25 May 2021 (Tuesday) - Towel Day

I was sleeping like a log when my phone beeped at half past one. Apparently the Post Office had just tried to deliver a parcel but couldn’t due to an unpaid shipping fee. At half past one in the morning? When you bear in mind the spelling mistakes in the message, the scammers had done a rather poor job. It was just a shame they had to wake me up quite so early.

 

Over brekkie I watched the last episode of “Motherland” on our rather good new telly, then peered into the Internet to see if I had missed much overnight. I hadn’t really, but I did see that today was “Towel Day”. Something I’ve vaguely heard of before, this is all about remembering the life and work of Douglas Adams. As well as writing “The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” he wrote quite a few stories for “Doctor Who” as well.

 

Bearing in mind the debacle on the motorway on Saturday I checked my “Highways England” app and seeing all was fine I trusted it and set off to work.

The app worked - there weren't any delays on the motorway. As I drove the pundits on the radio were talking about how the cost of a university education is now effectively beyond many people. Some universities are now trying to increase their bursary schemes; effectively doing away with student loans and going back to the days of student grants. What goes around comes around. I'm all in favour of this - *provided* the student actually gets something out of university at the end of it all. I can't help but think back forty years (when student grants were a *thing*) and the attitude of my old headmaster. If you didn't intend to go to a university then you had no business being at a grammar school. And going to a university was seen as an end in itself, not a means to a completely different end.

There was also talk about how some local councils have got the hump because the UK government have enforced local lockdown restrictions without involving them.

My piss boiled at that - isn't this why we have a national government?

 

As I drove through the busiest bit of my journey so I had a van of the DMA group about six feet behind me for several hundred yards. At the first opportunity this van flew past me and slalomed through the traffic at breakneck speeds. Ironically it could only slalom for about half a mile or so; with all the other drivers going in different directions I found myself directly behind this van at the first set of traffic lights we met on leaving the motorway. Driving like a loon didn't get him anywhere any faster.

As I have said before (many times), if you are going to drive like an idiot, best not to do it in the works van.

 

I got to work for the early shift; I did my bit. And an early start made for an early finish. I came home to find “Daddy’s Little Angel TM” in residence. She came to the co op field with me and the dogs and ranted about all sorts of things. We then came home where she announced she wants our old broken telly. Talking of which the price of the new telly on the Argos website is ten quid more than what we paid yesterday.

Meanwhile “My Boy TM” is talking about a day trip to London. He wants to go to Kew Gardens and to Buckingham Palace. I think Buck House is out the window – they charge sixty quid admission. Mind you, they must get people paying that price or they wouldn’t charge it. I’m reliably informed we can get a coach trip to Kew Gardens for under forty quid, but the first fruit of my loin flatly refuses to do a coach. 

er indoors TM” boiled up some dinner which we scoffed whilst watching some narrowboating TV shows. Having visited friends narrowboating last year I wonder if a little holiday sailing along the canals mightn’t be a bit of fun…

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