SALLY...PART 256...JUST TRY OPENING YOUR DRIVER'S DOOR WITH YOUR LEFT HAND !

 

The new Highway Code laws came into force today and here's the first cyclist I knocked off his bike as he road down the centre of the road at 3mph on his way to the shops...thankfully without a child sat behind him !

These include advice to cyclists to ride in the middle of the lane they would have ridden to the left of !

This will lead to millions of them being screamed at, hooted at and mown down !

Drivers now have to open their doors with their left hands in order that they will be facing backwards and be more able to see approaching cyclists !

I'M NOT MAKING THIS UP !

Try it !

I can't do it because I have a STEERING WHEEL in the way and when I did try it I had to squash the right hand side of my face up against my window before the door flew open and I fell out of the car into the path of an oncoming cyclist !

As I said, try it !

Then there's having to give way to pedestrians crossing the road when you're turning left !

Drivers now have to stop to let them cross which will result in vehiocles piling into the back of them !

Mark my words, this arrant nonsense is going to lead to mayhem, drivers going barmy being forced by law to sit at 3mph behind self-righteous cyclists hogging the centre of the car lanes, fines and judges forced to waste their time imprisoning perfectly decent drivers who will have infringed yet more nonsenical laws !

See you in prison soon chaps !

SALLY....PART 255....AND THEN I WENT AND TOOK MYSELF SOMEWHERE !

 

I haven't driven on a motorway for close to twenty years but today I had to get to the south of Leeds on a business trip and left just after 7am taking sandwiches, a flask, a blanket in case I broke down or got caught in a snowdrift and my wife's mobile phone so I could get talked there by Google Maps Sat Nav...except I couldn't get the voice to speak to me because I am just so technically useless !

Anyway I'm a man and don't need sat nav or maps !

I didn't take MY phone because it only had 5% charge in it after being charged all night !

Yes it WAS plugged in...it just didn't charge !

It's almost impossible to believe how crowded the roads are these days and the first twenty miles was a crawl through roadworks, in the dark with dangerously narrow lanes, at fifty or would have been if anyone had bothered going over forty...something I simply don't understand !

Despite it being dry the road surface was wet, if not muddy the whole way and my freshly filled washer bottle finally ran out after a hundred miles as I drove through the filthiest conditions I have ever driven through, made worse by a blinding sun after it rose at 8:45, as lorry after lorry covered me in brown road spray !

And what a nightmare trying to read road signs in order to cross over to the M62/M621 but I miraculously managed it , only taking the wrong exit off a local roundabout at the last moment because of the conditions !

Then the journey back with the sun behind and the road surface now dry was a doddle or would have been if drivers hadn't resolutely clung to the middle lane doing sixty instead of moving over into the slow lane, ignoring my constant flashing headlights and non-stop hooting as I passed, pointing to the slow lane before swerving in front of them to demonstrate where they should be...all to no avail !

Each one looked at me with complete bewilderment in their eyes and stayed right where they were ! 

Note, I haven't mentioned gender as there were a few old men too ! 

And if diesel at £1:49 a litre wasn't expensive enough, on the motorway it was £1:68....daylight robbery !

Finally, I actually washed the car by hand once I'd got back which means it's had three washes in eight years !

SALLY....PART 254....I CAN'T TAKE ME ANYWHERE !

Lloyds Bank gives us a dozen free cinema tickets every year, possibly to make up for the appallingly, embarrassingly low interest rate they pay us for letting them lend our money out to others at appallingly, embarrassingly high interest rates !

Last night Shirley suddenly said something about it being a shame that we hadn't used them as they were about to go out of date so looking up to see what might tempt us we discovered West Side Story would be starting in forty minutes but as she couldn't bear the thought of sitting in a crowded auditorium with a face mask on she persuaded me to form a vanguard and sus it out on my own !

There were ten others in the vast hall and I sat in a posh seat stuffing the bag of sweets that I'd been sent with to stop me spending twenty quid on a dried up hot dog and a monstrously large bucket of tasteless popcorn washed down with two litres of Coke like everyone else has when they go to the pictures !

I somehow got through the interminable adverts and trailers without falling too deeply asleep and reached for my first sweet as the main attraction started.

My hand kept bumping against a large bag of tightly bound something in the sweet bag that irritated me beyond words and after demolishing a hundred mint imperials and twenty humbugs I yanked it out to see what was in it, hopefully some toast or a cold sausage I was thinking as I struggled to open a plastic bag rolled solid with a nasty sharp rubber band preventing it spilling its contents !

I was probably swearing quite audibly as the band snapped off and whacked into my face and snorting in fury as I unrolled whatever it was, only to find that there was absolutely nothing in the bag at all....NOTHING !

"Oh how funny Shirley !" I muttered, "Very amusing !"

I still had two and a quarter hours to go, I was STARVING and my stomach was growling, disturbing the nearest couple who were sitting about thirty feet from me !

