Offers, less booze and Aussie

4 February

London Midland have come up with an offer for a day trip to London for only £15. Now bad really seeing as the cheapest normal fare I found was £29. The offer is valid for this month only and seeing as I haven’t been down there for some time I thought maybe it might be worthwhile. But I decided to have a look at using the coach from Coventry instead. Last time I went by coach about three years ago, it cost me just £16. I looked at last night it came out at £52 for the cheapest ticket. Jan has now printed out my voucher for the train and I shall read the T&C before I decide.

We were watching the news about an hour ago and there was someone giving warnings of cancer had how to prevent it. One of them was limit your alcohol. Jan asked how long it had been since we last had a drink out and we thought it was around two weeks ago. We haven’t had a drink in home for over a week too. You might think that is not all that a big thing, but when I tell you that for me in the late 1970s, 10 or 12 pints a night was a quiet time outing for me. Now, if I have three pints I’ve had a heavy session. I feel a lot better for cutting back though and that can’t be bad can it.

There’s a half hour show on telly this week about the flying doctor service in Australia. When I was kid someone bought me a Ladybird book called Flight One – Australia. I loved that little book and I have no idea how many times I read it. It did its job for me and fired up my interest in the place, so much so that I thought I would become a £10 Pom when I left school. Later I was working in a factory in Bed’th and a couple of us had decided that we were all interested  and had a day off work and went down to London to see about what we had to do about it.

The guy spoke to looked at us and said something like, ‘Oh yeah, we love young lads you. The first thing we would do is draft you and get over to Vietnam.’ We said, ‘Thanks but no thanks,’ and left. I later got idea that he was saying this to see just how serious we were; we were not all that serious it seems. But do you know, I have felt more than a bit sorry about that at times. Whatever … we had a great day in London after that.

I mentioned a wee while ago about kids being followed to and from school. Well, it seems that some of the reports have been hoaxes. Whoever is responsible they should be taken to task for it; wasting police time is not a good thing to do. Even so, some of the calls were real and those calls were for here in Weddington and in the St Nicolas Park areas. There’s two primary/middle schools and two comprehensive schools in the areas. Police are taking those reports seriously and have increased patrols around those areas.

And so for a photo … 

A European Bison in the Highland wildlife park, just off the A9 between Kingussie and Aviemore. It was taken when we were up there on a camping holiday. We miss camping now.

Our friendly Sage has provided us with another funny for today …      

A very self-important university student attending a recent football game took it upon himself to explain to a senior citizen sitting next to him why it was impossible for the older generation to understand his generation.
"You grew up in a different world, actually an almost primitive one," the student said, loud enough for many of those nearby to hear. "The young people of today grew up with television, jet planes, space travel, man walking on the moon, our spaceships have visited Mars. We have nuclear energy, electric and hydrogen cars, computers with light-speed processing ....and," paused to take another drink of beer.
The senior took advantage of the break in the student's litany and said, "You're right, son. We didn't have those things when we were young...so we invented them. Now, you arrogant little sh**, what are you doing for the next generation?"