pumpkinstrokemarrow

I have moaned about these people before, but I shall have another go. Now, my multi-processing capability is not what it used to be. That is to say, I am now down to two channels, which means that I cannot send a text message on my mobile, drive the car and decipher the forests of road signs at junctions all at the same time. In fact, it is getting very hard to sort out the wood from the trees in said forests, even when I am not sending a text message. I suspect that part of the trouble is that the signage contractors get paid by weight and they put a lot of effort into persuading the government buyers that they should always buy lots of very heavy ones. Then there are probably three teams of buyers: one for the blue signs, a second for the green signs and a third for the white signs. Based in Newport, Belfast and Cumbernauld respectively so as to provide jobs for the celts. And because they talk a differant lingo they certainly don't talk to each other, beyond competing to see who can get the most signs onto each junction. Net result of all this is that when going clockwise through the Gatwick junction on the M25, I managed to get onto the road to Gatwick rather than carrying on down the M25. And twice on the same run I nearly missed an exit. The first time because there were three exits very close together and the three lots of signs were mixed up in a confusing way; the second time because the hard shoulder turned into the slip road in a way which meant that I was not sure that the slip road was the slip road.

Would it help if a herd of cognitive psychologists was put on the case? They could get PhDs doing junction experiments on unwary motorists (their having been deemed to have signed consent forms by failing to tick a very small box on their tax disc renewal form).

To complete the story I should mention that there is a fourth team for the retards, this one based in London. They put up the signs which make smiley faces at me when I cycle past them at less that 30 miles an hour. 21 miles an hour in this particular case, down hill somewhere near the Bonesgate. Not being able to crank it up to 30 miles an hour any more, even down hill near the Bonesgate, I don't know what it does in that event. And a fifth team for the lines on the roads. I forget where they are based - perhaps in Jersey so that they are exempt from health and safety legislation and so can't be sued when they make a fatal blunder. Let's hope the ideas floating around for sign free zones catch on.

In the meantime I wonder whether all the differant signage contractors are all actually owned by the Megasign Corporation out of Atlanta, itself a front for some shadowy outfit from Shanghai. They find they do better business if they appear to be a bunch of entirely separate, cuddly small businesses to the buying teams, rather than a single, whacking great monopoly. Let alone a Chinese one. Think of the threat to national security.

Sunday was an eye of Silverside day - a three pound peice of meat which looked as if it had been cut from a single muscle with the grain running the long way. Gently boiled for several hours with some lard, onions, carrots and swede. Good gear and not bad cold - although because we forgot to wrap the leftovers in foil, a little dry. And the left over liquid and mushy vegetables made really good broth: mash it up a bit with a potato masher, add some pearl barley, simmer for a bit and then add some finely sliced crinkly cabbage just before serving. No need for seasonings or stock cubes at all. Which is not always the case.

Having mused about robots, I came across a bit in the DT about a parrot which imitated someone's mobile ringing and them laughed when the person came to answer him (or her). Now supposing the story to be true (the DT not being the most reliable rag, quite apart from their sloppy proof reading), what exactly is the parrot up to? It seems a bit far fetched that a bird brain, even that of an old and mature parrot, should manage a sense of humour, although I believe some people believe that their mammalial pets do. Does the owner simply reinforce the originally randomly generated behaviour by hemp seed rewards?

And then took lesson 4 from my geek course. This took the form of getting myself signed up for MySpace - a product which appears to be of the same order of complexity as Facebook. How do people find the time to learn how to drive these things? Not as feature rich as a Microsoft product but they are certainly trying. I have clearly not the got hang of it yet as I now seem to be getting Myspace flavoured emails from people I have never heard of. Should I be worried? Should I be worried that I have less friends on Myspace than the chap at number 13a down the road?