Neurotic or running on fumes

What sort of filler upper are you?

Appropriate piece on Drive Time on the radio. About filling up with petrol (or diesel). The (male) presenter didn't mind making his point of view obvious. “Are you” he said, “the neurotic type who has to stop at a filling station when the needle just hits the half-full mark...” that's you he's talking to, BLISS, by the way “...or do you try to squeeze the last ten miles out of every tankful before stopping and re-fuelling.” He then admitted doing all the stuff I do. Not on the warning light yet. Petrol station, yes, but on the wrong side of the road / too expensive / too soon after the warning light's illumination / the wrong colour / no Nectar points. All those undisputable and sensible reasons for not hitting the petrol pumps.

There's so many good reasons to hate filling up with petrol, like:

• queues to get to a pump;
• queues to pay;
• slow pumps;
• interrupting and slowing down the journey;
• no Nectar points.

With all that against stopping, there's little wonder that I push avoidance to the sweaty-palm point too often. Mainly on the M25.This in turn leads to having to stop at South Mimms or Clackett Lane, where the queues are extra long, the pumps are extra slow and the fuel costs extra-high.

Mmmm, scenic

Beautiful driving back through Petworth this evening. Low sun, stunning views, fantastic skies.

Sharp braces

TBG has had braces fitted. They're sharp. They come with wax to cover the sharp bits. This only sticks to dry surfaces. Why don't they make them smooth, as opposed to sharp, so they don't cut your mouth to pieces? That would remove the need for the wax. Or, if they have to be sharp for some obscure reason, how about some wax (or wax substitute) that sticks to wet surfaces (this is a mouth we're talking about here).

My Dad's slide-rule

A thing of beauty this. He taught me how to use it a long time ago. Now a ten quid calculator can do anything this can do a million times faster and more accurately. But that's just a plastic box with buttons and some microchips inside. We got rockets into orbit armed with nothing more than some sliding scales and a sliding cross-hair. Genius.

Hit & Miss

A transsexual hit-person, her family from her previous marriage, and battles over the northern smallholding they live on. Why did no-one think of it sooner?