Oddities

Well, the snow arrived last night. Everywhere was covered whitely this morning but, fortunately, it was not too slippery. If fact, hardly slippery at all when I went out before the sun came up to drive to my daughter’s house and take children to school. It did start to snow in earnest while we were en route to school and it was getting a little hairy as I made my way homeward. 

At some point mid-morning we received an email from the local police station. Yes, we are on their mailing list and hear about things going on in the area. This particular one was warning us that there had already been a few road traffic accidents in the area this morning because of the weather conditions. People, it told us, should try to avoid driving if they possibly could. How eminently sensible! It never would have occurred to me to think that up on my own. 

We have decided to refer to such emails in the future as “Floors may be ...” emails. This is a reference to the public service announcement in our local bus station which reminds us, “Floors may be slippery when wet”. The announcement is made in the tone of voice that you might use when speaking to a demented child and sets my teeth on edge whenever I hear it, almost but not quite provoking an impulse to run at top speed from one end of the bus station to the other. Anyway, we have abbreviated the reminder to “Floors may be...” by analogy with Winnie the Pooh’s house which is called “Trespassers Will”. 

That’s enough of that nonsense. The snow has stopped falling now and the sky actually has quite a lot of blue in it. This state of affairs needs to continue until I have collected the small people from school and brought them home for tea, indeed until I have safely delivered them back to their mother and returned home myself. After that it can snow as much as it likes. 

Another of today’s oddities is an item I heard on the radio about watches. Apparently fewer and fewer people are wearing watches these days. Among the younger generation it is almost unheard of as they all depend on their mobile phones, i-pods, i-pads and other electronic devices to keep track of time. I find it hard to visualise someone getting their i-pad out just to see what time it is but apparently this is so. I must be in a minority as I own several watches and like to vary their use according to the outfit I am wearing. Now, to some extent this fits in with what the radio report told me, of which more a little later. 

It seems that people are buying fewer watches but the ones they buy are more expensive. (I hasten to say that mine are not of the expensive variety.) Some people are buying watches that cost thousands of pounds and regard them as an investment, hoping that the watch will appreciate in value at a time when interest on your bank account and savings is not giving you much return. And then some are buying expensive second hand watches so that they can make a kind of statement about the kind of person they are: the sort who shows off expensive watches!! It seems that if you go out for an evening to some blingy social event, no-one notices that you have arrived in an expensive car but they do notice that you are wearing an expensive watch. 

The thing is, however, that they don’t call these watches “second-hand” but “pre-owned”. How’s that for a bit of linguistic manipulation? It smacks of nu-speak to me. Wasn’t it in Brave New World that such terminology was invented to hide the reality of things? 
 
 I learned as well that men and women buy watches on different criteria. Women regard them as pieces of jewellery and buy according to how they look and how they co-ordinate with clothes and other accessories. This is where my watch-wearing habits match the stereotype. Men, on the other hand, buy watches for the gadgets incorporated into the timepiece. They may never intend to wear their fancy watch several hundred feet under water but they like the option to do so. In fact, according to the watch seller interviewed, most men have no idea how to work the fancy things that their watches can do. How crazy is that? 

Finally a few pictures related to the tube trains. 

To mark 150 years of the existence of the underground system, a steam train was driven along one of the lines, complete with actors in fancy costumes. 

  And then there has been “No pants on the subway” day. This is called “No pants on the underground” day in the UK and involves people travelling without their trousers. Who would have thought that such a thing could exist? How amazing! 

The day is celebrated in many countries of the world, although the Chinese people on a subway in Shanghai seem rather bemused by the whole proceedings.