I’m not going to suggest that what I am about to describe is a new thing, it is the whole scale and spread of the phenomenon that gets me. I’m talking about a general lack of respect from people to audiences and performers.  In the cinema, at the theatre, at concerts and on TV entertainment shows.

It’s a fair while since we went to the cinema, not that I don’t like it, quite the reverse, but it is the atmosphere. Whilst there is no performer to offend, nonetheless people’s attitudes can be disrespectful and certainly bloody infuriating for others.

Why is it that cinemas feel compelled to sell crisps and popcorn in the bars and foyer  Even the sweets are in noisy plastic bags. They could at least use low-noise wrappings.  But that’s not going to help with some old git rattling a ‘Wurthers Original’ around his false teeth.  The stupidest thing is that people seem to think that by opening their sweets very slowly it will make less noise.  And whilst we’re at it, it’s not just noise that offends.  I absolutely hate the smell of ‘Red Bull’.  I can smell it through brick walls!  In fairness I’ve never tasted it; I have never been able to get my nose close enough to the stuff!  So how come I always get a load of 6′ 6″ students quaffing Red Bull, eating bags of Nachos and Giant bags of caramel popcorn sat in front of me?  You’ve got to wonder if it’s the general consistency of popcorn that triggers coughing that escalates to what sounds like a full blown outbreak of TB.

What really pisses me off though is the inability of British audiences to sit through a live show regardless of it’s genre; theatre, pop, general entertainment, whatever, without joining in.  It’s not just the domain of pop concerts, I’ve read reports of theatre goers who have to endure the die hard fans of the show, who scream, literally a high pitched screaming, at a note in the middle of a song they found particularly impressive, or try and start applause for a song way before it’s even over.  In fairness, at a live concert, a good solo from a drummer, guitarist, sax player or whatever, almost demands an appreciative applause, but not a whole load of whoopin’, hollerin’, whistlin’ and screamin’ all the way through it.  It’s getting to the point were if some idiots phone goes off, the rest of the crowd starts clapping in time with it!

We where in Cancun Mexico a couple of years ago and there was an incredible Michael Jackson ‘lookalike’ whom we had gone to see a second time.  There was a young girl sat to one side who jumped to her feet and started screaming hysterically at the act.  Her boyfriend who was a seriously evil looking gangster stood up in embarrassment and walked to the other side of the room, she was terminally screwy!

But worst of all why oh why do people have to clap?  Half the cretins couldn’t clap in time if someone was beating them over the head with a metronome.  And what’s with all this waving.  They can’t even wave in time to the music, let alone synchronise the waving.  Don’t think for a moment that it’s spontaneous, ask yourself who is controlling the microphones that are pointed at the audience in a recorded TV show. I’ll go as far as to suggest that there is some pinhead whose job, (I use the term loosely), it is to encourage “Clap Now”.  Have you ever thought whether anybody would buy an album where the music was drowned out by the discordant cacophony of an audience’s clapping and whooping?  What if there was a button on the remote control that could turn the clapping off?  Is there anybody on this planet who wouldn’t use it?

It does though feel symptomatic of a much bigger problem, which is we seem to have lost all sense of performance etiquette.

I just could not resist this story! 

BUNDANOON residents literally sang the praises of Australia’s first bottled-water free town at the launch of the Bundy-On-Tap….

Bundanoon goes bottle free – Local News – News – General – Southern Highland News

And how they did it. 
Can we do it? Yes of course we can!

Source: bowral.yourguide.com.au

Now let’s get this understood, right from the start.  I am NOT having a go at cats.  I like cats, I respect cats, I have owned cats and as much as any human is able, I understand cats.

For some people, a cat is a positive blessing.  It has been scientifically proven that owning cats is good for our health and can decrease the occurrence of high blood pressure and other illnesses. Stroking a cat can help to relieve stress, and the feel of a purring cat on your lap conveys a strong sense of security and comfort.

It wasn't me, I just found it!

So what’s the whinge?
Earlier this week I went into the garden only to find feathers everywhere.  There had been another murder!

