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Well, good morning to you all on a gloriously glorious morning in beautiful downtown Byfield. The sun is shining, the sky is clear and deep blue, the birds are busily announcing their enjoyment of the day, the temperature is pleasingly pleasant and just about everything seems fine with the world. Hmmm. Clearly that can’t last!

We had a pleasant visit on Thursday evening with Dean Wilkening who is in the UK to address a conference on security in London next week. So, he came a few days early with his girlfriend Lisa (who I gather Sandy and Pam have met) and they spent Thursday evening/night with us before heading off to Wales on Friday to visit with some other friends. We barbequed some of Sandy’s salmon with pesto, Penelope made an outstandingly fantastic rhubarb and strawberry crisp and, although it was a bit fresh for dining al fresco, we did enjoy a most magnificent feast.

I was amused by several articles in the media this week. Firstly, writing as we were last week about our corrupt (i.e., perfectly normal) politicians, I was both amused and disappointed at the suspended sentence handed down to Graziano Cecchini, an Italian artist and political activist – amused at his “protest” and disappointed that the authorities had bothered to charge him at all although I suppose the suspended sentence was probably a fair punishment for the “crime” with which he was charged – disrupting bus services.

In protest at the corruption of Italian politicians, he launched something in the region of 500,000 small plastic balls down the Spanish Steps in Rome. Apparently, the Italian for “ball” can also mean “untruths” and his protest was based on the certainty that politicians of every persuasion are simply incapable of telling the truth. You can read some more about it and catch some photos here.

I was also amused by the story of the three year old girl in New Zealand who managed to get on to an online auction site and purchase a full-size excavator while her parents were fast asleep. It seems that the mother had been looking for some toy diggers and had not shut the computer down the evening before. The child got up, found the computer online and, apparently, logged in to an auction site and she managed to enter a winning bid of something in the region of £8000. Again, you can read more here.

The following is less flippant or amusing, perhaps, but still caught my attention. Something that we all inherently know and understand and, even though it is illegal in the UK, one constantly sees people doing it, i.e., using their mobile phones while driving:

Texting and driving don't mix Maura Kelly The Guardian, Tuesday 19 May 2009 14.00 BST Boston's public transit authority have announced a plan that will ban all drivers of its trains, trolley cars and buses from carrying mobile phones – this after 49 people were injured when a 24-year-old trolley operator in the city crashed into the rear of another trolley while texting his girlfriend. Prohibiting public transport drivers from using phones while working sounds perfectly logical. In fact, it seems surprising that such a ban isn't already in place. But in fact, Boston's will be the most restrictive policy in the US. I'm hoping that others will follow Boston's lead. Because while it's possible to text or even read email on your iPhone while driving, it's not easy or wise to do any of that. Definitive studies have yet to conclude exactly how dangerous those activities are, but anyone who has tried it knows that texting while driving requires a lot more finesse than, say, fiddling with the radio or sipping coffee, which you can do while keeping your eyes on the road (for the most part). If you're still not convinced, ask 49-year-old Californian Deborah Matis-Engle. She'd been texting when she slammed into a line of cars waiting at a construction zone, causing the vehicle at the end of the line to explode into flames – killing its driver. In April, Matis-Engle was convicted of vehicular manslaughter and sentenced to six years in prison. Or look at California, where last September, 25 people were killed and 135 were injured when the engineer of a Los Angeles commuter train collided with a freight train moments after sending a text message. Experiments have shown that shifting your vision away from the landscape in front of you for even the few seconds that it takes to lift your cup or turn on the local jazz station can result in a crash. In fact, the transportation safety group at the national safety council found that driver inattention is the leading cause of all car accidents, accounting for nearly 80% of them. US legislators have been relatively vigilant about outlawing text-messaging while driving. It's currently illegal in Washington DC and 10 states – including Virginia, which just passed its law in March. The state of Illinois and the city of Baltimore are considering similar legislation. On the other hand, only six states, along with Washington, prohibit using a hand-held phone – despite the fact that simply chatting on your phone while driving, even if you use a hands-free device, is as dangerous as getting behind the wheel after a few drinks. A number of studies have disproven the public perception that it's OK for drivers to blab on their cells as long as they use an ear piece. And one such report, conducted by University of Utah psychologists in 2006, found that motorists who talk on their mobiles are just as impaired as drunk drivers. Now, you might be saying to yourself: Wait a second. Why are virtual conversations riskier than those that take place within the car itself? Good question. One expert I spoke to for another piece on this topic a few years ago told me it's possible that when a driver is talking to someone who's in the car with him or her, the passenger can see or sense when the driver needs to stop conversing and concentrate on the road. When the dialogue is happening over the phone, however, the person on the other end – perhaps a child who's had a bad day at school, a significant other who's angry about something or a depressed friend – may be more demanding of the driver's attention. Every level of government needs to do more to make our roads safe. As the national safety council said in January, all use of cell phones while driving should be prohibited. If lawmakers around the US heed the council's urgings, they could prevent 636,000 crashes annually – as well as 330,000 injuries, 12,000 serious injuries and 2,600 deaths each year, at a savings of $43bn, according to a recent report from the Harvard Centre of Risk Analysis. In the words of Janet Froetscher, president and chief executive of the NSC: "Studies show that driving while talking on a cell phone is extremely dangerous and puts drivers at a four times greater risk of a crash.... When our friends have been drinking, we take the car keys away. It's time to take the cell phone away."

Enjoyed the Heineken Cup rugby final on Saturday. Amusingly, the television had the match listed as Leicester v Leicester. Now, I know Leicester generally have a pretty good side but were they really going to play themselves for the championship? Somehow, I doubted it. In fact, it is Leicester against Leinster (an Irish team) and it was an excellent match.

Finally, this was very probably on the news in the US but not sure how much more widely it will have been available – a great little video clip of a good Samaritan saving some ducklings in Spokane, Washington. You can get it here. Enjoy.

Oh, final bit of news. I finally handed in my notice to leave work at the end of August. Hmmm, wonder how we will manage to make ends meet!

Love to you all,

Greg

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So I landed my new job as a Wal-Mart greeter (a good way to pass some time and get a few bucks for retirees like me).

My job lasted less than a day.

You probably want to know the story. Everyone does.

Well, about two hours into my first day on the job a very loud, unattractive, mean-acting woman walked into the store with her two kids, yelling obscenities at them all the way through the entrance.

As I had been instructed, I said pleasantly, "Good morning and welcome to Wal-Mart. Nice children you have there. Are they twins?

The ugly woman stopped yelling, and stopped in her tracks.

"Hell no, they ain't twins," she said in the same loud voice, glaring at me. "The oldest one's 9, and the other one's 7."

"Oh," I said.

"Why the hell would you think they're twins?" she continued, still using such a loud voice that all the other customers were also stopping and turning to look at us standing there at the entrance. "Are you blind, or just stewpid?"

"I'm neither blind nor stupid, Ma'am," I replied -- loud enough for everyone to hear, but calmly and in the politest of tones. "I just couldn't believe someone slept with you twice. Have a good day and thank you for shopping at Wal-Mart."

She just stood there dumb-struck, but all the other customers -- every last one of them smiling and giggling, immediately turned and continued on their ways.

But my supervisor said I probably wasn't cut out for this line of work.

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The first jockstrap was introduced in the United States in 1874. It was quickly adopted as a standard testicular guard by hockey players.

But it wasn't until 1979 that the National Hockey League made helmets mandatory -- which produced much grumbling by the players.

In other words, it took over 100 years for hockey players to decide that their brains are as important as their balls.

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