I have started listening to the BBC World Service in the morning. Sadly, the Today programme on Radio 4 has just annoyed me too much. I can’t stand Nick Robinson and the quality of the journalism is not very high.
Something else is the depth of the stories. The Today programme allows a couple of minutes then it’s hurry, hurry, hurry, get out of the studio. The World Service has a lot longer for each story. Each piece, therefore, gets more detail and is more understandable than sensational.
So, this morning, I was listening to an Australian reporter talking about the storms which have all but put out the fires in New South Wales. We heard from Bob, Fi and mum last week that the rain had been prodigious but we hadn’t realised just how dangerous it was.
According to the reporter on the radio this morning it was “Literally raining buckets!“
Having grown up in Sydney, I can testify to the danger presented by hailstones the size of golf balls but I think they pale into insignificance when buckets full of water are dropping from the sky.
There was also rain in Farnham this morning but it was falling freely without containers making it dangerous. It was, however, wet.
There was another container related mystery today, however. Something odd happened in Waitrose. I bought a bottle of beer (that’s not odd), the same brand and size I have bought many times before. Usually the self check out machine will flash red and tell me to wait to have my age verified.
I scan the beer first so it gives the person who can verify my age time to clear it from the machine while I continue scanning. This morning, however, there was no red light and no-one came over to check my age. The machine just let me buy it. Now that was certainly odd.
But back to the weather which, for February, is certainly not odd. While it was a bit grey and miserable on the way in, it wasn’t until I was on my way home that it decided to make me damp. Then, of course, it all cleared up so that, after lunch, we went up to the park for a walk.
I was sitting on my bench, throwing Emma’s ball and playing with my phone when I discovered a handy feature of the Galaxy S10 which could easily have been designed specifically for me.
I’m pretty crap when it comes to taking selfies. I think I’ve proven that many times in the past. However, the S10 has a feature whereby you just wave at the camera and, after a brief interval, it takes your photo. It’s excellent.
I posted this photo on Instagram, asking if I should shave or not. It seems people like the beard. Even Sue who we met on the way home said “Love the beard!”
If I decide to keep the beard, I might have to stop dying my hair.
In more news from Oz, it seems that Formidable Vegetable won’t be attending Glastonbury this year. They were invited again but feel that they couldn’t justify the plane trips and selfish use of carbon. And, if you listen to their music and check out their ethos, it’s not hard to see why.
