Modern Britain: part infinite! As I was taking a walk into town the other day I suddenly noticed an area of pavement just outside our new Police Headquarters. It's fairly recently been dug up and repaired. Part of the pavement is a cycle path so there is a painted dividing line between pedestrian area and cycle path. Take a look at what the cheapskate company that dug up and then made the repairs has done. Of course, I had to dash out with camera in hand! Look at how they repainted the line: painting ONLY what they felt they needed to. Whatever happened to public spiritedness? The width of the gap between the two bits of new line painting is around half a meter (two feet for the wrinklies and crumblies among us!): hardly going to cost a vast fortune in paint and time is it? Thought you'd like to know that. It's amazing what you can do with digital photographs, too. These snaps were originally 320Kb EACH. With a bit of jiggery pokery, I get them down to 5 and 6Kb respectively ... of course, you can't see the orgy going on in the background now; but you wuldn't want to, would you? Would you? OK, email me and I'll send the unabridged versions! Just joking! DW

Saturday morning and it's another frosty start. The last two nights have been really frosty and this means that I can't mow my lawn. The lawn really needs a trim but I'm told that if you chop grass when it's frosty you could kill the stuff. Patience, patience, then! Do you know which country consumes more boxed chocolates than any other on earth? Go on have a guess. Alright I'll tell you: it's Russia. If you've ever been there and seen the locals dishing out boxes of chocs to each other you won't be surprised. 303 million kilogrammes of the stuff in 2001 with a value of around £870 million. Guess who PAYS the most for their boxed chocolates ... of course, WE do. The UK has the highest priced boxed chocolates, you will not be in the slightest surprised to hear: per capita expenditure on boxed chocolates reached £13.8 in 2001. That means we spent around £ 799,750,000 on boxed chocs in 2001. The UK really is a nation of chocoholics, with the largest chocolate consumption rate in Europe and a 30% share of the total European market in 2001. Even in the novelty sector, the smallest in the UK chocolate confectionery market, expenditure and consumption rates are higher than anywhere else in the world. Now, which country came second, do you think? The USA? China? The UK, even? You're in for a surprise as it's not even the supposedly amorous latin lovers: the French, the Italians or the Spaniards ... close though. It's Brazil with 168 million kg of the stuff. Brazil's the world's fifth largest producer of cocoa, too, by the way. Isn't it funny that boxes of chocs are being reported in kilogrammes? In case you're duff at arithmetic, 303 million kg = 303,000 tonnes. I got this chocolate info from Data Monitor. DW

Here's the follow up from O2, my mobile phone provider. I wrote the letter as mentioned below and lo and behold yesterday, Tuesday, without any phone call, letter or email message, they switched me back on. Another winner for British business. If there is any further follow up I'll let you know! Anybody want to call me now? I went to Cambridge on Saturday to see the kids, Daniel, Andrew and Fran: it was Andrew's umpteenth birthday and we had a great meal at the Chez Gerard restaurant in the city. Excellent food but the service was a bit slow. Luckily we weren't in a hurry so that didn't matter much. Had to remind Fran what a side plate was for as she plonked her baguette bits on the table as she tucked in! I am not known for my navigation skills when I am accompanied by someone but when I'm alone, as on Saturday, I can get to anywhere and back without a hitch. Well, almost. For some reason I can never leave Cambridge without taking a massive wrong turn first; and I did that on Saturday. No surpirse but just a frustrating waste of 20 mins or so as I get back on track. Otherwise, faultless. They didn't even throw me with the major snarl up about 10 miles out of Cambridge on the way in: I just picked a different route and snaked my way in from a different direction. There you go. Did I mention the brilliant PGTips television advert that I saw, involving a chicken trying on an LBD? Only seen it once so far but it had me in stitches: the rest of the family didn't see the joke for some reason. Odd that! Here's a thing: I need to do a massive email shot today/tomorrow and was dreading having to send them either one by one or with all the names visible in every message in every address line. Literally by accident I found that if you have Word as your email editor you can do a mail merge and have each message invididually crafted. Did you know that? Why didn't you tell me then? Am I the last to know? This Iraq nonsense is getting silly now. I'm not an expert and I'm not that interested in it but the level of debate on television and the radio here is dreadful. History will tell its own story but if historians rely on the output of the telly and the radio, some poor unfortunate children in the future are in for a shock! Toodle pip! DW