did to the cardboard cut out of a kid in the road which the Class one all singing all dancing traffic Police driver was running over does play on your mind somewhat. I tell you what …...I will try and avoid those cut out people when they stand in the road in future…..!!!!!!

What did surprise me is the complete lack of knowledge of speed limits and hazards that the general P have…………We had these little "ask the audience" buttons where we voted for the right answer and only 40 percent of the class got the answer right for the national speed limit on a dual carriageway!!!!!! and single carriageway wasn't much better.

So what did I learn from my experience at speed awareness scheme…? That the older generation are far better at kidding themselves they are good driver than the younger generation. That there are some really crap drivers on the road. That the coffee machine churned out some great hot chocolate …….and of course…..watch my speed…..

Come Monday I am back out in the field……a change from office work I've been doing for the last two and a half years and I am looking forward to it…..A whole new set of colleagues to blog about and a new town to write about…..Ruislip. Weird old place really you would think it would be pronounced Roo slip wouldn't you….. No….. it's rice lip..for those not in the know…..Full of the posher people in Hillingdon no less.

So one bids you farewell so does one.

In need of surgery

It's going to hurt but the marvels of modern day medicine will ensure that Lil Miss C is surgically removed succesfully from her laptop and her thirst for MSN and facebook.

Yes our 16 year old niece Lil Miss is up from Weymouth. Now I'm not sure if this is a common trait amongst the teenage fraternity of the Dorset coastal resort that they can't communicate unless via keyboard but Lil Miss seems to have a mad desire to communicate with all her friends at once via these social websites for the best part of her hours awake ....and in her sleep as well.....

I mean ,I was on the darn PC the other morning and into my inbox came the message from facebook from Lil Miss....."I'll be down in the minute" ?!?!?! she even sent a hello message when she was tapping away in the kitchen "hello" ...now when i say tapping I don't mean dancing either.....the only dancing that has occurred in our kitchen this week was me doing the dance of joy when Wifey shouted out from the front room in an automated "vehicle reversing" type voice...."Lil Miss has left the Laptop...:Lil Miss has left the laptop" I broke out into a spontaneous dance of joy as she walked into the kitchen to replenish her glass of Pepsi ...the dance resembled a Bhangra dance!!!! Lil Miss looked at me as I explained you had to screw the light bulb with your hand above your head and pat the dog with the other.......then I doubted myself ....was it screw the dog and pat the light bulb...the sight of me patting the ceiling and gyrating my hips doggy style by the cooker was abit too much for Lil miss so she returned back to her comfort zone ...hidden behind her laptop shaking her head and muttering how her parents had warned her that their sister and brother in law were going through a mid life crisis with the piercings and the faeries and spriggans and that she had to humour us.

Hey I'm used to humiliating myself now......Wifey and I spent most of last Saturday with our hands up the backsides of stuffed toys entertaining Mini minx's friends at her party......an avenue we are exploring is this...children's entertainers......We had loads of rubbish and the hall administrator at the church makes it his undying duty to make hiring the hall the hardest thing ever ...I'm sure he measured if we put the chairs back the allotted 5 cms apart!!!!! anyway he told me we had to take our rubbish with us. So there i was fresh from entertaining 20 odd 5 year olds...when I say odd i don't mean they were odd.....well not all of them....anyway I loaded the car up with our props which included obligatory faery door and big papier mache Toadstools painted in red and white just to make sure they stand out. I was dressed in a pixie hood white pirate style lace up shirt multicoloured stripey trousers and sandals. would have looked good at a medieval fair or a gig even... but down the dump with my bags of rubbish ....no.....I was getting these odd stares from people as my pixie hood swung behind my back as I off loaded my refuse......I caught the eye of a middle aged woman ...you know the sort, prim proper Mrs ordinary .....she was staring at me with apoker face in utter disaproval of me and my amazing collection of toadstools...I nearly said ...."what's the problem ?..they are only for personal use!!!!"

I drove off thinking what a discriminatory society we lived in ...when a pixie or faery (not that I am either) can't throw his refuse in the dump without getting glared at.....

So I part with you all today with a clanger I dropped in rehearsals on Monday...a Freudian slip as opposed to my rank bass playing that is.....

I announced to the band that wifey......wants a 12 inch.........of course I was referring to a 12 string.....

Pasties and Exercise

The choice was ….Malta …or Cornwall……..hmmmm as Mick Hucknall said…"money's too tight to mention"…this year we'll do Cornwall….actually I'm saying the we'll do Cornwall bit not Hucknall …...So this year we forfeited the sun and family in Malta for the rain of Cornwall

Tintagel is a lovely place and we thoroughly enjoyed the whole Arthurian thing…..but my God did it rain?........which considering on the most rainy of days we went to Boscastle almost 5 years to the day that 3 metre high flood waves crashed through the town…we must be mad.

Pasties and Cornish icecream…….beautiful……..although my children opting for a sausage roll and Cornetto from Spar still bewilders me…..but then that is the innocence of youth is it not? The same as Rock Star my 8 year old boy whilst walking through a cow field with our dog asked me if it was allright for Doodles to do poo in the field ….I did point out the cowpats and and he put his hands on his hips and in his bestest Rigsby from Rising Damp pose…(blimey I'm showing some age now) said to me in disgust….well someone needs to do a poo patrol around here (poo patrol is when we pooper scoop the garden at home)

But the hollies are a distant memory now...back to the fun filled world of work ...wooo hooo! We do however have a fun filled weekend to look forward to....We are seeing U2 at Wembley Friday...Mini minx who has just turned 5 has her birthday party on Saturday and then we are hot footing down to Canterbury on Sunday to the Goddess show where Dragon Fly Moon are playing then to top it all off tis band rehearsal on Monday .......I’m trying to learn a bass line for a cover we are looking to do of that 70’s hit Northern Lights by Renaissance....(singer song writer musician of which lives next door virtually to the Gizmos incidentally) The bass line is all over the fret board and I must admit ...it’s hard going and yours truelly is having to work on this ....(rotters) but no pressure.....I’m sure the main man from Renaissance really won’t mind me ripping his song to pieces ....aghhhh!!!! more on that next blog however.....

Mother Dearest is on a fitness drive.......oh yes she circum navigates her sheltered accommodation daily ....(I mean the whole building not just her flat) Whilst we were on holidays she decided to have a go at the cross trainer machine that is situated in a little gym area they have there ......as she fought her way through the cobwebs she climbed on the machine and started pacing .....she found it very hard going the resistance was too much and had to stop very soon after starting. When she proudly told me of her little jaunt on the machine I asked if she had set the resistance low ....she looked at me perplexed and told me she had twiddled some knob......”well what did the display say?” I enquired...”well nothing was on it” she replied......Then the million dollar question beckoned........

“Did you have it switched on?...or even plugged in?”

”What plug? Do you mean you have to plug it in ?” she exclaimed