As one moves around, one often notices things with more acuity than otherwise. On Friday, I was travelling around again and mode notes of the following:
Is Britain the only developed country that has no idea how to clean and maintain toilets in public areas? They usually stink, to say the least.
It rained quite a bit yesterday and as I got to the roundabout that takes me on to the A404(M) coming from Henley, there was a road closed sign. Two thirds of the road around that roundabout was under relatively deep water. Confusion reigned and I thought, even though I've allowed four hours for this journey (one should be enough) I couldn't contemplate the thought of turning back. Cars were cutting across lanes, going the wrong way round the roundabout and one BMW 3 series had clearly tried to get across the roundabout but had flooded his engine. I sat still for a while until a Transit type van and a Land Rover navigated the waters and saw that at worst only three quarters of their wheels were covered ... I decided to follow their line and give it a try. I drove slowly along the line I had plotted and made it through without let or hindrance to the other side. That other BMW driver must be stupid: having thought about the structure of my engine, the only thing that could possibly have hurt would have been water getting into the cabin (didn’t happen) or up the exhaust pipe. I think he went so quickly that he just swamped the entire car.
The road was then clear until the next major roundabout at Junction 4 of the M4. Getting off the M4 there to go to Terminals 1, 2 and 3 immediately led to very slow moving traffic. It took 45 minutes to crawl about a mile and in the end, having parked the car and got the bus to terminal 3, I could see no reason for the movement to be so slow as things were OK at the airport, the tunnel leading up to terminal one wasn't flooded ... I think I was lucky in the end that my one hour or so journey only took the two hours it did.
I sat near some foreigners on the shuttle bus and they simply couldn't understand our systems ... how can the buses, trains and the underground grind to a halt in the way they had. What about using big pump to drain the water? I have to say that it just takes a few snowflakes, leaves and drops of water and we are absolutely ruined aren't we?
Then again, I watched the news in the departures lounge and would like to record how astonishing it is that as soon as there is any surface water, someone has launched a dinghy or a rowing boat ... where do they come from? Is there a rowing boat fairy or something who dishes them out at the appropriate time?
Finally, was amused to see that in first class, they have monstrously big televisions to watch but they are encased in wood effect surrounds! An ultra modern Boeing 777-300 with wood effect televisions! It looks odd to me anyway!
DW