About six times this year, in my small garden alone, I have found six birds killed by cats.  How do I know it’s cats?, Because I have seen them with birds and because I am forever chasing them from the garden where they lie in wait.  I have witnessed it.  That’s why I am sure it’s cats.

I know that cats are territorial, but there are five cats that regularly use my garden as a killing field, a toilet, a battleground and a knocking shop.  What other ‘pet’ is allowed to do that? Cats are the only pets that are permitted to wander freely at will to do whatever they want.  If I owned a dog and it wandered into your garden, (especially on a regular basis), and defecated on your veg patch, sat on your lawn and barked throughout the night, used your patio as a bonking area and ate your cat, you would be up in arms and looking for revenge.  So what is it with cats that renders them immune?

For the moment, I want to just focus on the predatory nature of the cat.  I recognise that  people are prone to judging the hunting habits of cats by our own moral standards, but the fact of it is that , cats are solitary predatory hunters.  Even for a well fed cat the motivation to hunt is quite separate from its desire to satisfy hunger.  Out on the prowl, the feline taste for blood appears insatiable, with few British animals off the menu.  A study by The Mammal Society which looks at the species preyed on by cats shows that the most commonly killed birds are, in order, house sparrows, blue tits, blackbirds, starlings and robins.  Commonly cats will also take wood pigeons, adult squirrels, rats, mice, voles, shrews, slow-worms and young rabbits.  Most of these creatures will be tortured to death.  They cut a swathe through the nation’s wildlife, said the Mammal Society – which reckons some 275 million animals meet their maker under a cat’s paw every year.

There are currently over 10 million cats in the UK and according to the RSPCA, a single female moggy, left unchecked, could spawn a bloodline of 50 million cats during a 10-year life span.  They are rapidly becoming a major problem to the wildlife of the UK.

So what can be done?

A correctly-fitted collar can help stop cats from catching birds

The Feline Advisory Bureau and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, not obvious bedfellows, have united in endorsing quick-release cat collars mounted with bells as one of the best ways of reducing wildlife kill rates. In tests, cats wearing these collars killed 41% fewer birds and 34% fewer mammals than those with a plain collar. Collars with electronic sonic devices achieved even better results.

There are easy solutions that cat-owners can do to help.  Open-all-hours cat flaps allow a cat to be outside when birds are at their most vulnerable. Birds are most active an hour after sunrise and an hour before sunset, which makes these periods the best times to feed and, therefore, it makes sense to keep cats indoors during these hours.

There is one other compelling reason to do this.  If you want your pet cat to enjoy a long life; the average life span of a free-to-roam cat is about 3 to 5 years while an indoor-only cat can live 16 years or much longer.

Having come from a family brought up around drink and at times being someone who has drunk too much too often, it might come as a surprise that I would protest about alcohol abuse.  Better perhaps not to mention it lest I draw attention to my own short-comings.  However, there is a huge difference between even heavy ‘social’ drinking and the culture of drinking that we are led to believe we as a nation are now gripped.

I believe that we, (and by that I mean the ‘we’ referred to, but rarely identified, in the media),  are completely misrepresented and wrongly targeted in the search for a solution.  The trigger for the whinge is an advert I have just seen from Tesco, advertising 24 cans of Lager for £10!  In my book, that’s not a bargain, it’s totally irresponsible.

Let’s just focus on that word, ‘irresponsible’, ‘without responsibility’ for therein lies the rub.  When people in their youth are first introduced to alcohol, in a family environment, there is with it, a responsibility, (or at the very least, an opportunity), upon the adult to demonstrate a sensible approach.  In a Pub environment there is a similar responsibility upon the landlord, and indeed fellow drinkers, to moderate and show guidance.  I know this sounds idyllic and acknowledge that there are exceptions, but stay with me for a moment.  Force, or make attractive, an alternative to this responsible introduction and you end up with youths drinking irresponsibly and taught to do so by their peers.

The emphasis in this latter scenario, is not so much on the ‘social’ aspect of drinking, but rather on the effect of the alcohol itself.  To be drunk.  With no responsibility, no education and easy access, there is inevitably going to be a disaster.

