Photo: Testing out the new Nikon 4600: G&D’s in Oxford. Two small local coffee houses which make yummy home made ice cream.
We had fun on Saturday after me, Dan, and Hussein met up fairly randomly. I say fairly because we did at least plan this the day before. I met Dan in the late afternoon and we ended up going shopping in Selfridges food court for father’s day gifts (yes, it’s a horrible markeering gimmick but it’s also an excuse to buy yummy sweet turkish delight for your dad and then help him to eat it). I got a few brochures on Jura coffee machines since one of the guys I work with splashed out on one a while back and subsequently raved about it. At 1595GBP (over 2200USD) it had better be a good machine – and the newer model doesn’t even have the connectivity pack the previous model could be configured to come with (but it’s only for diagnostics and recipies – they missed a trick there by not having it remote controllable too).
I resisted the temptation to buy lots of Hershey’s bars while I was in with all the sweet stuff – they’re not widely available in this country (because Cadbury’s does taste better and is obviously extremely well established as a household brand) and taste disgusting initially, but you soon seem to want to eat more after you’ve had a few bites. I didn’t resist having a Frapaccino and am now quite fond of the Caramel Coffee “light” variety that a certain coffeehouse chain have finally realised people would like (there’s just no reason for them to be so bad for you unless you subscribe to the “it’s coffee, let’s make it extra bad for you” philosophy they often have).
Hmm. What else? Oh, I failed a driving test. For a couple of reasons. Pop quiz – what would you do about the below:
- You’re completing a turn in the road manoeuvre and have completely blocked the road as you proceed with the final stages of the turn. Two cars are approaching from both sides and are unable to pass you, but are a safe distance from your vehicle. Do you finish up or stop?
- You’re at a “priority to oncoming traffic” sign and there’s another in the distance ahead. Parked cars are littering your side of the road inbetween. Cars are approaching from the distance – do you wait for them or slip in behind the parked cars?
These two issues are not safety related. Nothing I did was in any way dangerous (in fact, I assisted an emergency ambulance by stopping promptly and properly on a roadabout and was given praise for handling that situation correctly). No. I technically failed. This is also known as a). bitterness on my part. b). anality on the part of the test criteria. What annoys me even more than failing on petty technicalities is that I can’t book a regular test until October. October! The DSA are almost as bad as the rail chiefs (read on) but not quite there – they should get themselves in gear (pun intended) and sort out the backlog and mess of tests caused by people being forced to retake their test after too many endorsements. So, it’s back to waiting and hoping I can get a cancellation slot soonish.
Meanwhile…two other things annoyed me on Tuesday:
- The UK government is pushing through legislation against religious hatred which also happens to violate my fundamental right to freedom of expression (article 10 of the EHCR is intentionally badly worded to give these crooks the ability to pass such unpleasant legislation). Not that we ever really had any. While it’s a good idea to stop people from being persecuted, our government – like certain other evil regimes around the world – just didn’t need to introduce yet more legislation in that regard (they already lock people up for being potential terrorists, why bother with this).
- Evil bastards (rail operators) have proposed Congestion Charging on British Rail networks during peak hours – designed to punish those of us who willfully submit to the vile and disgustingly badly run services on a daily basis. Wow. Thanks a whole lot for being so out of touch with reality. I had the good fortune of happening upon a gathering of train managers at Birmingham station a year or so back (some “meet the management who run this circus” event) so had the opportunity to (after giving them hell for some time, repeatedly firing off valid points they could not counter) conduct a survey to find out how many of them actually used trains. The results were hardly surprising. Get a [removed incitement to hatred of badly run rail networks] clue.
For your general amusement, I recalled this evening how I haven’t yet mentioned the US tourists I was speaking to last week. They were after directions and I helped them out – they were in search of their hire car place and I tried to help get them the relevent information to interpret the Google Maps they had brought. But the guy (with what was presumably his wife/partner – middle aged folks at any rate so you might hold out some hope over the college jocks who asked me “say, do you have canoeing in the UK?” last summer at the Vatican. No, I’m not making that up – I explained I live on a giant island surrounded by millions of gallons of water) did manage to step in it by saying how they have this wonderful in-car map system you can get in the States, and it uses satellites. No shit! Wow! Strangely enough, there’s an ongoing revolt against the government wanting to mandate GPS tracking of every car for road tax reasons (horribly evil). I found the naivety most amusing, but only very briefly. Then saddening.
I seem to be being a bit negative in this blog lately. It’s not exactly intentional, and I’ve not got a fantastical reason to be so. In other news, my new Nikon Coolpix 4600 arrived randomly in the mail. It takes nice photos and is smaller than the older model that it replaces. Also unfortunately takes MMC, but meh. I’ll try to upload some of the sample shots I’ve taken and update this entry with some photos above.
Jon.