Boy it certainly warmed up as I sat in my Tshirt, shirt, three jumpers and my winter coat, so warm in fact that I was sweating by the end and couldn't wait to get out !

The full horror of what had actually happened revealed itself this morning when I put my coat on and discovered that the entire front of it was CAKED in chocolate that had melted off  the chocolate peanuts that I had poured out of the already opened bag and straight onto myself without realising it because I had held the bag upside down !

No wonder the usherettes looked astonished, shocked and horrified when I raised my trilby to them on my way out and bid them a good evening !

SALLY....PART 253....MY MOBILE PHONE NEARLY GOT ME KILLED WHILST DRIVING !

 

Everyone knows that I HATE mobile phones and refuse to buy one or carry one but somehow a child donated one and I'm forced to carry it in case I die so that whoever finds me can ring my wife who doesn't drive and won't be able to come and sort things out !

But it's got worse recently as she now tracks me and I really hate that because obviously at 72 I'm likely to be out on the razzle and would be bound to lie about it when I got home having been careful to remove all traces of blonde hairs from my clothing and any lingering perfume too !

I'm not stupid !

On my drive home this evening along the Western bypass having left home twelve hours before to go to market where I and my stock once again got soaked and then after three hours babysitting and conscietiously sitting behind a van doing 48 instead of the 50 the never ending road works permit I had my radio playing something soothing when it occured to me, and I chuckled to myself silently at the thought, to take a different route home to see if I got spotted and closely questioned and had I pulled out without checking my overtaking mirror to overtake the slow idiot in front of me before pulling off to take the Sandy Lane road I would have been wiped off the face of the earth by a police Volvo XC90 which appeared from absolutely nowhere doing at least a hundred and twenty and going too fast for me to hear its siren or focus on its very tiny blue flashing lights !

I didn't pull out with or without looking and didn't die but five minutes later the same vehicle or its twin but this time without lights or siren roared past me again doing the same speed !

So you see if I had been wiped out and the police had found my mobile phone they and everyone else would have undoubtedly thought I been on it, probably phoning ahead to make sure my tea was on and been terribly critical of me and both sympathetic and supportive of my wife whose actual fault my death would have been !

I don't think I can win, do you ?

SALLY....PART 252....I JUST DON'T GET WH SMITHS BUSINESS MODEL !

I walked into WH Smiths in The Metro Centre with my eight year old grandson Hugo this evening,  a boy who could spend hours and hours in every shop examining the merchandise !

There was only one employee in the vastness and THOUSANDS of overpriced items begging to be stolen !

There wasn't even an assistant on a till as it's yet another of those self-service places which always trip me up or need an adult to come and check my age when I scan a 'dangerous' item like correction fluid which apparently schoolchildren used to buy to sniff themselves high on !

Hugo picked up every one of the several hundred pens in open containers and tried them on a pad, remarking to me how much each one was his favourite but at £3:99 per pen I wasn't buying !

What he got was the cheapest item in the shop, a pencil with all the times tables printed on it, perfect for cheating eight year olds to hide up their sleeves during a test, which I was SO tempted to nick but restrained myself as I didn't want to risk getting nicked as I had purposefully left my mobile phone at home because I WILL NOT BE TRACKED so couldn't have phoned to get someone to pick up the child !

Anyway £1:50 didn't seem TOO much and we made our way to the checkout where I failed to press, 'NO BAGS' and also failed to inform the machine that I would be paying with cash for my purchase and so stood there looking like the old twerp I refuse not to look like ! Even my £1:50 which I had payed into the cash slot was returned to me because of that omission !

Thank Goodness I had Hugo with me !

There were no other customers in the shop, not even that row of seedy looking people who stand reading the magazines for free and I'm left wondering how a business can survive without customers when the rent and overheads must be sky high and the prices are ridiculous ?

I bet WH Smith don't survive another five years !

SALLY....PART 251....SURELY THIS TITANIC MUST ALSO SINK ?

 I once wasted forty quid by buying PLAY IT TODAY, a piano course which came in forty issues at £1 each fortnight !

It was or I was rubbish and I quickly gave up trying to learn to play ! Twenty years later I gave it to my daughter who did a bit better than me before she gave up too !

I am occasionally reminded of my folly by my wife who still thinks forty quid a fortune but how, I wonder, would she react if I insisted on building a replica of The Titanic which at £9:99 a fortnight for 140 issues of kit and magazine will add up to ONE THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED POUNDS !

Yes, someone out there in publishing land has decided that punters will shell out £1,400 to build a model of The Titanic over a period of SIX YEARS !

Or have I got my maths wrong ? No I haven't !

The advert for it keeps appearing so I presume someone must think that it'll sell like hot cakes whereas I feel it will sink like a stone !

Actually I have got a bit of the maths wrong because some months you get FOUR issues and with issue 130 you get a FREE display case !

If anyone does finish their model then if you send me a photograph of you standing beside it...and it will be about four feet long... I will get Hugo to sign a limited edition print of his Titanic drawing for you to frame and hang proudly above it !