The whole attitude to drink has totally changed over the years.  For hundreds of years, the Public House has been seen as a centre for the community, a meeting place and a place to enjoy good quality beer.  With that came some degree of control and in my opinion ‘adequate’ control, inasmuch as the purveyors had both social and legal obligations.

However, things changed, and very rapidly too.  The introduction of the happy hour, city centre late night clubs and a breakdown of the family unit could all perhaps be attributed to the change.  For me however, it was the availability of cheap supermarket ‘booze’ that was and is the killer.

What has made things worse are the solutions that have been used to resolve it.  Firstly, there is a lack of understanding of the core problem, secondly, the targeting of ‘responsible’ drinkers alongside the irresponsible drinkers by application of punitive taxes, and thirdly, by not acting to the full extent of law for those who abuse; both drinkers and providers.

The most dangerous of these three points is the taxing of drinks.  Anybody with half an understanding of the real world will tell you, drink abusers don’t buy the bulk of their drinks in pubs.  They buy cheap beer and spirits from the supermarket and consume that prior to going out.  The pub sells them a few drinks and suffers the consequences along with ‘sensible’ patrons.  The pubs take less revenue and people stop going because it’s too expensive.  Meanwhile, the ‘problem’ drinkers simply continue to use supermarkets for cheap drink.  For goodness sake, stop putting the price up for pub goers, stop supermarkets selling ridiculously cheap ‘booze’ and start prosecuting anti-social drinkers.

Britain’s pubs are part of Britain’s heritage and are to be proud of, not ashamed of.  This is what CAMRA has to say.

With the most recent Beer & Pub Association report highlighting that 39 pubs are closing every week, CAMRA has to do more than ever to support local pubs through these difficult times.

CAMRA’s own research shows that 84% of people believe a pub is as essential to village life as a shop or post office. Despite their popularity pubs are still under threat and need our help.

As you might expect, this weeks whinge is hospital related, but not quite the way you might expect. It’s all about those damned annoying beeps of monitors.

Now I understand that they are necessary to monitor people and equipment, but there seem to be two rules. Rule one: beep when there is a problem. Rule two: Beep continuously until a problem occurs. Clearly there is an obvious problem of conflict and confusion.. But it goes deeper than the obvious, so let’s get them out of the way first. How can they be distinguished between each other? Frequency? Tone, volume pattern of sound? Well, believe it or not, all of them.

One of the most common beeps is the drip that most patients have linked into their cannula. This can be anything from pain relief, to a saline drip and depending on the reason, these can be very important to the patient and even the simple saline drip can also be carrying important salts to a dehyrated patient. Or pain relief can be vital to the patient’s comfort. They are important, So when a pump starts beeping to signal the end of a drip, the nurse has no way of knowing what has finished, especially at shift changeover. So why is it okay to leave it for 45 minutes? (I say 45 minutes because that is just how long I have just waited). Oh, I nearly forgot, do that too many times and the cannular fails and you need a new one, painful!

Now let’s consider the continuous beep. There is the beep that monitors heart rate and so on. Vital. But there is another sort of beep that has no other function than to signal that the equipment is working. Now who thought that one a good idea? After a while, you start blanking it out if you are staff, and it starts to act like chinese water torture if you are a patient. So in the case of staff, they don’t hear it go off, especially if they are out of the room when it stops.
In the worse case, staff have been known to turn it off because it irritates them. So what’s the point? Well actually, there is an important reson, to alert people that their attention is needed for somebody who is ill and in their care..

Scary Stuff!

If you have not already downloaded Internet Explorer 8, (IE8) yet, DON’T!  It is crap!

First thing you will notice is that the whole internet experience slows to a crawl.  It almost hangs up.

New versions of most software these day are inevitably buggy and suffer from incompatibilities that haven’t yet been discovered and/or documented.  We have come to accept that there may also be small quirks that take time to discover.  Amazingly, Microsoft knew of some of the issues before they released it because they issued a ‘fix’  before the final release.  What’s more, they still haven’t sorted it out! 

This Microsoft we’re talking about, one of the biggest companies in the world with a customer base that covers virtually the whole of the globe.  And they didn’t check it worked!  If you think about how many businesses this effects, then the cost to industry is mind-blowing!

