Happy New Beer - I mean Year!

Happy New Year, everyone

Another dusting (again)...

Well, I woke up this morning to find that we had yet another dusting of snow overnight - luckily it was, indeed, only a light dusting this time, and should melt off fairly rapidly. It also shows that apparently the majority of weather forecasts out there aren't that detailed - the ONLY one to even hint that there was going to be snow was accuweather.com, and I only know of them because of the nifty weather application on my several months-old three-and-a-half-"G"-capable HTC Touch Pro 2 mobile phone - cum - PDA

Y'know I used to think, when they first announced the whole 3G thing, that it'd be an interesting fad, only used by business folks and true internet geeks on the move. Now I'm happy to admit that I'm wrong, and blimey, was I ever in this case - it's one of the most useful things to hit mobile comms in ages (ever since the introduction of widespread mobile phone networks, in fact). So much so, that I find I'm using it practically every day. Not only for checking email on the move (I like staying fairly well connected, just not when I'm driving, of course!), killing time during breaks by browsing the net, and so on.

It's also good for getting maps of places you don't know in timely manner (Google maps mobile, VERY useful!), and so on... the range of applications is growing every day - and before you say that I must have an iPhone, I'll tell you "no bleeping way!" - I'm very happy with my Windows Mobile PDA/phone, thanks very much, and will be hanging onto it for some time to come!

OK, back to the Ranting part of the Blant...

Frightening driving (again)...

Now, let's hope all the motorists out there have had their daily jug of Java , as some of the driving I saw yesterday was truly frightening

Idiot tracks...

Take this goon. Not content with being a Chelsea Tractor driver, whose tractor probably only sees mud and grass when parked outside his home (the garden), this muppit decided that oh no, the yellow box obviously didn't apply to him, and proceeded, in full view of no less than three CCTV cameras, and probably untold amazed somewhat more sensible motorists, that he'd not only put his lump of iron on a yellow box, but so positioned to block tram tracks as well. There's a phrase for that: Suicidal Impatience.

Lucky for him that the trams come round that corner dead slow (they've seen gits like this before, of course). Were it a railway level crossing, and not tram tracks, there's a good probability that this git would be spread across nine or ten grid squares by now.

Corner Cropping...

Now for this fool. What's the problem? See the red and white sign on the left? It's there for a reason. Buses come out from the left. Honking great big double deckers. To accomplish a safe turn right from the junction (back past my position), they have to use ALL of the space generated by the area forward of the "stop here" sign.

Result in this case? Chances are the fool would have had his car corner cropped to some massive degree.

Moral of these lessons?

OBEY the bloody signage, folks. It's there for a reason!

Here endeth the rant!

Again, Happy New Year, everyone!

Seasons' greetings...

Well. Been a while (again). Seems to come in fits and starts, this blant.

Then again, I've been damnably busy over the last few months, so that might explain a few things. I'm back on the day shift again (currently on a batch of early shifts), and when I've not been working, I've been recovering (the new rota I'm on has a truly punishing set of shifts - I don't think I've been so busy in years), and when I've not been recovering at home, I've been over at my partners place, getting away from it all (and spoiling Achtung & Chunky something rotten - oh, and the better half as well, too! )

Anyhow, the photo. Right. More bleeping snow. And since it was raining when I got home this afternoon, I couldn't put the cover over the car, so at oh-my-****ing-god tomorrow morning, colour me pushing ****ing snow off the car. Again.

And since we're talking Silly Season antics, let's ask why the average Amateur Driver (those who are not in possession of a "vocational" driving licence, i.e. those who are not PSV or LGV drivers) find it impossible to follow Highway Code rule 223?

223

Buses, coaches and trams. Give priority to these vehicles when you can do so safely, especially when they signal to pull away from stops. Look out for people getting off a bus or tram and crossing the road.

This does NOT mean that when you're a hundred yards away, you should stand on the accelerator pedal and overtake come hell or high water, does it now? No. It means, boiled down, GIVE WAY to buses indicating that they wish to pull out from the kerb. Unless some moron is trying to crawl up your exhaust, you should slow down, and allow the bus to pull out. Who knows, you might even get a meaty thumbs up out the window from the grateful bus driver!

