Eclipses, appointments and modern communication.

Up bright and early yesterday morning, I went out for a run, determinedly NOT looking up at the sun in the sky to see what was going on with the eclipse. Amazingly, we had mostly blue sky. Other parts of Greater Manchester had cloud, thin enough to allow the eclipse to be seen and not enough to hide it completely. I was expecting it to grow darker as the eclipse progressed. It that didn't happen. On the radio they talked about it being a kind of dusk but I wouldn't even say that. Not a great deal of change in the light levels at all. 

When I got home, before showering - in case the promised cloud moved in - I decided to try out the colander eclipse viewer, as recommended by the BBC's scientist. And it worked. I was like a big kid, ever so pleased that my bit of elementary science had worked so well. I don't think my photos were all that impressive but that's how it goes. In fact, the image looks rather like a strange alien. A moonbug perhaps? Almost immediately after the eclipse excitement was all over, the cloud moved in, the temperature went down and general gloominess was restored. So much for the Spring Equinox. 

We went into town later for an appointment at the bank. We wanted to ask questions about ISAs and duly set off to catch the bus and get there in plenty of time. We stood in a queue for some time while one amazingly calm young lady fielded questions from one customer after another. She even dealt most diplomatically with the case of the customer who complained, ever so politely in good British fashion, that the lady who had been attended to before her was in fact a queue jumper! It struck us as odd that there was no system of triage: greet a customer, find out what the concern is, pass the customer on to the relevant person and be ready to greet the next one. No, there appeared to be just her. If a customer's query took a while to deal with, the others just had to wait patiently. Although I did see one walk out in a huff. 

There were no security guards either. The Spanish branches of this bank have impressive-looking security men placed at strategic points. Do they fear a large number of armed robbers or do they plan to terrify the customers into submission? Although not as grand as some of the branches I have been in over in Spain, there was almost as much empty space, simply not being used for anything. A perfect space for a flash-mob to do a protest dance, I thought to myself! I had to think about something as we stood and waited. 

Eventually our turn in the queue came around, we explained that we had an appointment. The young lady asked if we had an appointment card. No, we didn't; the young man who made the appointment for us had not given us one. What's more, it transpired that he had not bothered entering out appointment into the diary either! There was no appointment for us with Donna at 12. How very annoying! Much abject apologising took place and we made a fresh appointment for Monday. And this time we made sure we got a little card! 

We could have gone back later in the afternoon if that suited us but I had arranged to pick up our grandson and take him to our house. We had had a quite lengthy text messaging conversation the evening before, he on his iPod and me on my iPhone. Isn't it amazing how quite young children just get accustomed to using the communication systems. Basically he wanted to come and play football in our garden, the garden of their new house being woefully inadequate for his purposes. Fair enough! 

So I went along and met him out of school and drove away in his mother's car, leaving her to cadge a lift off a friend/colleague. We took advantage of the holes left all over the back garden by the studs of his football boots to get him to plant grass seed for us. Time will tell whether that was any use or not!