Where there's blame

If you know me, you will be aware that I ride a bicycle.  In fact, I ride a bicycle quite a lot.  If you read my bike blog you will be aware that I will ride tens of kilometres at a time and in all conditions.  Indeed, I will, when the mood, conditions, my fitness and the aid of a good descent all work together then I ride quite quickly.  At a guess, adding up my blog rides, a bit of commuting and pootling about I have ridden well over 1000 miles this year.  I am also having a stab at riding a unicycle.  All without incident.  Until yesterday that is.  Let me paint the picture for you:

I drove Tina, my good lady wife, to work in Barnwood with my bicycle in the back of the car.  As is my wont, I cycled to my place of work just a couple of kilometres further up the road leaving the car in Barnwood.  I was scheduled to finish work earlier than Tina so decided that I would perform some necessary errands in Gloucester where, incidentally, I was pleased to see that the Animal travelling cycle display team were in Kings' Square doing there demonstration things using the ramps and quarter pipes bolted to the sides of their vans.  They didn't have any accidents either.  Despite doing some particularly stupid stuff.  Having completed my tasks, I headed back to Barnwood.  That's some 10Km completed today.  Without incident.  After saying hello to Tina I went to ride the 200 metres or so to the back of the building where I would put my bicycle in the back of the car and wait to drive home.  Weather is good.  Visibility excellent.  The road in the car park is dry.  There are no obstacles on the road.  In many ways, perfect conditions.  Except for one thing.  Deciding I was just going round the corner, I hadn't adjusted the straps on my rucksack, causing the right strap to slip down my arm pulling the handlebars sharply to the right, into my thigh and dumping me unceremoniously onto the tarmac.  Possibly my first accident in 20 years and I am travelling at no more than walking pace.  Tina dressed the wound on my leg and off we go to the accident unit.  After waiting an hour or so, in we go to see triage.  I am limping and holding my chest, having bounced off it when I landed.  There is blood oozing out of the dressing on my left leg, clearly visible through the ripped trouser leg.  Sitting down with triage and having been given pain killers, the first question the nurse asks is 'was I wearing a helmet?'.  No I wasn't, and anyway, it's my legs and chest that hurt.  My head is unscathed.

So, after being prodded by a doctor, x-rayed and seeing my daughter, Victoria, who, coincidentally, was in with a friend rather than going shopping with her mum, I am informed I have a clot in my leg, bruising and soft tissue damage on my other leg and a broken rib or two.  Take pain killers and take it easy for a bit.

Fortunately, when I got home and checked my emails I have the usual plethora of emails offering me drugs over the internet from pharmacies in Canada.  I won't be taking them up on that.

I prefer not to use the word "fail"

Failed is a bad word.   So I shall consider "not quite passed".  And I am in good company.  Allow me to quote Thomas Edison.  I don't consider old Tom to be a failure but he is quoted as saying "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."  Apart from the sentiment, famous peoples quotes are good for at least two reasons:

1.  It makes me look intellectual and well read (there's a bluff, I still struggle with the advanced Janet and John books)
2.  It saves me from thinking up something clever and witty to say for myself.

So, what is all this talk of not passing?  Last Friday I took my part two (of three) tests to be a driving instructor and, no surprises if you have read this far, I didn't pass.  But did I fail?  Well yes I did, there is a big marked box on the form that says "Fail".  So why did I fail?  Or rather, why did I not pass?  There are lots of categories on the test form that the examiner will put a mark in if you make a fault and I had seven of them although they could all have been scrubbed out and another box added entitled "Russ drove like a dick".  I may be being a little hard on myself but you know the feeling when you do something stupid and you know what you are doing is stupid and you know the examiner knows that you are doing something stupid and you know that the examiner knows that you know you are doing something stupid.  I know the feeling.  A few little stupid mistakes that aren't worth going into here but one big mistake.  One huge great doozy of a mistake that cost me a tick in the pass box.

If you know the roads around Gloucester, you may be aware of the stretch of A38 from Junction 12 of the motorway to the junction at Quedgeley where the Roundabout used to be.  It is a 70 mph limit all the way to the last 600 yards or so where it drops to 30.  I sailed past the 30 sign at about 45mph.  Dumbass.  I am generally familiar with the idiosyncrasies of these sudden changes in speed limit.  In my other life I regularly sit in judgement on people that fall foul of them.  I must therefore consider myself a bad person and take my punishment like a man.  Sitting in the car at the end of the test the Examiner instructs me to turn the engine off:

"I'm sorry to tell you Mr Kirby you haven't succeeded" (see, even the instructor didn't call me a failure)
 "I know"
"Why do you think you failed"
"Because I was dick on the bypass"
"Not quite how I would have put it but...."

Anyway, a bit more revision, a bit more practice and we'll give it another go.  In fact, we will give it another go at 9:30am Monday 1st March.  Happy St David's Day.  I hope the examiner has a good weekend.

Are you taking the pith?