IE8 has made significant changes to the way it renders web pages and this is a massive headache for designers like me.  In order to be ‘compliant’ it is necessary to ensure that the code can be correctly interpreted by various browsers.  Most designers are happy to content themselves that it works with Explorer in the knowledge that it is used by some 90%+ of the world. A quick check that it works in Firefox and that’s a good stab at compliance.  However, IE8 has rewritten the rulebook and it’s going to be a long adjustment period before designers get up to speed on the changes.

For me, I am beginning to see this a time to move on and leave the designing to others.

But I digress, I am whinging at the browser usability here.  Unfortunately, as well as slowing down browsing, it appears to have done something to the way the mouse works in ALL programs.  It’s as though there is a continuous polling going on such that the mouse keeps resetting itself.  Drag and drop is precarious to the extreme.  Mark an area and it resets the start to somewhere in the middle.  Drag, and it drops somewhere between where you start and where you are aiming.  Nightmare!

Okay, so it’s rubbish, so let’s get rid of it.  Uninstalling is easy enough and it defaults back to IE7.  Except that it somehow retains some of its bad habits.  It’s still slower than before.  You’ve got to remember Internet Explorer is very much a part of the operating system.

Sadly, it does not stop there.  Having uninstalled it, a couple of days later I had new updates waiting.  That’s normal for me because I allow regular updates from Microsoft.  However, when I said ok to the update, I realized that it was IE8 installing itself again!  “What a f&^*g liberty!”

I’ve just made Firefox my default browser.

If you are having problems with IE8 then click here, this might help

Driving down Bath Road, Cheltenham, earlier in the week approaching a crossroads I was annoyed to see a young woman, (say, mid 20s), walking around the corner and press the pedestrian crossing button.  She didn’t falter in her step as she continued around the corner and pressed the next crossing button, then walked on down the street.  This stopped the flow of traffic in both directions for about 2 minutes each.  Prat! It was almost as though she was making some sort of a protest.

It’s on a par with people who carefully manipulate the ‘Engaged’ sign in public toilets.  Seriously, I’ve seen it happen.  They are probably the same people who don’t flush it either.

I was just going to liken them to people who whistle pointless, tuneless tunes , usually where you can’t get away from them, but at least some of them can be excused because they are oblivious to the annoyance that they are to others.  The people I am talking about are those that deliberately set about to annoy, but in an anonymous sort of way.  Like the 6’ 6” tall idiot who sits in front of you at the cinema even though there are 6 empty seats either side.

It’s the act of deliberately inconveniencing people just for the sake of it.  Hate them.

I have for some time now been researching for a large feature or possibly a small book with a working title of "Truth, Lies & Bullshit".  However, I have taken a bit of a sidestep for this week’s Whinge of the Week.

Perhaps because of the research I have been doing, I appreciate that I may be a bit more sensitive to the topic that most, but recently I have seen a rapid rise in reporting that displays an ‘irrelevance’ to truth.

Perhaps because the media is rapidly running out of new adjectives to describe simple events, there is now a need to take things to a new level.  Let’s assume for a moment that there is a rule somewhere that excludes the use of expletives to supplement that adjectives, otherwise we would have been hearing, "It was the biggest f*&king downpour ever experienced at Lords", etc.  In it’s stead, there appears to be a marked increase in completely disregarding the truth. 

Recently we have apparently been in in the grip of a heat wave.  Not true.  The Met Office definition of a heat wave is 5 consecutive days of 5c above the 1961-1990 average maximum temp.  For June the 61-90 ave temp is 19.1c in SE England and 21.2c for July. Temps usually peak second half of July. For end of June average maxima should be around 20c to 20.5c in the south.  Check it out here: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/anomacts/#  There never was a heat wave.  The truth was irrelevant.

Another classic example of this would be the current "Recession".  We were being told back in August last year that we were in a recession.  By Mid-January most of the media was reporting that we were "in the grip of a deep and long lasting recession"  In fact, a recession technically occurs when the economy contracts for two successive quarters.  This means that it was on 23rd January 2009 that we ‘entered’ into recession triggered by the previous 6 months performance.  The truth was irrelevant.

