Monday 13 April 2009

Bank holiday rage

As children a very close friend and I used to hate bank holidays. Now that we have grown up we have changed our minds- because a day off work is always nice and also because more is now open. Our chief complaint with bank holidays as kids was literally everything was shut (I think we must have been quite strange children though because surely a day off school was always highly desirable).

I am now thinking my ten year old self wasn't so silly. I have had a good weekend up until today but bank holiday Mondays are tricky, if you ask me. If you do go out you run into traffic on an epic scale and much weekend/ hungover driving (this is not just true of London it is also true in Surrey where I have spent my weekend). So it takes ages to get anywhere and you need eyes everywhere.

There are also literally thousands upon millions of cyclists everywhere but not the usual arrogant but quite well equipped, speedy ones. No these are the ones without helmets who ride in the middle of the road at 2 miles an hour, all red faced and looking like they're about to drop. When you do get anywhere you can't park, even though the being able to park on yellow lines should improve the situation. You have to leave wherever you go early because you know the roads will be even worse by 4pm when things will get literally biblical and you may have to sleep in your car if you try and use the A3/ M4/ M25.

On top of the roads and parking you have the Sunday feeling- but on Monday. By Sunday feeling I mean that nagging in the back of your head saying 'you have work tomorrow', 'better not have another glass of wine you have to be up early', 'you'll have lots of work on tomorrow' and 'what about all that stuff you put off on Thursday because it was a bank holiday the next day'. Hmm.

So I decided that after several nice outings over the weekend- and many hundreds of mini cream eggs- today would be the day to stay in, stop eating out constantly and finally set up my i-pod.

Now the reason I am still in the dark ages and don't have a pod set up is when I did try 2 years ago it was apparently impossible and I gave up and probably went out or watched a dvd. The other reason is that I like to listen to the sound of town around me on buses and trains and have never really felt the desire to have a pod on- but I did miss having one on holiday- hence the decision to try and have another go.

Today I discovered that 2 years have not healed the pod and they have not made me any more patient with technology. I actually consider myself to be not bad with computers in general but the pods seem to have been made by aliens and are beyond my abilities.

The pod is back in the drawer and I'm about to drink wine, even though tomorrow will be an excessively busy school day- and I'm going to watch Twilight on dvd and revel in it's wonder as if seventeen and a hater of bank holidays again.

I hope everyone had very happy Easters.

2 comments:

The Daily Connoisseur said...

Hi Rose- I,too, enjoyed the bank holiday in England today... we don't get this day off in America so I loved every minute of it. Don't ask me about i-pods- I am hopeless- ours has never been used! Hope you had a great weekend and I hope the weather improves!

Rose said...

Hi Daily, I'm glad someone else doesn't get ipods! I understand once they have songs on them but I can't seem to put them on!

Glad you like the bank holidays, they are great really, I just had cabin fever yesterday.

Enjoy your London trip. Sorry the weather isn't great for you, although it is genuine London weather!