Near-death experience (not really)

My daughter went to Bournemouth with her boyfriend after school today. It's ok because I knew all about it and because it meant I didn't have to leave work so early to pick her up. The arrangement was that I'd meet her in the Pavillion car park on Westover Road at 6.30pm.

I was bursting for a pee when I got there, and also needed some change to pay for parking. To kill two birds with one stone I headed for the ABC just down the road. ABC don't let you have change unless you buy something. I bought some sweets. Tight-arse bastards. At least they didn't charge me to use the toilet. I thought it was very restrained of me to confine my urine to the urinal.

As I started crossing the road at the pedestrian crossing on my way back to the car, I was almost knocked over by a cyclist. Not only was this dick cycling up the one-way street in the wrong direction, he also went through a  red light, and didn't have any lights on when it was dark. Twat.

On a lighter note, my daughter and I went to Wagamama (Japanese inspired restaurant) for tea. Nice. What I like about this restaurant is that they're fairly quick, and I have no idea what the things on the menu are. This time I had tori kara age as a starter (not the nicest dish I've ever had) and chicken katsu curry as a main (gorgeous). My daughter had chicken tebasaki as a starter (very nice) and yaki soba as a main (also very nice).

For those of you that are interested, here's a description of the dishes we had :

• Tori kara age : Deep-fried chicken pieces served with a chilli, garlic, sesame and soy sauce.
• Chicken tebasaki : Tender chicken wings glazed with a korean barbecue sauce.
• Chicken katsu curry : Chicken breast grilled in panko breadcrumbs, served with a curry sauce and sticky white rice. garnished with dressed mixed leaves and red pickles.
• Yaki soba : Teppan-fried soba noodles with chicken, shrimps, egg, beansprouts, peppers, white and spring onions. garnished with fried shallots, pickled ginger and sesame seeds.

For those of you that aren't interested, here's a picture of a cat wearing a helmet made from a carved-out fuit :

See you later.

Bad Driving #1

I spend quite a lot of time in my car, driving to and from work during the week, chauffeur to my daughter at the weekend. So I get to see many examples of bad driving. I'm not going to pretend to be a good driver - the fact that I've attended more than one driver awareness course is testament to that. However, I do recognize bad driving when I see it, and I see it quite often.

This is going to be one of the things I'm going to blog about.

So here's my first gripe...

I'm fairly certain that you're not allowed to park on a roundabout. By parking, I include loading/unloading deliveries and dropping-off and picking up passengers.

So if that's the case, what do you make of this?

This bus is parked right on the roundabout, blocking access from the road in which I'm parked. If I wanted to drive off, I'd have to wait. Even if it's not illegal, it's certainly inconsiderate. He's also making it difficult for other vehicles, especially large ones, to get round the roundabout.

Tell me what you think.

It's been two years...

Can you believe it? It's been a little over two years since my last blog entry.

Looking back I realise I've always been good at starting diaries, but not so good at keeping them going. I eventually get bored and stop. I have scores of such diaries in a box somewhere. It seems I'm exactly the same when it comes to keeping a blog.

It's not that I don't want to keep a blog. I find it quite therapeutic, and helps get things off my chest, usually things that upset or bother me, but sometimes things that I've found good, interesting or funny.

So I'll try again. I don't promise to write an entry every day, but instead will try to write something when I've got something to talk about.

I warn you now that I've become a grumpy old man. This isn't something I'm embarrassed about. On the contrary, I quite enjoy being grumpy at times. With my grumpy hat on, I find it easier to notice how silly people and society can be, so I'm hoping this will be a rich source of material.

One more thing: please excuse the American spelling. I'm Welsh and prefer British spelling. The browsers I use (I flip between Chrome and Firefox) are obviously set up with an American dictionary, and underlines all British spellings that have a different American spelling. I must be slightly OCD because I don't like these underlines, and so always accept the offered corrections. So we're stuck with American until I figure out how to switch to a British dictionary.

See you next time.

Postscript: I've now figured out how to switch to a British dictionary, so we should be spared U.S. spellings from now on.