Dom Davis (The Blog)

It turns out that motorway driving at night is, in my opinion, easier than during the day. You’re separated from oncoming traffic enough that their headlights don’t cause the same issues as on a single carriageway and, when moving between lanes it’s easy to spot where everyone else is, especially if their in your blond spot because their lights just give them away.

I also discovered that in third at about 4,500 revs there is a tiny bit of grunt in Po’s 1104cc engine which meant I could risk overtaking some of the slower moving vehicles on the drive.

About 90 minutes into our journey we stopped at a pub for food. It was here that I discovered Po had a massive scratch along her passenger door. Some bastard had either keyed her, or run a shopping trolley into her or otherwise injured her while she was parked. Since were not sure when it happened we can’t be sure. There’s me thrashing the nuts off her and she’s injured, albeit just winged.

Despite her wound Po performed admirably over the weekend, if a little thirstily (for her size of engine) as squeezing out that last little drop of performance rather wrecks the fuel economy. Unfortunately the biggest challenge was about to come.

25 minutes from home, entering a little village called Letheringset (fantastic pub there if you ever fancy a meal by the way), we had slowed to just under 30 when a big four wheel drive pulls out of a side road to our right. He’s already made one abortive attempt at pulling out and we’re that close to him that I assumed he was going to pull half way out, wait for us and the car behind to pass and slot in behind. After all, Po is bright red, he’s surely seen us and isn’t going to pull out in front….

…yes, yes he is. Brakes were firmly applied and I wondered if I’d stopped in time or if Po was now sporting a new accessory off her offside front wing.

Now, to give you an idea of the final speed of the incident imagine, if you will, you’ve turned off a roundabout that has two lanes that instantly merge into one. Some tosser has gone round you and is bullying their way in front. You have to slow and they try squeeze in front of you. Eventually both cars stop at close to hitting and the car that can proceed without causing a crash wins. It was like that only in our case there weren’t two lanes going into one, just one small lane that our new appendage had tried to merge into and they weren’t slowing, or indeed doing anything to avoid us. Not going to work.

Anyway, he pulls off into the next little turning on the left and we followed. Not sure what to do, or how to react (he wasn’t the first person to drive at me that weekend, just the most successful) I opened the door to be met by a very apologetic man which rather diffused the situation. The Zozo, being infinitely more practical than I, proceeded to take charge of the situation and organise things like insurance details and the noting down of the number plate.

During the discussion the damage was assessed. Remember that I wasn’t even sure if we’d hit. I’d stalled the car and been a little surprised but during the whole thing hadn’t heard any bangs. The Zozo, on the other hand, tells a tale of hearing the tortured screams of metal upon metal. The reality was somewhere in between. We had hit, but barely. Po was sporting less red paint and more silver paint than before and the other car was slightly scuffed if you knew where to look. I believe the term is traded paint.

As accidents go it was almost pleasant. It’s not something I’d like to repeat, but if you absolutely, positively have to crash then that’s how you want it to happen. Meanwhile we’ll get a quote for buffing Pos front wing and see if we can’t get her scratch sorted at the same time.

This weekend The Zozo and I are off to the northern part of the Republic of Yorkshire to visit my family and go to a zoo (the name of which escapes me, but it’s near Doncaster so we’re going Sunday and driving home afterwards).

The drive North will involve motorways. On a Friday. At night. I have done motorway driving before (twice, the last time we went to North Yorkshire so the drive there and the drive back) but this was during daylight hours at more sedate times of the day. Tonights journey will be advanced motorway driving which is why I’ve asked The Zozo if I can drive. Got to learn sometime

Anyway, if you see a little red Citroën C2 pootling along the A17 or A1(M) cut me some slack… and please don’t drive at 40.

Hopefully Mondays post will be about Zoo visits (due to an uneventful and therefore unblogworthy drive) and not the drive up :S

This weekend is the first time in 3 weeks that The Zozo and I have shared a day off so we decided to go out and do something. Being a bank holiday weekend there was lots of choice but we opted for village fête at one of the villages just down the road from us. It rained. But then it was a bank holiday.

Undeterred we went further along the coast road and visited a military vehicle museum. This post isn’t about that. Nope, this post is about the pointless ‘Please drive carefully’ signs all over the place, especially on the coast road.

Now don’t get me wrong here, the coast road going west from Cromer is windy¹, narrow and not something to be traversed at speed. By all means drop the limit from 60 to 40 well before the villages, and it’s eminently sensible to have a 30 limit in the villages themselves, or even 20 in some parts where it’s very narrow and has 90 degree corners. But do I really need “Welcome to Coastal Village, please drive carefully” on the 30 sign? No. And here’s why:

Firstly you should always drive carefully. It’s why we have the offence “Driving without due care and attention”.

