TK's cartoons

A couple of seasonal cartoons from TK. Sorry, I don't know where they came from originally but I thought they might raise a smile. They can be clicked on to enlarge.

Christmas madness 2008

I had to do some more Christmas shopping yesterday. I didn't want to, not because I don't want to give presents, but because at this time of year, it's all about fighting your way through crowds of ill-tempered, stressed-out people. Elder Daughter used to get most annoyed with me whenever we went shopping together, as I used to insist on going early in the day to avoid the crowds. "Mother!" she once said, completely exasperated, "If there are more than nine people in the shop, you think it's crowded!"
However, yesterday morning, I was counselling, so I didn't get out until lunch-time. Off I trundled into town to find not one free parking space in the central car parks, so I decided to cut my losses and go and park in the Matalan car-park. (Yes, I did go into Matalan as well, so I was parked legitimately.) On my way home I passed a lengthy traffic queue, not queueing to get into Tesco but waiting on the road to get into the queue for Tesco's car park!
It was December 12th, almost a fortnight before Christmas Day, or have I done a Rip van Winkle and slept through the final run up to the big day?

Welsh Blog of the Year

I had a lovely surprise the other day when I visited Yorkshire Pudding's blog and discovered that he had very kindly given me an award, not just any old award, you understand, but the prestigious and highly sought after 'Laughing Horse Yorkshire Pudding Blog Award 2008'.


Need I say more? (Cheque's in the post, YP.)

Communication?

I, in my innocence, would presume that an important, if not essential aspect of a politician's role is to be a good communicator, which means, surely, that he/she needs to give a nod in the direction of plain English. So, is this really what Ed Miliband thinks he is doing when he says,
"There will be some people saying 'we can't go ahead with an agreement on climate change, it's not the biggest priority'. And, therefore, what you need is countervailing forces.
"Some of those countervailing forces come from popular mobilisation."
Yes, well... You can see the full article here.
And just in case you need any help, look here for a definition of 'countervailing.'
Don't you get tired of the way our language is so surreptitiously being infiltrated by meaningless jargon?

Maths and psychology

I was quite intrigued by this article about procrastinators. I can do task avoidance with the best of them but I would never have made the association promoted here that procrastination is due to being a perfectionist. As far as I am concerned, and speaking personally, it's all down to laziness or just not being in the right mood!
Or is that just too simple?
Mind you, the maths equation is interesting. U=EV/ID.
The 'U' stands for utility, or the desire to complete a given task. It is equal to the product of E, the expectation of success, and V the value of completion, divided by the product of I, the immediacy of the task, and D, the personal sensitivity to delay.

OK, maybe not...

A car with a poltergeist

I've had my 'new' car for four weeks now. It's a silver Renault Clio ("Papa!" "Nicole!" - remember the advert?) and I've been running around in it quite happily, including a trip down to Bristol one weekend, but this Saturday morning it was very cold (Remember that, it's a clue) when I set off to the bank in town. I was aware that the heating didn't seem to be working at all and by the time I got to town, my fingers were in pain inside my gloves from the cold.
"Just my luck," I thought, "a car with faulty heating."
I pulled into the car park, parked, got my ticket, stuck it inside the windscreen and set off. Seconds later, I heard a sound like a car struggling to start behind me. As I didn't remember noticing another car near mine, I turned round. The bonnet of my car was gently vibrating and there were strange groaning noises coming from it. I walked back, cautiously.
A car with a ghost?
I stood in front of it just in time to see brown liquid running out from between the wheels. There were gentle clouds of steam above the bonnet.
My thoughts at this point do not bear repetition but were along the lines of "Oh dear, there seems to be a big problem here, which could even result in my losing yet another car."
A quick phone call to my knight in a shining (converted)ambulance and Keith arrived within minutes to inspect the damage.
"There's no anti-freeze in it," was his diagnosis.
Now what idiot second-hand car dealer sells a car in November, having had it MOT'd and (apparently) serviced, with NO ANTI-FREEZE in it!!!
Fortunately, no damage was done and my car lives to drive another day.
Not sure I can say the same about the car dealer when I get my hands on him!

Internet problems

We've been having intermittent problems with our internet lately, usually out of office hours, so when we ring BT we end up speaking to someone in India who is obviously reading from a script and hasn't the faintest clue what might be wrong. During the last few days, however, it's been worse and we are still not sure whether the problem is with the modem or the line. When Keith rang the other day, he ended up, not having the connection tested, but ordering a new BT Home Hub, which is one of those all singing, all dancing ones which give you broadband and TV as well. It's cheaper than Sky and the reviews I've read of it have been favourable, so we'll see...
The modem is due to arrive tomorrow, so I have two requirements to start my week:
1. That the modem arrives tomorrow as promised and doesn't get lost in the post like the last one did.
2. It sorts out the problem.
Not much to ask!