It is now Tuesday, the 16th. Coincidentally, and unfunnily enough, we find ourselves almost mid-way through our much-awaited half term week’s holiday, having realised that we are just about commencing on the small heal and mend of mental energy and whole life forces. I have been helped (pas si très grand) by a large IM injection of vitamin B12 that I shot into my upper arm this morning. Yeah, it’s a month overdue already, but I only remembered today! Okay! My other half has been assisted in the recharge process by enduring longer than normal lie-ins and earlier-to beds than we would otherwise submit to. Strange to believe that whereas I more than certainly told all my students, both verbally, and in writing that there would be “NO CLASSES AT ALL” the week commencing 15th Jan, you would not believe how may phone calls and text messages that I received from said students, enquiring about the status of today’s Web Design course, etc. Indeed, it was on the way back to Hull, along what used to be the M62 motorway, of which, more later, that I got several incoming messages from MM at JNH, informing me that several of my learners had turned up at the campus, expecting moi, and normal classes . . . . Obviously, my communication skills need brushing up.
The M62 westwards of Bradford, has for a over a year, been in a moveable state of disrepair. Upgrades that nobody, I am sure minds about too much? However, we have been enduring the 50 mph zones guarded over by “average speed check” cameras for far too long. Bottom line, this is about mon£y. So, how much are the cameras costing? How much revenue are they bringing in? You know, after admin and service costs? How much is lost when someone burns them or steals them? (Good on you, lads & lasses)? How many lives they have saved hardly comes into it . . . since such figures can at best be only projections and at worst speculation. Personally, I’ve got to get an alternative route where I can move at speed through town and country from East to West Yorkshire. By the way, the newspapers reckon around £30 million for the upgrades!
Maintaining 50 in this environment needs skills that I would rarely demonstrate in conversation, much less in reality behind the wheel: simultaneously dodging fools and the suicide drivers, while all around are motorists on the very edge: desperate to reach home or travel to that vital next destination and get there through fair means or foul calls for a calm head. All of us are being impeded by the high volumes of stop-start, the slow moving cars, and traffic that is variously infected with the erratic behaviour of the commonly-occurring boy racer, the lane hopper, the undertaker, the tailgater, the non-indicator, the lane blocker, and the driver asleep at the wheel. We're all in the same boat, dammit: SMART, Fiat, Mercedes or Ferrari . . .
Glad to be home, updating Twitter, marking work, and making ready my desk and computer for the next module at university. So glad to be away from Bradford, complete with the hole in the ground known as the Westfield Shopping Centre. Along with the dreadful statistics that tell a bad story of empty shop units and stilted regeneration. On a more personal note, we have left behind also, the incessant noise, emanating from Flat 9 next door, where developers are updating the property prior to praying that someone buys it or rents it presently. In the East Riding we’ll stay until Thursday morning, when I have got to return for an interview with an agency in the city offering work, teaching in secondary schools in the LB Corridor. Annoyingly, I have to have a new rear tyre on the SMART which has had to be ordered in especially, on account of the peculiar wheel size (175/55 R15).
So, watch this space . . .