Secondly you’ve slowed me from 60 to 40 to 30 and in 50 yards you’re going to drop me to 20. I’ve kind of worked out that some care is needed.

Thirdly at the 40 sign on the other side of the village you’re effectively saying “thankyou for driving carefully through our village, you may now drive like a moron”.

No, if they need reminding to drive carefully they shouldn’t be driving at all. What next: “Welcome to Coastal Village, please don’t rape, pillage and murder”?

¹As in bendy, but sometimes, depending on the weather, as in blowy too.

Forget what I said in the last post, events have transpired that I need to rant about.

I have an annual season ticket printed, as with all annual season tickets, on the bog standard ticket stock using the normal printers. This fades with use going through the ticket machines. Why they don’t use the same plastic tickets they have for season direct I don’t know. I’d be willing to pay to have the paper ticket upgraded to a plastic one, even if it meant using a normal one for a week or two while waiting for the plastic one to be posted.

Anyway, every day I get on the train, every day the ticket inspectors either inspect the ticket, glance at it, point at me and give me a thumbs up because the recognise me or fail to notice me and don’t check the ticket (the latter two happen more in the morning when it’s quiet). Recently there have been incidents of the ticket inspectors taking a closer look at the ticket because it’s faded a bit, however, no one has told me I need to replace it (which is ball ache because it involves queuing at rush hour in the ticket office to get it sorted).

Until, that is today. One of the more regular conductors decided today that I’d have to take my ticket out of it’s holder so he could inspect it. He then declared it unreadable and told me I’d have to buy a ticket. When I asked why he told me it was because the destination station was not visible. It’s not been visible for about a month. I’ve had many season tickets where it’s not visible, it’s one of the first things to go. When the ruddy great big expiry date stops being visible, that’s when people start complaining. Never in my decade plus of commuting have I ever been faced with that argument. I’ve also never been forced to buy a ticket, I’ve always been told to get it sorted soon, and I have. Nope, jobsworth is having none of it. I have to buy a single ticket to Cromer. Great. What if I don’t have any money? Well then, it turns out, I get treated like a fare evader and would be treated the same way someone with no ticket who refused to buy one would be, i.e. like a common criminal. I paid.

I also asked would I have to pay to get into Norwich tomorrow and got met with a smug “If the conductor is doing their job correctly and not just glancing at the tickets then yes”. In other words if another jobsworth is on the train in the morning I’ll need to buy another ticket. It’s ‘OK though’, because I can get the tickets refunded. Well that’s fine, except getting a refund on a ticket is bigger ball ache than getting the ticket changed. I can see me wasting half an hour tomorrow all because some git (who has inspected my ticket already thus week I should point out) is in a bad mood.

Grrrrrrrrrrr!

These days I’ve taken to sorting out my todo list, doing a load of admin and a bit of programming on the train to work. It’s the only way I can even hope to keep up with everything that needs to be done at work. It certainly helps that I now do 90% of my work on the laptop¹.

This morning I got on the train, grabbed a table seat² got out the laptop and hit big confusion. There were apps running that I hadn’t started, folders open that I hadn’t opened and files that I didn’t recognise. I’d picked up Zo’s laptop, a near identical one to mine. Crud.

My todo lists both sync to my phone, email and calendars are handled by exchange, code is all on a server and I could, in theory, move back to using my desktop for the day supplemented by my phone… or I could get off the train, go home, get my laptop and head into work a hour late.

I chose the latter; after all, I was in an hour early yesterday, I can work from home while waiting for the train and I’d probably get more done that way than ducking about with the other option. Teach me not to check which one I’d picked up

¹If anyone knows where I can get my hands on BEA weblogic 8.1 for AIX (don’t ask) I could make it 100%.
²Be interesting to see if I can still get a table when school starts again.

I needed to get to work early today so got the 06:46 instead of my usual train. That time in the morning is rush hour for Cromer station because both platforms have a trains at them.

Look at the TV screen, Sheringham service on platform 1, Norwich platform 2.

Look at the train on platform 1, says Norwich on the front. Train on platform 2 doesn’t have something on the outside to tell you where it’s going but the display in the carriage says Sheringham.

So which is which?¹ It’s little wonder the last time I got that train I got on the wrong one.

