“Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.” - Jeff Valdez

Despite being my day off, Friday has been rather stressful. More snow fell in the night, just enough to cover the roads and the cars. They had been cleared after the previous snow fall a couple of days ago but the roads were slushy and reluctant drivers had to spend time clearing snow from their cars before taking to the road. It was very cold, the sort of day when you want to stay at home in front of the fire. In fact Dave the cat made sure that he had the warmest spot in the house all day and he made it quite clear that he had no intention of moving. 

Robbie was working from home, so we didn't need to go far, but my daughters had to drive to work and my son had to brave the elements to walk to school. I hoped there would be no more snow because I had to take David (my step father) to a hospital appointment in the afternoon. The snow continued falling all morning and the roads became more dangerous, so we took the decision to postpone his appointment. He is frail due to his kidney cancer and he walks with two sticks (he has had two hip replacements), so I was very worried about him falling and hurting himself. I think he was quite relieved not to have to go out in the snow.

By early afternoon the buses had stopped running and reports of traffic chaos filled the news broadcasts. One daughter was already home, but she was worried about her boyfriend who had to drive back from Cranfield and I was worried about my other daughter who would not be able to drive home from her teaching placement at Corby until her school closed. Eventually both arrived home safely, apparently it took three hours to get back from Cranfield and my daughter took almost as long to get back from Corby. 

We need to get our local planning sorted out, the world shouldn't grind to a halt every time we have a couple of inches of snow, but that is a problem for another day. At least all my family are home safely for the weekend.

Norfolk Here We Come - Again!

Robbie set the alarm on his Blackberry to the time that he wanted to wake up, so at a stupidly early time the alarm went off. For a small phone it makes a very loud noise, it could wake the dead, but it doesn't wake Robbie - apparently that's my job!  The alarm went off and sleeping beayty didn't flinch, I shouted at him to turn it off and he said yes but did nothing. I yelled louder, this time he obeyed and turned the alarm off, but he didn't wake up! This process was repeated ever 5 minutes until 5.20 by which time I was ready to kill. I made dark threats about the fate of his Blackberry and he woke up sufficiently to turn the alarm off completly before pulling the covers over his head and going back to sleep. I went off and had my bath and got on with my morning routine before trying to wake him again, but after a series of insults (from him) he finally got up and waddled off to the bathroom to have a shower. 


By some miracle we were ready to leave the house at 8.20 and after a quick detour for fuel and to buy Robbie some breakfast we were on the road just before 9am. heading for Norfolk. This time we were going to collect some of my mum's luggage to make her journey home a little easier on Saturday. Traffic was fairly heavy but we made good time and we were at the bungalow just after 11.30. It was so nice to be close to the sea again, to look our across the beach and to listen to the rythum of the waves, to me it seems like the heartbeat of the earth.


My mum and stepfather took us for lunch in Mundesley, it was very nice, lamb shank with vegetables and yorkshire pudding. Afterwards we took my mum shopping in North Walsham while David (my step father) relaxed back at the bungalow. As we set off for North Walsham a butterfly fluttered across the windscreen of the car and then it fluttered alongside the passenger window until we reached the end of the lane. Then as we travelled along the very pretty country road to North Walsham Robbie noticed that we had a stowaway, a grasshopper was travelling on the windscreen wiper. Foolish as it may seem I had vague worries about it not being able to get back to it's correct habitat, but by the time we reached North Walsham my attention had been taken up with other things. 


We spent a happy couple of hours in North Walsham, Robbie bought some railway magazines and a couple of prints of old railway posters but I had more practical matters in mind, I bought some oven cleaner! As we drove back Robbie made a series of excited squeals and pointed out of the window. Usually this signals that he has seen a train, but as there was no railway line nearby I realised that it must be something else. He wasn't pointing out of the window he was pointing at the window, the grasshopper was hitching a lift back on the passenger window! I think it bailed out at almost the same spot that we picked it up!


Robbie had a bit of a sulk because I was unable to stop at exactly the spot he requested to enable him to  take a photo of a tractor in an adjoining field. He got over it eventually and it was such a nice day that we were able to go and sit in the garden with a cup of tea, or in Robbie's case a cup of coffee. Later on we went for a walk on the beach and I found a lovely 'wishing stone', if only it really could make my wishes come true.


