Monday 7 January 2008

Watery Monday

As soon as I realise I have to go out and post a letter it starts to rain. Luckily I'm only going to the post office. The queue in the Post Office is huge, and I spend 15 minutes standing in line. I decide to reward myself with a hot-wrap from Pret a Manger. Very nice!

Not much in the news when I picked up my Metro this morning. It was alarmingly pink (for a newspaper that isn't the Financial Times). Seems that Evian were sponsoring it this morning. Gordon Brown has an excellent idea for having 'health screening' for all. To be administered it would seem from GPs Surgeries. That will work really well in London where they are already so busy and oversubscribed that sometimes it is hard to find a practice to register with! And not to think that the NHS might find better ways of spending its funds... keeping hospitals clean and banishing MRSA, ending the postcode lottery - to think of only two!

I was so enraged by my travel troubles the other morning that it totally slipped my mind to mention the number 9 bus. The number 9 is an odd route, as during the day it still runs Routemasters (as a heritage route). However the normal looking bus that I got on Friday morning was nothing like an old Routemaster. It was a talking bus! There was an information ticker, similar to the ones you find on the tube - but it also kept talking too! Telling you where you were, and as you left the stop telling you that you were on the number 9! About time too. I remember being in New York about 10 years ago where the buses spoke, and I thought it was a fantastic idea, especially for a city that prides itself on attracting tourists!