No one noticed

There aren't enough hours in the day dammit. I had my stitches out yesterday, but the fact that my knee is swollen and warm caused much excitement. I am now on a course of antibiotics. I take the view that a mild infection is probably not as bad as the operation failing. My original fear was that the swelling was simply the original problem returning. I think it has gone down a bit though, so I am hoping it will go back to normal by itself. On the downside, I have a blinding headache, which might be down to the pills, and I am not supposed to eat or drink dairy products, alcohol, or tea or coffee. I've had two cups of tea today already though.

This morning I was late for work. No one noticed. The A34 was doing its impression of a long, thin car park. Some selfish bastard decided to crash into another car and a van some 5 miles ahead of me. It brought traffic to walking pace for ages. I drove past the aftermath. There was a slightly mangled Renault Clio or something. It looked a mess, but I imagine the driver walked out of it unscathed. It reminded me of a news story I read yesterday. Apparently police in Bristol shut the M5 motorway, leaving motorists stranded between exits for over 6 hours. This was because some nutter was threatening to jump off a bridge. He jumped anyway it seems.

Can you believe that? Six hours! Apparently traffic was backed up 35 miles! Imagine spending 6 hours in a car with a three-year-old. I use that road regularly with my three-year-old.

Here's a great story; parents are up in arms because their children's school is selling raffle tickets. The raffle prize is meat, lamb in fact, and the lamb was hand-reared by the kids at the school. Apparently the school has a "council" of pupils which voted to have the lamb slaughtered to raise money for more animals next year. I think this shows enormous maturity. These kids, all under 11, have shown an understanding of the food chain, farming practices, and sustainability. That's wonderful.

According to the BBC one mother said, "I feel this is the same as my daughter coming home from school to find her pet rabbit bubbling away on the stove in a stew. My daughter was told it was no different to buying lamb from the supermarket." Madam, you could learn a lot from your daughter.

And the story in the news today that amused me most was this one from the BBC site. It seems a South African IT firm got fed up with the poor service provided by their internet provider and they decided to see whether their ADSL service could transfer 4GB faster than a pigeon carrying the same data on a memory stick. The pigeon won. It carried the memory stick to the destination 60 miles away in the same time that the ADSL service had transferred 4%.