Today I spotted frog spawn in the pond in the garden. I collected some
and have put it into a clear vase of pond water which now sits on my
desk. This was done so that my step-son can see the eggs develop,
tadpoles hatch, and finally the transformation into frogs. Then I had the
idea of keeping a photographic record so here’s the first picture. I’ll take
a photo every 7 days and post it here.
Why can’t passengers just ask “Do you go to xxxx?” Today was typical with a young lady getting on the bus which was on its stand at Winchester Bus Station. “Where are you going?” she asked. I gave my usual reply “Where it says on the front” which is a much easier than listing every stop between Winchester and Stockbridge. She obviously had read Stockbridge because she then asked “Do you go to Kings Somborne?” “Yes”, I said. “Where do you stop in Kings Somborne?” came next. There are five stops in King Somborne and I really didn’t want to describe each one so simply asked “Where do you want to go?” “Eldon Close” she replied. My response was “Fine” as I punched the destination into the ticket machine I told her the price.
It would have been so much quicker and easier if she’d got on and simply asked “Do you go to Eldon Close?” Most people do just ask in a straight forward way but it’s surprising how many make such hard work of it.
Today I did 63 duty which has the usual two times Winchester to Salisbury in it. But the difference between this duty and all others is 15 minutes of HELL on the school run in it. I’m going to name and shame what for me are the worst behaved school kids in Hampshire – if not the world! Stand up (and be counted) Test Valley School, Stockbridge!
It is our burden to have to transport the attendeees (I hesitate to call them children or passengers because it sounds too normal) from Kings Somborne to Stockbridge and back. It’s difficult, no impossible, to imagine a more surly unruly mob than these ……. attendees. Going to school is bad enough but they save the real misery (for the driver) for the return trip. As soon as they are boarded the 50 odd attendees are making more noise than 1,000 baboons in a cage with a firecracker. As the bus drives off the window opening and closing begins. I’ll correct that, not opening and closing in the normal sense, but opening and them immediately slamming shut as loudly as possible as many trimes per second as possible. Those not engaged in window slamming but with access to a bell push are working their fingers to the bone on it. The poor souls who can’t reach either a bell push or a window to slam keep themselves occupied in mock ( it may be real) fighting. Rushing up and down the aisle, pulling other attendees coats off them, swinging their bags around in the air, that sort of thing.
I’ve no idea how they know they’re nearing Kings Somborne because they’re so involved in their disruptive activities but some how they do. At this point they all stand up in the aisle and those at the back start to push. At this point we’re still about 1 mile from Kings Somborne and the bus is travelling on a windy narrow road. If something big like another bus, or a lorry, comes around the corner at you then you’ve got to brake and they all fly forward. I’ve learnt that it’s useless shouting at them, they just push harder from the back! Ah, well. If they get themselves killed it will only improve the gene pool!
The Joy! Oh, Joy! heading is because today when I pulled up at the first pick up point no one was there. No one at the second either. I then realised, not that we’d been told, that they were starting half-term a day earlier than expected. I couldn’t have been happier if I’d won the lottery on a roll over week!
Having named and shamed Test Valley School it’s only fair that I show how different it can be. Stand up for a round of applause, my other school run, Testbourne School, Whitchurch. A more pleasant, polite, bunch of young people would be hard to imagine.
Paul, a fellow Winchester bus driver, e-mailed me to say “Your picture of the Guildhall in the snow looks remarkably similar to this one of 1905. You�must have been standing�very near�the same spot!” I’m not sure that the shop I was outside was called The British Heart Foundation in 1905 but it certainly was the spot. Here are the two photos taken 104 years apart together with the camera I used and one of a type likely to have been used in 1905.
‘Century’ Quarter-Plate Hand Camera, c. 1905
Height 140 mm, width 140 mm, length 75 mm (folded).
Weight : Approx. 1250g (2.77Ib)
Panasonic DMC-FS5, 2008
Height 53.4 mm, width 94.9 mm, length 22.5 mm (lens retracted)
Weight : Approx. 119g (0.26Ib)
Only a couple of inches of snow and it’s the usual chaos on the roads. My sign on time today was 05:45 and I was due to be the first bus out. It had already snowed before I left home and was still snowing as I arrived in Winchester. As I entered the Depot I was that no buses would be going out as many of the roads around Winchester had not been treated! Here’s a picture of the deserted station.
And another of the Broadway just outside the exit from the Bus Station.
It was 11:00 before the first local buses went out and then only on ammended routes which stayed on main roads. I never did get to do a Salisbury run which is probably a good thing in view of the country lanes which this route includes.
That’s the latest official Zimbabwean dollar inflation rate. 231 million % isn’t a number I can make sense of or begin to understand, mathematically, but it can be visualised in seeing the misery and starvation throughout the Country.
The World Food Programme (WFP) has revised up the number of people it says need food aid. It now says seven million Zimbabweans are in need of food aid, up from 5.1 million in June. Put into perspective this is eight out of every ten Zimbabweans who need food aid! I’ve taken the current population as less than 9 million from a recent article by Eddie Cross (click on the 24 Jan 2009 article) who is the MP for Bullawayo South. Eddie’s site is well worth reading.
I’m writing this because of the news yesterday, on the BBC, that Zimbabwe abandons its currency. If you watch the video embeded in the article please don’t be misled by how the supermarket in which it’s filmed appears – the shelves are full and everything is normal. That’s not reality for Zimbabweans who haven’t got access to foreign currency.
How do people get access to foreign currency? Salaries are still paid in Zimbabwe dollars and buying foreign currency with your earned Zim dollars wont work – a teacher’s monthly salary would buy 1 US$ at the current exchange rate (with 231m% inflation it probably fell as I typed those words). The US$ prices in the supermarket are about the same as the US$ dollar price would be in a supermarket in Florida, Ohio etc. So you see how useless 1 US$ dollar a month is.
The foreign currency comes from those who have abandoned Zimbabwe in an attempt to live ‘normally’ and are sending money home to relatives. As a generalisation this leaves a large percentage of the population without much possibility of having someone outside Zimbabwe support them – the 25 to 40 year olds who probably have young children. They don’t have children old enough to have left Zimbabwe and be sending money home and their parents (possibly, but unlikely to still be alive) too old to have left Zimbabwe. They may have brother or sisters outside Zimbabwe but there’s only so much money someone living abroad has after paying for their own needs.