We sat outside and watched the bats flying around the garden for a while, but then Robbie decided to go and have a shower because he was too hot. I went in and chatted to my mum, then after an hour or so we realised that Robbie was 'missing in action', he hadn't made it to the shower he was sprawled across the bed fast asleep. He didn't surface again, so when I went to bed I had to wake him up and ask him to move so that he wasn't blocking the entire bed. He answered me, but when I asked him to move he lifted his legs in the air, peddled vigorously and then resumed his original position. It took consiberal effort to shift him but eventually he went off to have a wash and get ready for bed. I stood at the window looking out at the moon on the sea and wishing that I could hang on to the precious times that sometimes seem so fleeting.

Soon Robbie was fast asleep again. I snuggled under the duvet, but it was a long time before I fell asleep. I lay there listening to the sounds of the sea and remembering the many happy times and a few sad ones spent here. This little bit of Norfolk will always hold a special place in my heart.

Road Rage

I think of myself as a fairly placid even tempered person generally, but I have to admit that there are a certain things that make my blood boil. The mere mention of milk floats has me gnashing my teeth and thinking evil thoughts. I could almost cope with at horrible noise they make, like an overworked hair dryer, but I can't forgive them for getting in my way or for moving so slowly that you could be forgiven for thinking that they were not moving at all. I encounter three milk floats every morning as I take various family members to school and work. They have a number of things in common, they are all driven by dubious looking men of a certain age who make up for their own inadequacies by disregarding the rules of the road and creating total chaos. All of them think it is OK to double park while they wander off to deliver the milk in their own sweet time. The one that I encounter in the ring road even weaves between lanes to cause maximum disruption and he doesn't exactly double park, it would be more accurate to say that he recklessly abandons his milk float skewed across two lanes of traffic! If only I had a hand grenade!!

Robbie thinks it is really funny that I get so wound up about milk floats and whenever he gets the chance he mentions them just to get a reaction - and it always works! The other day he tried to tell me that milk floats were perfectly designed for a quieter time on urban roads, he then asked me to think back to my childhood and remember how efficient milk delivery was. He is right it was certainly much faster and more efficient, because it took place long before rush hour. When I was very young our milkman had a horse, it didn't double park and it could easily outpace a milk float!

Road Rage

I am so sick of road works in Northampton, it has taken months to be rid of the road works in the area around the station, so I have not been overjoyed to find new roadworks popping up like mushrooms all around the town. I know that roads have to be maintained, but it is so annoying. It wouldn't be so bad if you could actually see them making progress, but they are so slow that you would need time lapse photography to capture any movement at all!

There is a road that I use every day (along with thousands of other people) and they are doing resurfacing work on it. It has created chaos in that part of town and this has been compounded by the unhelpful notices that appeared to announce the impending road closure. The notice read “This road will be closed off peak from .....” what on earth does off peak mean? The train operating companies can't agree on a definition of off peak, telephone companies have their own ideas about it, and the fuel companies have yet another interpretation. I wasn't until the works had started that they decided to let us in to their little secret, off peak (according to them) means between 9.30am and 3.30pm. They are obviously not used to providing helpful information, so they redressed the balance (and caused chaos) by putting up a sign on the Billing Road to inform drivers that the road ahead was closed - with the arrow pointing in the wrong direction!

Back to Reality

Saturday dawned impossibly early, we were all up by 5.15am and by 7am we were on the road. It was the Royal Cornwall Show and I wanted to be well away from Wadebridge before the queues built up. It was an uneventful but exhausting journey and we made reasonably good time. Something about the M5 always brings the worst out of Robbie, he spotted a train at the point where the motorway passes close to the railway line and for the next ten minutes he 'entertained' us with a medley of train noises - I think he has been missing work! My nerves were still jangling when there was a thump against the window behind me, I thought some debris had broken the window but it was only Sam recreating the legendary moment when grandad had thumped his hand on the side of the window to express his feelings to a particularly inconsiderate driver. Needless to say both 'boys' were silenced by a few words from me!