Be nice, folks. It's the Silly Season, after all

Oh, and how do I feel in the morning?

Well, some company's got it about right, I think...



It's actually an advert, designed to be part of the corrugated "hold the cup here" ring that they put blisteringly hot paper coffee cups into, so as to avoid coffee shop customers dropping the coffee and holding the palms of their hands in pain on receiving ninetieth degree burns first thing in the morning. Good idea, that company. And no, I'm not naming you - you don't pay me for advertising space

Oh, and on Achtung...

This is Achtung (NOT her actual name. She gets to have privacy too ). here, she appears to have charged her lasers... obviously not impressed that we weren't about to share our sausages with her. Again.

What the HELL is Brown thinking?!

OK, the Territorial Army...

Currently, the TA supplies a massive amount of its' troops to assist our Regular Forces in places like Afghanistan.

Now, to save money, the T.A. has been told by the Government to cease any and all training, which includes the regular weekday Drillhall evenings, monthly weekend exercises/training and, in fact, all normal T.A. training, for six months.

See this article...

They say this will save twenty million quid.

What they DO NOT SAY is that it'll destroy unit cohesion. It'll ruin standards of training - these days, many T.A. soldiers are undertaking things like NVQs, safety courses, required skillset update courses, and so on. It'll completely wreck such training, resulting in increased costs when the T.A. soldiers return to their training schedules in six months.

They have, of course, said that continuation training, when a T.A. soldier is called up to serve in, say, Afghanistan, will not be affected.

Frankly, that's highly likely to be bunkum as well: I have now completely lost faith in this government.

They've cut public services, while voting themselves fat increases in salaries (that's a matter of public record). They've screwed up our Armed Forces, Police Services, Fire Services, and healthcare, while apparently fiddling their expenses (it's in the papers, and where there's smoke, there is invariably fire as well).

They have, in short, wasted money themselves.

And now they want to cut the training of one of the most important areas of defence spending?!

Words fail me. Well, they don't, but if I put down here what I really think, I'll be done under section 5 of the Public Order Act!

God help serving T.A. soldiers - because this bloody government won't.

It was THAT kind of shift, last night... (part two)...

OK... typing this up before I go to work tonight :)

So, there I was at our Friday night lunch stand (at 04:08 in the morning! Ye gods, I gotta find an easier and more sociable-hours usable way to earn a living!), when our nice friendly roadside controller comes up and says, "Sorry mate, I gotta nick yer bus, chummy's got a water leak, you'll get a sub" - he meant a substitute bus from the depot - "soon, OK?"

This, when for the first time in close to a fortnight, I actually had a bus whose cab heater worked as advertised, and pushed out warm air, not frozen air from the Siberian regions!

OK, so the bus wasn't exactly all systems go, the nice new shiny just-out-of-its'-wrapping iBus system on it was somewhat stuffed (it wasn't taking trip data, so no recorded bus stop location announcements for the punters to fall asleep by as they usually do), and the front route blind winding mechanism wasn't working properly (it only wound in one direction: naturally, this was not the desired direction!), meaning that I had to change from the day route number to my night route number by opening up the front route blinds cabinet from the upstairs saloon, and winding them by hand (laborious, that!), but forget that - the damn bus had a working cab heater!

And he wanted to nick it off me!

On a bloody freezing night just like it was last night!

Sometimes you just can't win.

So he got my bus.

Naturally, I muttered dark imprecations about the driver of the stuffed bus, the stuffed bus, the controller, engineers, et all. In my very best "Victor Meldrew" impression (from the telly series "One Foot In The Grave"), of course. Must retain some kind of sense of humour, or I'd wind up talking to myself, AND getting answers, too!

Anyhow, I wound up spending my break in a not-very-warm, and very drafty, staff room at the bus stand. Muttering dark imprecations about engineers, spit balls, baling wire, and chewing gum usage...

Hmm... I was talking to myself again, wasn't I?