To be fair, these are easy targets for me to pick on, and what concerns me more is the less important, almost trivial items that pass us by.  Silly things.

A BBC report on a classroom built inside a converted aircraft at Kingsland Primary School in Stoke-on-Trent identified the plane as a "Short 360" Jet.  A Jet my arse! The idiot reading the news was looking straight at the plane as he was talking.  Those bloody great big spiky thins on the wings are propellers! In fact the Short 360 had two advanced six-blade propellers.  The truth is irrelevant again.

Before I leave this post, I have to include a little twist on in the tale, (sic).  I found this little snippet albeit referring to a story some time ago.  In New Hampshire, a doctor had the audacity to tell one of his patients, an obese woman, that she needed to lose weight because her health and quality of life were at risk.  Unfortunately, rather than take her doctor’s advice, she instead complained to the State Medical Board.  The Board took action and opened an investigation.  Perhaps it isn’t that the truth is irrelevant, perhaps it is unwanted.

Both myself and Karan have hearing problems sufficient for us to need subtitles on much of the television we watch.  It’s either too indistinct, too fast or drowned out by the background music, for us to catch it all properly without the aid of subtitles.  (Why must the news summary be done to the accompaniment of bloody great Kettle Drums)?

So why is it beyond the capabilities of program producers to synchronize the subtitles with the voices?  I understand to some degree that ‘live’ broadcasts cannot always be synchronized easily, but more on that in a minute.

It is ordinary run of the mill programs.  Sometimes the sync is some 10-15 seconds adrift.  It is unwatchable, not just behind, but ahead!  Incredibly, I am just watching QI and it’s sync is about 10 seconds ahead. It started just after I started this article and therefore is totally coincidental, but not only is it on ‘Dave’ and therefore a couple of years old, but it’s also on ‘Dave ja vu’ and therefore an hour later than this evening’s earlier transmission.  Why therefore is it allowed to happen?

It takes me exactly the same length of time to sync a song, karaoke style, as the song is.  It is not difficult.  There is voice recognition technology that does the job virtually instantly.  And having done it once, to then on a subsequent broadcast, adjust by using an ‘offset’, any lapse is simple.  Let’s not forget either, that these people have some incredibly sophisticated software for doing the job.

Which brings me back to the ‘live’ news.  Any subsequent transmission, it is no longer ‘live’, and therefore is not an excuse for being out of sync.  Try watching the Grand Prix with subtitles on, impossible.  So watch the highlights later on.  No good.  Same bloody subtitles!

To be honest, the broadcasting companies just don’t give a toss.  Now if it where a website, they’d have the ‘Accessibility’ people all over them!

I’ve just found something that really takes the piss. I was doing a bit of research about the law relating to car alarms.  You know the ones I mean, they go off in Tesco’s car parks.  I entered ‘car alarms law’ and could not believe the first entry. It was this http://www.tescolegalstore.com/car_alarm_complaint.asp.

Did you get that? Tesco’s Legal department’s form for complaining about noisy car alarms.  Having an office that backed onto Tesco’s car park for four years and listened to the Tesco Car Park Symphony Orchestra every 10 minutes every day, this is irony one step too far. 

I can understand the need sometimes to alarm the car when you’re popping into Tesco for a few minutes, we live in villainous times. But what possesses someone to switch their car alarm on with a couple of kids or a dog in the back.  The bloody alarm is going to go off!

Even the sensible ones could do with a bit more thought.  It’s raining hard, the bloody alarm is going to go off! It’s very wind, the bloody alarm is going to go off! You’re parked next to another car, the bloody alarm is going to go off!

Who the hell does anything about it when one goes off?

Just to round this bit off, this is where the law stands.

Under the Noise and Statutory Nuisance Act 1993 the local environmental health officer (EHO) can serve an abatement notice on the owner or driver of a car with a faulty alarm to remedy the fault. If the alarm goes off and after an hour the owner/driver has not been found the officer can immobilise the alarm or remove the vehicle.

Cat Burglar

The trigger for this whinge actually wasn’t a car alarm, it was a house alarm.  the advert could have read, “Probably the most powerful alarm in the world”!  At one point, a small crowd were stood outside in the lane looking up at the offending siren.  The next door neighbour sat forlornly on her doorstep with head in hands, her dog frantically running round in circles on the lawn.

