Three weeks off

The plan is to...

Catch up on most of my lost sleep from the past six months

Decide if the new goldfrapp album is 'great', or 'meh'

Walk more

Do coffee more

Read plenty of books that I’ve had on my lengthy to-read list

Help girlfriend with all those little jobs around her place

Visit my brother

Help my brother with all those little jobs around his new place

Make my flight in time

Visit friends in southern Germany

Successfully plan and execute an assault on Lichtenstein

Try not to decimate last months’ surprisingly healthy pay-packet entirely

Once more, with feeling

Why that when something happens to someone these days, be it a tragedy or a victory, be it to a CEO or a housewife, do they stand before the massed media reading a carefully worded statement?

I understand that in these days of lawsuits gone mad, one has to chose one's words carefully, but doesn't anyone just react anymore? Say what's on their mind? What they really think? Not what's scripted best?

Call me cynical, but it's a shame when even a head teacher of a primary school has to lower his eyes to a written statement every second line whilst reciting in complete monotone regarding a tragedy.

Someone break the mould.

Next time something of note happens to you, and you're asked for an opinion, say what you really think.

Bringing the noise

You're in a car travelling at the national speed limit on an single carriage way main arterial road that bisects a county somewhere in the northern midlands.

It's mid-afternoon.

Conditions are good; bright sunshine, good visibility, dry, only a slight breeze.

Traffic is fairly light; however you share your 1/2 mile section of the road with an articulated lorry and a few other cars in front of you, all neatly spaced using the two-second rule.

Your car is placed in the centre of your side of the carriageway. The road is straight for the most, although there are frequent hidden dips and blind hill-crests on this section of the road

Suddenly your happy drive is disturbed by the unmistakable two-tone siren, blue flashing lights, strobes and alternate headlight flashes of a police vehicle on an emergency call approaching at a high rate of knots behind you.

In front of you, it appears that other vehicles have taken notice of the emergency vehicle and are responding accordingly.

Do you:

1. Maintain your current speed and position
2. Maintain your current speed and move your position to the nearside slightly
3. Maintain your current speed and move your position to the offside slightly
4. Come to a halt, regardless of your location on your side of the carriageway
5. Come to a halt on the nearside, in a dip in the road
6. Come to a halt on the nearside, on the crest of a hill
7. Slow down slightly and indicate in to the nearside, however not stopping
8. Consider this a perfect opportunity to overtake the vehicles in front

The 'correct' answer I will reveal in due course. Suffice as to say I saw examples of ALL on the road today, during week three of my police driver training.

*sigh*