Add to this the fact that my better half is off with a bunch of our friends this weekend, and partying hard without me, because I couldn't get the time off work (probably just as well, I don't dance, and I really don't do discos - they make my ears hurt!), and you might understand why I was a tad hacked off last night...

The kind of things speeding through my sorry excuse for a brain bucket (skull) at this point were similar to "I've had enough, I don't wanna play no more, gimme me ball back", and "Stop the world, I wanna get off!". You get the idea.

This somewhat less than ideally motivated attitude was inspired by previous incidents of this nature. Whenever you needed a sub bus, the bus the engineers would send out would be about one step away from being a candidate for the knackers yard... and specifically on a night shift, would likely as not have (1) no working cab heater, and (2) probably about as much acceleration ability as a slug, meaning that I'd not only be freezing my toes off, but would have to work my backside off to keep to time, even on an empty road.

So, imagine my shock and amazement when they sent not only a bus that had a working cab heater, but which was actually able to do nought to thirty in less than five hours!

Colour me not only impressed, but totally gob smacked! I sincerely took it all back about what I'd been muttering about engineers earlier (well, until next time, anyhow )

To even things out, it was all things back to normal when I got home a little while later. Once again, I'd failed to win the Euro Lottery jackpot. Hell, I hadn't even got any numbers whatsoever!

Oh... pooh. Back to work again tonight, then!

It was THAT kind of shift, last night...

It was the kind of shift where you find that Morons From The Planet Zog have replaced most of the human population (there's a good title for a comedy Sci-Fi movie - you saw it here first! ..um... the title, I mean, not the movie!).

The kind of shift that you only get when it's a full moon.

The kind on shift that makes you want to scream at the top of your lungs "Stop the world, I wanna get off!".

The kind of shift where said Morons From Zog all seem to want to moan and meander onto your bus (when you're already ten minutes late due to traffic), all spending (seemingly) hours searching for their passes in the most bizarre of places (no, their inside coat pockets would definitely be too easy a place to search first, naturally)...

The kind of shift where you ask someone not to drop the empty coke can on the floor lest it get stuck in the doors.

Yep. He did. of course, they jammed. I then had to spend five minutes unjamming the sodding things.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

That kind of shift.

It's the kind of shift that had me about ready to pull my hair out in sodding great clumps (if I had any clumps, of course. A No 2 haircut knows no clumps!).

And to cap it all, I got back to the depot, to find that my car was covered in that horrid brown crap called dust that drifts over from the landfill site over the road. My car, that I cleaned not 48 hours earlier.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

Yup. It WAS that kind of shift.

Stop the world, I wanna get off!

Welcome to the Great British Summer!

As you might have noticed last night, it was ****ing down. Cats, dogs, frogs, rabbits, stair rods, you name it, the whole enchilada was coming down at one point...

Then, it decided to get a mite chilly. The kind of chilly that sends folks who've been drinking all evening a tad, how can we put this, wobbly. Not physically wobbly, you understand. Oh, no, that'd be far too easy. No, this is the wobbly in the head kind of wobbly.

The wobbly that makes brave men attack streetlamps for having one shining eye, and looking at them funny, requiring a slap or ten. That they don't notice that they've probably broken every bone in their fists doing that probably only occurs in the morning, once semi-sober.

It's the kind of wobbly that makes folks get on a bus with no pass, no money, and no idea of decent conduct. Who then insult the driver, as they're looking to get a free ride, and want no arguments or challenges about the fact that they're being complete muppits, criminals (it's technically fraud, that being "attempting to obtain pecuniary services by means of deception"), and, frankly, bloody boring drunkards.

THAT kind of wobbly.

It'd be nice if there were such a thing as a "Sober-Up-Instantly" pill. Better yet, it'd be nice if the Old Bill could come down hard on these gits (as a deterrent, you understand), like they used to be able to in the 60s and 70s ("Come 'er, son" *slap* "we wannaword wiv you" *knee in the groin* "OI! Stop upchucking on me shoes!")... oh, hang on... I'm reliably informed that only happened in "Life On Mars".

Oh... pooh :(

So, back to the initial topic... why the crap weather? Global Warming? Nope. Not in my book, or it'd be bloody hot and dry. I think someone, somewhere, needs to rethink what our climate's doing, and come up with a more accurate - and punchy - name for it.