¹The correct answer is Sheringham platform 1, Norwich platform 2 (as per the TV screen). Barring incident the trains always leave from those platforms except for the first one where a big (i.e. 3 carriage train) comes into platform 1, divides and the rear carriage heads to Norwich and the front two go to Sheringham. But you need to know that, it’s not stated anywhere.

This year is the first year I’ve been about for Cromer Carnival which is a week of festivities including the crowning of the Carnival queen ¹ (Saturday), airshow² (yesterday), fireworks (tonight) and fairground (all week). I believe it’s one of the larger carnivals in North Norfolk.

Last night was the big parade. Cromer is closed to traffic and floats, bands, dancers and becostumed people paraded along the streets to throngs of happy, cheering and quite tipsy people. The Zozo and I went out to see this spectacle, eat burgers, hotdogs and doughnuts and generally join in with the revelry.

Being my first carnival I wasn’t sure what to expect but I was very impressed by the quality of the floats and costumes. I was also stunned by the number of young girls in leotards twirling batons. Either they were imported from round the county or Cromer has the highest number of twirlers per capita of anywhere in the world.

Parade over the Zozo and I investigated the fun fair and the Zozo treated me to a few goes shooting prizes with cork guns (she won 3 prizes, I only managed 1) and a go throwing surprisingly light balls at clearly weighted cans. Neither of us won a prize although I managed to cheat and catch the ball on a rebound without anyone seeing giving me a fourth shot. Didn’t help

We went to sleep that night with full bellies, smiles on our faces and the sounds of revelry drifting on the night air. All in all a great evening.

¹ which was more of an afterthought after the long and boring speeches by local dignitaries
² the Red Arrows pitch up and do their thang. I missed that unfortunately

A month or two ago we had rain of biblical proportions which managed to soak me entirely despite having a brolly. I don’t seem to have blogged about it though which is remiss of me. I certainly bitched about it on Facebook a lot. Anyway, the upshot is that these days I take my bigger umbrella if it looks like more than showers. So consider this morning:

Me: Good morning rain!
Rain: Good morning Dom.
Me: You’re going to piss it down aren’t you?
Rain: *looks innocent*
Me: Well I don’t trust you so I’m taking my big umbrella!
Rain: As you wish.
Me: Yup, see, lovely and dry!
Rain: You sure about that?

[Cue more biblical rain that hits the ground so hard it then bounces up and soaks you from the thighs down.]

Me: Bastard!
Rain: You’re welcome.

Thankfully the point was proved on the quick 250m dash to the station so I was able to go from soaked to damp by the time I arrived in Norwich and was not made any damper on my walk to work. Poor old Zozo was out in it all day though

Placid though “Riverside walk” may sound my daily commute is fraught with peril and obstacles. If it’s not Killer bees, renegade cyclists or loose canines who are patently not on leads (despite the signs) it’s the trees. Use of the start (or end, depending which way you’re going) of the walk involves navigation round some rather lovely, rather low hanging branches. Not so lovely when it’s wet, the grass is muddy and walking through or under the branches is asking for a drenching. Of course today it’s dry and the council seem to have tidied up the path during the day, including trimming the trees somewhat, making the problem much less pronounced than it was when I saw them this morning. Bloody typical

You must be at lease this short to use this path

With thanks to the random lady who has no idea the person behind was surreptitiously photographing her ducking in order to get an idea of scale

Knowing full well it was going to rain today (the rain falling on my head when I left the house this morning gave it away) I decided to take my big brolly and see if I could keep dry, blog and walk in a straight line all at the same time. The answer is ‘no’. I found this out on the way to the station during my usual morning Facebook and the phone was still getting wet despite the big brolly.

Being the selfless kind of guy I am I forewent watching my James May Toy Stories and fired off a blog entry in the comfort on the train. So why, you may ask, am I blogging now and what has all this got to do with cyclists? The answer is simple: it’s not raining. Since it’s not raining I can happily walk along, headphones on, head down, phone taking up most of my vision completely unaware of anything more that a few meters in front of me and nothing behind me. Given the speed I walk the only thing wanting to overtake is cyclists. Since the path is clearly marked with signs saying ‘no cyclists’ (it used to be even more clearly marked but people keep destroying the signs) I don’t have to feel guilty that I can’t hear their pathetic bells pinging away¹ or that I force them onto the grass to get round me. They shouldn’t be there and all the pathetic pinging isn’t going to stop me blogging. Nope, it’ll make me do it more because that’s just the kind of guy I am

¹ The air horns, on the other hand, are enough to scare the hell out of anyone. I challenge anyone not to jump when one of those goes off half a meter behind you when you’re not expecting it, no matter how loud or good your headphones.