When we got home there was a note and a key from our neighbour, she had just left for her holiday and she wanted Robbie to water the plants and feed the fish. He takes his responsibilities seriously and he popped round to check on the fish and see to the plants. He was gone for quite a long time, and when he returned he had a puzzled look on his face, he had been searching for the fish. Apparently he expected them to be in a tank somewhere in the house, but when he couldn't find them he went out to water the plants and found the fish - in the garden pond! The following day he wasn't quite as long, but he still took longer than expected, apparently he was trying to count the fish to make sure they were all still there, but they wouldn't stay still!

Saboutaged by Sat-navs? 10.02.08

So Network Rail think that Satellite Navigation systems are at the root of their problems?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/09/nsatnav109.xml

I'm not convinced; I manage perfectly well with a map, a bit of forward planning and a window, and I have never gone too far wrong! There again, Network Rail don't have a great track record when it comes to forward planning or seeing what is right under their nose, so it hardly surprising that they think we all 'drive by numbers'. If there really is a problem with lorries going around bashing bridges to the extent that they claim then I think there may be more plausible reasons. I would guess that incomprehensible road signs play their part, also I think that foreign lorry drivers may be at fault. Many do not speak English and they may struggle to understand our road signs and some may not be familiar with our measurements either so warning signs may mean very little to them. On the way into Kettering they have a sign with a sensor to tell lorries that they are too big and get them to turn off before they get stuck under the bridge. Maybe a few more signs like that may help. Perhaps Network Rail should start to think outside the box and come up with some imaginative ideas to prevent future accidents. If there really are all these cars and lorries causing so much disruption to the railway, Network Rail should be suing the drivers involved and it is a pretty safe bet that if sat-nav is at fault the motor insurance companies would pursue the sat-nav providers. It may be an alien concept to Network Rail but a certain amount of common sense is essential when driving (and a little more of it could work wonders on the railways too!) so maybe an IQ test should be compulsory for all drivers. If nothing else it would reduce traffic congestion over night!

Addiction 20.08.07

Today, I found out the extent of my mother's blogging addiction, I found a letter in the letter box, containing a CD's worth of blog installments and instructions! What has become of postcards I wonder?! I'm now following orders by posting the entries she sent:

Saturday 11/8/07 Tell Them The War is Over

The alarm clock woke me ridiculously early; why does going on holiday involve so much hard work? As well as dealing with the last minute packing, and getting everything stowed safely into the car, I had to hand over the blog to Emily who is going to look after it while I am out of reach of the internet. If the wonders of snail mail permit I may be able to send some blog entries to her from Norfolk.

We started out much later than planned so the traffic was fairly busy, but the journey wasn't too bad. Robbie was a little put out that his services as navigator were not required - been there got the T shirt! Just to make him feel wanted I let him take me on a minor detour, but not until we were so close that he couldn't do too much harm.

I have become very fond of Norfolk and I always look forward to our time at Walcott, but I wish someone would tell the powers that be that the war is over! There is really no need to have such confusing road signs in peace time; there are plenty of road signs the problem is that they contradict each other and I am sure a number of visitors spend their holiday driving round in circles without ever reaching their destination.

I am pleased to report that we reached the bungalow without any problems. It was a lovely sunny day and as soon as the essentials had been unpacked we sat outside on our new loungers enjoying a well deserved cup of tea.

Help 29.03.07

This morning while I was still half asleep I made a seemingly innocent remark, I said that I hated milk floats, because they drive slowly, park inconsiderately, obstruct traffic and they wake me up at a ridiculously hour when they deliver to my neighbour. I observed that country milk deliveries were done in a more suitable vehicle that could drive at a sensible speed and was capable of getting out of my way. Fool! I had unwittingly prompted a monologue on the power supply of the milk float. This lead seamlessly on to power issues with pendolinos, and on to dual power, this in turn lead to a quick detour to French railways and back to the Magic Roundabout. Yes, I did say the Magic Roundabout! You must be wondering how he managed to make that connection - me too! He made a rumbling growling sort of noise that sounded like the agonised moaning from a constipated cow. I said he sounded like Ermintrude, but apparently it was his impression of a class 92 starting up! By this time I was begging for silence, but I still had a lot more 'verbal' to 'enjoy' - it began with the third rail and ranged on and on over miles of track and every conceivable power problem ever encountered on the railways.