WEBUG (Weather B*****ed)... that sound about right?

Trials, Toasted arms, Trumpton, and Tattoos...

Well, Jury Service was... Long. Not that much I can add to it, really, mostly due to the restriction on what Jurors can say in public both before, during, and after, a trial. We spent the first week sitting around waiting to be called to form a Jury (being "Jurified" would seem to be a good word for that, wouldn't it?), and eventually got sent home early on the Friday - like most days that week, in fact.

The reason? Seems H.M. Court Service summonsed a few too many of us for that week - go figure. Well, I suppose that's better than not enough Jurors, on balance, but believe me, sitting on your backside doing stuff all is a right royal pain in the (appropriately) rear!

So, into week two, and it begins to look as if we're never going to see the inside of a Jury Box, when lo and behold, we're called to form a Jury Panel. A Jury Panel is fifteen people, of which twelve are selected at random by the Clerk of the Court, to serve as a Jury. I was number twelve - whoopee! I actually got to do something!

Regrettably, I can't do much more than that, due to the rules governing Jurors and what goes on in the Jury Room. Which is a hell of a shame, as it'd make for very interesting reading - the whole Judicial process appears to be covered in a fog-like substance, and while we may know, from the television (from things like "Cops With Cameras" and suchlike), how crooks are caught, it's the process of bringing them to court, and the trial process itself, that exists in a murky world of rumour, confusion, and not a little fear and ignorance, to the general public.

Maybe it's time the lid was lifted, at least a little, to provide a little more reassurance to Joe Public on the whole and complete Criminal Justice System?

Toasted Arms...

Well, following on from my fortnight in and around court, I managed to attend one of my Living History Groups' main events :-)

The "Military Mayhem" event is held in Faversham, Kent, around the middle of August. Now in its' second year, we've attended it for both years now, walking away with Best Static Display 2008, and now Best Living History Display 2009 - you may indeed colour us well and truly chuffed to the max :-)

However, to temper my chuffedness, I picked up the worst case of sunburn to my neck and arms that it's been my misfortune to suffer in many a year.

In the next week, I fully expect to look like the incredible snake man, shedding his skin, as my sunburn peels off

Trumpton playing with hoses again...!

There I was, thinking "Ah, a nice quiet Tuesday"...

Wrong!

From the moment I got to work, I realised that "quiet" wasn't going to describe this night...!

On getting to work, I found that the Fire Brigade (known reasonably affectionately to many as 'Trumpton' (see "Camberwick Green")), were in attendance over the road from our bus depot, at a landfill fire... Um... Uh-oh... Anyhow, to help them make a new urban swimming pool - I mean put the fire out - they'd draped their big bore fire hoses from the hydrant, across the road, to the landfill...

Which made getting on and out of the depot an exercise in care and attention, let me tell you - those hoses are BIG bumps in the road, and when you run over them with a twelve ton bus (even with the greatest of care), it makes for interesting facial expressions from the assembled players from Trumpton!

Chest Tattoos...

And then, to cap the start of a truly long shift, we had someone running around in the road, literally playing with the traffic. Now, I'm NOT one to make fun of the afflicted, but this poor sod definitely should not be out in the community: He was obviously not all there upstairs, and that he was running from vehicle to vehicle, in the middle of the road, trying to say God knows what to the various drivers, was not only sad, it was bloody dangerous.

Add to this that he was visibly physically disabled (serious limping due to a gammy right leg, and a visibly disabled right wrist), means that Social Services somewhere were (again) falling down on the job again - that lad needed constant supervisory care, not freedom to potentially commit suicide by car, for Gods' sake.

I'm just glad that I did not hear that Brixton got gridlocked by a pedestrian incident. His being found with "Pirelli" impact tattooed to his chest would have been a truly criminally preventable incident, to say the least.

Thank the stars the rest of the shift was quiet (if bloody long).

Oh, and Trumpton? Yup. They were still there when I logged off duty at 08:22 - they had a long night of it too, by the look of things!