Eventually the sound ceased and the small crowd moved on, the dog staggered dizzily to the backdoor and attempted to console the woman with great wet licks.  I came home to write my blog.

For the record, by law, alarm owners have to do two things:
1. Register the details of two keyholder details with the Police, (they must be available to allow police etc into the premises within 20minutes.

2. Make sure the alarm has a working cut-out device. (It must switch off after 20 minutes).

This is the bit I like:

If your burglar alarm causes a noise nuisance, the Noise Team may decide to prosecute
you. If you are found guilty, the Courts can impose fines of up to £5,000 (£20,000 for
businesses). This is in addition to you being invoiced for the costs of breaking into your
property.

The stupidity is that if the alarm is ringing persistently, it advertises the fact that on one is in, and no one had been informed of the situation, except of course a potential burglar.

I thought I was hearing things or the media was up to it’s usual trick of extreme exaggeration when I heard that pupils at one school are forced to put on goggles before using Blu Tack to prevent them rubbing it in their eyes.

So I had a bit of a dig around to find what other rubbish rules our schools impose, normally under the guise of ‘Health and Safety’.

Assuming you’ve lost your last pair of goggles and therefore the blu tack is out of bounds, you might be a bit pissed off to learn that teachers are required to read a five-page briefing note on the dangers of Pritt Stick before they may use it with children.

Can you believe that empty egg boxes are banned in some schools for fear of salmonella poisoning; and it’s no use reaching for the empty bog rolls either, ’cause they’re banned as well. Oh, and don’t give the little cherubs shaving foam in art classes because they ‘might drown in it’.

Never mind, they can always go out to play; with just one or two restrictions, because there are bans on footballs, snowball fights, conker games and running in the playground. Just as well really, because some schools have stopped children going outside without a hat and sun-cream.

Oh and you can forget three-legged races on sports day because children "might fall over". That assumes it’s not raining anyway because PE lessons are not allowed in wet weather.

Other idiot rules include: Teachers banned from sending naughty kids to stand outside the classroom because they pose a ‘Fire Hazard’, pictures must be hung at least 7 ft high on school walls, girls banned from wearing plastic head bands because they could cause damage if they bumped heads, teachers who supervise outings must take a bucket in case children are sick and sweets banned for fear of choking.

I’m reminded of a story my gran once told me, (probably a myth), about the old lady who was so frightened of the modern world that she spent most of her life lying on a feather bed.  She died when she choked on a feather from her pillow!

For those of you that don’t know, I was born in Bury, Lancs.  And what is Bury famous for? Black Puddings!
Stay with me on this one because I need a couple of lines of explanation.
Firstly, let’s understand one thing, there is ONLY way to eat black pudding and that is to BOIL it!
That’s right, BOIL it!.

Whoever the hell first thought it a good idea to fry it was clearly from some cretinous sub-culture.

And what traditionally is a black pudding made from?
Pigs blood, Pig Rind, Oatmeal, Barley and mixed herbs all inside Pig’s intestine.
Traditionally, this is made into a Black Pudding Ring.
(You can also get them as ‘Sticks’ and ‘Chubs’).

So what is the whinge?
In the absence of the ‘real thing’ I have been eating a passable interpretation from Sainsburys.
However, they appear to have changed their supplier!
The new one omits the Barley, the Oats, and the Pig Rind has been replaced with lumps of lard.
In desperation, I succumbed to the ultimate sacrilige and FRIED it!
BIG MISTAKE, because they had swapped the Intestine with PLASTIC!
That’s NOT a Black Pudding, it’s shit.

Bloody Livid!

Cyclists! Now don’t get me wrong, this is not a whinge about ALL cyclists, just the ones that drive on the same roads as me.

I understand that there are cyclist who obey the rules of the road and are considerate to other road users and their own safety. Unfortunately, in the period of a couple of weeks, there seems to be a whole new generation of idiots taking to the Lycra like a plague of locusts in biblical proportions. Have you ever thought what possesses an otherwise sane human being to go out and buy himself a pair of Lycra shorts? I say he, because I could probably tolerate a female doing that. Just!

