June/July 2019

This went into service around the end of June apparently, don't recall seeing it last year. Could be misleading photo, maybe not really a proper roundabout? :

Remind me to have another look for Roundabout in 55 days time. It might well be there, but I wasn't paying attention really and there was an enormous truck being escorted on that area with building works still in progress. It certainly LOOKS like a proper roundabout (with somebody driving the wrong way round at the other side!).

I thought it best not to show my ignorance of rone pipes, I thought it was just some sort of Scottish educational malfunction but I was too polite to mention it. I wonder if Kate's heard of wainscoting?

So, return flight. Passage through Departures went like a dream, almost, merely a crocodile queue to checkin, which I didn't much mind as it wasn't too long. And they never weighed my 15Kilo hand luggage! I offered myself up for searching by the chubby blonde lady guard, but she turned me down. The incoming flight arrived more than half an hour early and they started boarding at 12:40, when the plane should have been arriving! Yippee, I said, we'll miss the M42 numbers game (for the uninitiated, M42 is a vast variable speed zone where it is popularly believed that somebody just loves to mess with the limits to amuse himself or maybe it's bring a child to work day every day!).

By the way, Departures is indeed much better, air conditioned and not even half as loud or garbled, BUT Arrivals is a mess - queueing up about twenty five yards several deep to get into the arriving passports check - just two checkers - how many on one plane? 200? And if two planes arrive close together?. Presumably to use up more time to let the one man and his (lame) dog arrangements for baggage reclaim come to VERY belated fruition, many trolleys outside waiting to be unloaded with nobody in sight unloading, ridiculous!

So we boarded at 12:40. That is to say, many of us boarded at 12:40. But apparently there was a mess up with the boarding card checks at the gate, so a boarding card lady came aboard and demanded to see the cards of quite a few people. Satisfied, she left, but we didn't. Eventually four passengers turned up at 1:20, saying Sorry we're late - I didn't hear why, but I presume the idiots checked their luggage in, then went off, to return at the usual time for boarding. So Captain Garble announced something - I think I caught 45 minutes, certainly some people with better hearing than mine groaned out loud. There was also something about flight time 4 hours. Five minutes later, Capt Garble said something about four minutes and everybody (with unimpaired hearing) cheered. So off we went, pretty much on time for the normal flight schedule - was it 4 minutes late Bob? As an added bonus, we also had Miss Garble on the microphone for emergency exits etc and inflight announcements, sounding just like those adverts where they speak so fast you can't recognise a word they're saying about Ts&Cs apply until two minutes after they stop talking, thereby saving us the effort of trying to follow her. But the usual 3 1/4, 3 1/2 hour return flight took 4 whole hours - I heard 100mph head wind. So the M42 got us after all, because landing at 3:33pm, Birmingham Airport reluctantly delivered up our cases to the carousel at 4:45pm, windup time for the M42.

Edited to add - not only did the electric box blow the household electrics, but the pond filter went bust and was leaking when the pump was running from a different power source, so the pump couldn't be left on. The water is dark and foul but I have spotted at least six fishes in the murk. Urgent new power filter tomorrow and electrician to the box ASAP.