To start my most recent blog, I would like to set my vast readership (Ian, Darrel), a challenge.  Can you peel an orange in one go?  I only ask because I can.  Well sometimes.  That and writing this post gives me an excuse to gratuitously use the word 'pith' which, of course, has it's own comedy value; but only if you are immature enough.  I enjoy the occasional orange particularly in my lunch box at work if for no other reason than any colleague that may not be in the office when I peel will inevitably ask "Have you been eating oranges?".   The smell will linger for hours if not days after enjoying the fruity Vitamin C laden treat.
However, my method of peeling the other day was called into question.   I don't know how you do it but I find a good way of loosening the peel from the fruit is to roll it on the desk first, thus separating the bit you eat and the bit you don't, get it right and the pith also comes away from the fruit and that's a good thing.  The pith, so far as I can see is pointless, you can't use it for zesting and you don't want to eat it as part of the flesh.  So, if you will take my advice, next time you eat an orange, give it a roll first.

So to the snow.  I have been trying to avoid blogging about this so far because everybody else already has and what else can I add?  Well, here's one thing, I'm quite proud of this here panorama of Gloucester from a jolly chilly top of Robinswood hill.

I strongly expect you are expecting me to waffle on for hours on end now about sledging and snowball fights with the kids.  Well I'm not.  Although we did take a trip up Robinswood Hill, leaving a poorly mummy wrapped up in bed, armed with some equipment not designed for sledging and that would have the Health and Safety Executive trembling with fear with; all the expected results except no trip to A&E.

Another thing you're probably expecting is for me to have a grump about the snow, well I'm going to disappoint you again.  I like the snow, it makes me happy.  However, I won't stop anyone else being grumpy and if you want some topics to get your grumpfest going, may I suggest:

1.  Other drivers.  Not me or you obviously, just everybody else either driving like a lunatic or at 6.3 mph on well gritted, clear roads with a little slush in the gutter.
2.  "Cold enough?", "Slippy enough?" etc.
3.  Local press.  The Citizen (that's the Gloucester local if you don't know) has turned over at least 99.8% of the paper to covering the snow.  Surely there's other news?  Damned lazy hacks.  Still, at least it has given us a rest from reading about the 2007 floods.
4.  Flood threats - Panic, quick phone the press, when this lot melts we're going to flood for sure.
5.  Schools/businesses closed.  I don't know or care if I have an opinion on these closures but it is a good topic for a seasoned grumpy.  When has a legitimate opinion made a difference?

And a Happy New Year

So, that's more or less the end of another year then and, in the best of traditions it seems time for a little reminiscence on the past year, you know all the sort of stuff that will be filling the television schedules for the next couple of weeks except this is, shamelessly selfishly, all about me.  Well, it's my blog and I'll put what I want into it.

Starting off with the biggest change, who would have thought at the start of the year that now I would have been made redundant and doing something completely different?  I'll tell you who.  Me.  For the last god only knows how long, there had been regular 'team meetings' at Vertex.  Every time you were summonsed to one it was a sword of Damocles.  Possibly the most surprised people are those that weren't made redundant.  Add to which the fact that I worked with a number of people that were so grumpy that even I looked like Mr Happy at the Happyville convention for the foolishly happy and you have a rather bitter cocktail.  Now, taking destiny into my own hands, if it all does go horribly wrong I will have only me to blame.  Oh, and I won't have to suck up to anyone.

At the end of 2008, I had the plaster removed from my foot.  There was some concern as I had lost a significant amount of weight due to being incapacitated for some time.  Fast forward to the end of 2009, nothing in plaster but I have put on a significant amount of weight due to being an idle git.

I am also marking a whole year of being on Facebook.  It's a good job I haven't dedicated this blog to the changes that this has made to my life.  That would be the shortest blog in the history of the blogiverse.  Facebook has been an experience in some respect; previously, I was completely unaware of the amount of bollocks people could come up with that is of no interest or importance to anyone.  In short, Facebook is marvellous.  That's a  contradiction I hear you cry.  Well yes, I thank Facebook for giving me a whole new subject to be grumpy about.

I was quite heartened to read the other day that there has been a return to more traditional, in a manner of speaking, Christmas gifts for kids this year.  I don't mean wooden spinning tops or bilbo catchers.  In particular, it seems that Lego, a personal favourite of mine, is selling like hot cakes.  Or more accurately selling like a very popular toy.  So much to the point where the most popular sets are selling for multiples of their normal selling price on ebay.  Let's now look in stark contrast at the world's most chuffing ridiculous thing.  I'm sure that most people that know me are aware of my thoughts on games consoles so imagine my horror when I happened upon this monstrosity.  Follow the link to the web page mentioned in the article and it just gets worse.  Whatever your views on gadgets, surely this takes the proverbial biscuit?  It's enough to make even me grumpy.

Seeing as how this may well be my last blog before Christmas, that just leaves me to wish you all a very merry Christmas and hopefully we'll meet again in the New Year.