What makes them think that they take on a cloak of invincibility when they ride in packs? Single file is great, two abreast, hmmm…, three, stupid and beyond that it’s just plain suicide.

Some time ago, on a trip to mid-Wales, I was toddling along in my old RX7 when I went around a sharp bend only to be confronted by a pack of cyclists spread right across the left side of the road. If anything was coming the other direction it would have been carnage because the choice would have been the wrong side of the road or the Lycra. Sorry, the Lycra gets it. As it was, I was forced across the wrong side and only met with waved fists in my rear mirror by way of thanks. It was some time before I completely lost the urge to turn back and have another go.

Last year, Karan and myself were having lunch in the ‘Greyhound’ pub in Gloucester. We had to wait a while to get served because there was a cycle club on a pub crawl. A PUB CRAWL, on bikes! Half of them were already worse for the wear. What makes beer swilling cyclists immune from the law?

But it’s not just the Lycra mob that leave their brains in their bum-belts. Why is it that twilight is the best time to ride your bike without lights? Dark clothes, no lights, riding on pavements, cutting across traffic at traffic lights, cutting across to the extreme right hand side of a roundabout, (that ones really brain-dead). It seems that there is an ‘alternative’ highway code.

What prompted this week’s whinge was some old prat going about 3 miles an hour in the centre of our lane. Too narrow to overtake and totally oblivious to my toots of the horn, he doggedly held the centre of the road with the occasional weave gently and serenely from side to side. Fortunately I wasn’t in a hurry, but life’s too short. Thankfully, so is our lane.

Why is it that people leave their manners behind when they go on holiday?

On holiday in Gran Canaria last week, on an ‘All Inclusive’ (more about that later), I was stunned by some holiday makers behaviour.  I am reluctant to call it inconsideration, it went beyond that, almost a ‘survival’ instinct kicking in.

The dining hall was classic. 
I saw one woman with side plate filling it with fresh cherries.  Fair enough, but she took the lot. Still fair enough.
However, just as she was walking away, the waiter replenished the tray with a new load of cherries.
She spun around and seemed to grow four foot wider as she began piling more and more cherries on the plate.
It was a frenzy.
When she couldn’t get more on the side plate, she replaced this with a larger bowl.
It wasn’t as if she wanted all the cherries, it was as though she didn’t want anyone else to have them either!

Satisfied that there was no hope of adding more to her stash she started to make her way back to her table, but every couple of steps she stopped to glance back at the remainder on the ca rousel.  She was clearly in a state of mild panic.

She wasn’t alone either. 

During the week I saw someone with a FULL cake on the table.
Quite a few people taking full bottles of Cava back to their table, leaving others to wait for replenishment.

One chap with four large steaks together with about a dozen large battered prawns and spaghetti bolognese all on one plate.  He abandoned the prawns to the tablecloth when he discovered they still had their shells on.

I could go on but my blood pressure wouldn’t stand it.

What a totally exasperating weekend!

I have been trying to produce a couple of videos from the 60th birthday to publish to the Blog, but have hit brick walls all around.

Firstly, I started to load up Microsoft’s Movie Maker.  I’ve used it dozens of times in the past but yesterday it decided it was not going to play,  After a lot of searching, it looks like one of the million updates from Microsoft had installed some new codex files that are not compatible with Movie Maker.
You’d have thought that they would have checked first wouldn’t you.

Okay, plan ‘B’, use the office PC.  Loaded Movie Maker.  Guess what?  No Codex loaded.  I needed to download them.  Great, Downloaded, ran the program.  I bet you’re ahead of me! Yup, they are not compatible and Movie Maker Crashes.

Right, bite the bullet, Adobe Premiere v7 it is.  Downloaded a “Fully Functioning” 30 day trial.  Took a couple of hours to download and install.  But it ran!

Trouble was, it produces a line right through the middle of the production “Produced with a Trail Copy of Movie Maker”.  Bugger!

Fair enough, I suppose I have to shell out £75 for a copy.  But hang on, it’s only £65 in the US.
Okay, I’ll do it, but I hate being ripped of by Yanks!