Common Sense

I do seem to find myself becoming increasingly frustrated and angered whenever I drive anywhere in South Holland. The habits of drivers in this area are no longer limited to speeding and poor indicator use. A large number it seems do not know when it is appropriate to use their lights.
Take today for instance, most of the area around Spalding is blanketed by a thick layer of dense fog. Visibility is very poor as a consequence and on the faster roads, it is impossible to spot vehicles until they are just a hundred feet away or less. Why therefore are there so many drivers who choose to make themselves impossible to see by not using their headlights? I have this afternoon driven back from Spalding and I have honestly lost count of the number of cars without lights, front or rear. It's not just the older cars at fault, most of the offenders are the new larger cars such as Land Rovers and Mercedes. For some reason best known to them, they don't seem to need lights. Perhaps it is just too much effort for them. What would their excuse be I wonder when explaining to a police officer why they hit a car pulling out from a junction on a 60 mph road? It is just this type of driver and their plain ignorance and lack of basic common sense that puts other road users in danger and causes accidents. Headlight use should be mandatory and the penalty for failing to use them should be severe. There can be no excuse.

Continuing in a similar vein, the funeral is being held in Sutton Bridge this afternoon for the two young sisters tragically killed a couple of weeks ago on the A47 near Wisbech. Apparently the two young girls attended the Westmere School in Sutton Bridge - which is federated with my son's school. There is no indication of what caused the accident but it serves as a stark reminder of how dangerous our roads can be.

A Foggy Hunstanton

Today we took a trip to Hunstanton so that Polly our dog could have a good run around. She loves it down there on the beach and I'm rather fond of the place also. My favourite poet John Betjeman had a fondness for it also. Such a shame that it was shrouded in thick fog. In fact, the journey there and back was in thick fog.

An incessant northerly wind soon made my face numb and as we reached the cliffs and rocks, we turned around so the wind was behind us. Thankfully I had thought to take my scarf and wear a fleece.
Despite the inclement weather, there were quite a few people on the beach, most of them walking their dogs. It's that time of year when dogs are allowed on the beach - out of season - so we tend to make the most of it while we can.
With the wind behind us, we continued to walk to where the lifeboat and beach huts are. In all the years I've lived here, and in my visits to Hunstanton, I had not actually been to this part of the beach and wouldn't have known it existed until my wife had pointed it out.

There's even a place to sit down and enjoy a cup of tea and a snack. I imagine it is bustling during the summer months, but the fog today did lend itself rather well to giving the place a closed in feeling.
As we walked back along the sand dunes towards the main car park, we passed the little village of beach huts and I felt quite envious of their owners, imagining how useful it would be to own one and use it as a shelter and a place to get changed on hot summer days.

A visit to Hunstanton isn't complete without fish and chips and this time, we tried out a new place my in-laws had spoken highly of. It's a little way up into the town and it was a job to find somewhere to park. We each had cod and chips and a drink and I was shocked to find it costing £19! Either I'm out of touch or prices have gotten ridiculous in the last few years. Despite the cost, they were delicious and being served in a strong box ensured I didn't end up with a lap full of chips, as is the norm on occasions such as these.

The drive back home via King's Lynn for fuel was taken a little more gingerly given the weather conditions and I found myself having to flash other motorists every few minutes for failing to use their lights. I don't know what it is with some people. Surely, the automatic instinct when seeing fog is to turn on your car lights. It seems common sense isn't that common after all.
My Moodscope rating today is 71%, pretty good.

A Day of change & a damned culture

It feels like a day of change today. This morning we welcomed two new members to our support group. Both are unique and bring their own problems and experiences. I am reminded of just how diverse society is.  It is very easy to get used to people, those you see regularly and interact with. New people bring fresh insight and dynamics, and it is interesting to see the new connections being made between the new and old members of the group. Change can be good, but it can feel odd.

Weather today has been pretty miserable. It's still very misty, but quite mild. My drive to Spalding this morning was peppered with countless mindless idiots who don't understand when they should use the bright shiny lights on the front of their cars. Another (blue Vauxhall Cavalier driver) even thought it would be great to overtake anything in front of him, at speed and without indication. In a changing world, one thing seems to remain constant - the driving skills and behaviour of South Holland road users. Rant over.

I see that Ceefax will be switched off tonight at 11.30pm when Northern Ireland's remaining analogue TV signal is powered down for good. It's amazing to read that Ceefax has been around for 38 years and how at its peak in the 1990's, 20 million viewers regularly used the service, relying on it for their news headlines, weather forecasts and and sports results - all in a simple though blocky format.

The Jimmy Savile scandal is still very much in the news and continues to dominate the headlines. George Entwistle appeared before MP's earlier today to explain why the Newsnight report into the original allegations had been dropped. I like many do find his explanation a little difficult to understand and I question why he was not in the least bit curious as to why the report had been cancelled. I find it very hard to believe that a person in his position would not want to know why, or enquire at the very least into what the report was about.
I do feel that although obviously the person at the centre of the allegations and investigations is Jimmy Savile, what we are also investigating and to some extent blaming, is an entire era and its culture. It seems to me that it is not just the actions of an individual, but a culture that allowed for such actions to take place and go unreported for so long. I cannot believe that no one else knew. One only has to watch an edition of 'Top of the Pops' from the 1970's to see young girls literally falling all over the presenters. Other programmes of the era record over-familiarity between presenters and audience members. There is a stark physical element to many - arms around shoulders and waists, embraces and touching - that today simply would not happen. It would be judged as assault, pure and simple. The culture then was totally different to the culture of today, and it is the culture then that played an important part in allowing the abuse to take place. We judge that period by the standards of today. Yes it was wrong, very wrong but the culture and the society of the 1970's allowed it and expected to see it - a few hours of TV from the period is evidence enough.

My Moodscope rating is 33% today, pretty good.