Why is it…

…snow in the light of a streetlamp looks so amazing?

I’m not a big fan of streetlamps – don’t like the light pollution, think they’re a waste of resources and there are usually far more than required (if any were required in the first place), but last night driving home there was quite a bit of snow coming down and I couldn’t but help smiling and feeling all excited when I saw it. What a sook!

I passed an accident on the way home (2 cars, going opposite directions, had hit a fallen tree at exactly the same time. No-one hurt. Rather scarily, I was the first car through after it happened). It was in the middle of nowhere and, rather ironically, we could have done with a streetlamp or 2!

So did they?

How many people that you know came out with the line “oh, when petrol hits £1 a litre I’ll give up driving.”?

How many of them have?

Putting it in perspective

The other day I mentioned a few thing round the house had been breaking down all at once. I found something out yesterday that kind of put all of that into perspective.

Our local main road can get a bit busy at times and as with most busy main roads it has it “accident blackspots”. Last week, one of these claimed another victim. When I heard about it, something niggled me. Something to do with one of the cars involved, the time it happened, the mention of a loan female driver.

All week I couldn’t shake this niggle. It was added to by the fact my neighbour (who drives that road, at that time, in that kind of car, on her own) hadn’t had her car on the drive, which is unusual. Also, there had been unusual cars at her house. Also, there were people in her house when neither her, nor her partner’s cars were there.

Yesterday, I saw her being dropped off home. She smiled and waved, but there was something not right. So I popped round.

Last Friday morning, when the OH and I had taken the faithful canine companion for a walk, we’d seen our neighbour leave for work. About 10 minutes later, she was very lucky to walk away from a fatal accident that left her car on it’s roof (from a stationary start).

This morning as I walked the FCC, I could hear the traffic from on that road (something you can only do in certain weather conditions) and it occurred to me, that had we had the same conditions the week before, we’d have heard the crash too.

I’m glad she’s not seriously injured, but in a very selfish way, I’m glad it wasn’t me and I’m glad our current troubles are all insignificant ones.

Trappings of a modern life…

…who needs ‘em?

A couple of weeks back, the TV packed up (not entirely surprised – it was 20 years old). While I wasn’t particularly bothered about that (we’ve done without TV for a long period before due to no signal), there was an “important” footie match on the next night. As we don’t splash out very often we decided to buy ourselves a new TV (nothing flash though).

The next night, while sat watching the afore mentioned match, it was a bit chilly, so we put the heating on. An hour later I popped out with the dog, but when I came back in, no blast of hot air you usually get when the heating’s on – radiators stone cold. So we had that fixed.

Then the breaks went on the OH’s car…
Now the exhaust is hanging off my car…
Now the washing machine has packed up…
And the phone bill’s just come in…
And the gas tank will need filling soon…
I thought these things only came in 3s?