Had my first driving lesson yesterday. Well, it wasn’t really my driving lesson in the strictest sense, though I suspect that I learnt more than the driver under instruction.

So after my son had is first lesson with a ‘proper’ driving instructor I decided to throw caution to the wind and take him out on the road for some experience.

Holy shit! I learnt a lot.

Lesson #1: Right turns are harder then left turns.
Yep. I forgot this. Guess which way we turned on our first junction?

Lesson #2: Even the slightest incline is a huge hill to a learner.
Not only did I cover lesson #1 on the first junction, but it was ever so slightly up hill as well. Just not enough up hill for a regular driver to notice.

Lesson #3: Avoid the rush hour traffic.
This isn’t so much because there’s more traffic on the roads, but that everyone is in a hurry to get home.

Yep, so I learnt fast. My wife could tell I’d been on a roller coaster because I was apparently white when I got back. I’m pretty sure I’d aged quite a bit as well.

We also managed to educate some of the other road users as well. Like the time when we were trundling down a major A road at 40 miles per hour, and my lad asked why was that big truck so close to us, can’t he see our ‘L’ plates, and what should he do about it. He changed from 4th to 5th gear, but somehow missed and ended up in third gear with the car lurching suddenly. Next look in the mirror saw a bunch of traffic behind us by at least 20 meters. They stayed there for the rest of the time we were all on the road. Chalk up one victory to a learner.

The next task was the impending roundabout. “I only go left on roundabouts” he said. So we went left. That is, left towards a major crossroads that left us in front at the red light on a slight upward incline.

So I instructed my laddo in the art of moving ourselves off when the lights changed and after our searches to the left and right. Plenty of revs and let the clutch out purposefully.

We launched across the junction with a nice wheel spin that any drug dealing pimped up driver would have been proud of. All we had to do was to miss the cars opposite us and we were away.

This brought us to the next set of lights, and I thought, let’s get him onto the small country lanes where we can do less damage.

Wrong! I had the hedges coming in through my opened door window, then we had issues with oncoming traffic and narrow lanes, sharp left and right bends, more right hand corners, sweeping rolling roads and debris.

Well, we did arrive home in on piece.

And lesson number #4?

Driving instructors are worth the money!

I work in a top secret government establishment (Ok, I just made that up, it’s really just a pile of offices). These offices are surrounded by a bit of grass that’s lovingly maintained by the grounds keepers here.

One of the much talked about features of our landscape is the number of cute looking little bunny rabbits that roam the grounds. The wander up to the windows, hop around and provide much amusement during times of high stress *yawn*.

So yesterday, whilst walking through the grounds we couldn’t help but notice the complete lack of bunny rabbits. The pond had none. The grassy fields had none. Where we would normally count forty or fifty of the little cutie pies, we now reach a maximum count of three.

My theory is that over the weekend the rabbit catcher came onto the site and towed em all away, or is that buckshot I see in the brickwork?

It had to happen sooner or later. Eventually I’d get around to global warming and it’s effects on me. That is, if you believe all you hea.

I like to play outdoors and I love the summer. When it’s nice and warm, with a gentle breeze or still air I can go and get one of my model planes out and fly around. My newest additions to the fleet are park flyers. These are foam aircraft built with very light wing loadings. They fly slow and are very sensitive to turbulence. They are just so perfect for the lazy summer evenings that used to abound.

This year of course they haven’t seen the light of day. So it’s pissed down daily. We have new records for rainfall in the summer, and it’s all down to global warming.

Just cast your mind back a few thousand years. Can you hear the cries? “The lack of fires is causing global cooling”. “We need to burn more oil.” How were they to know that the ice age was coming and that it wasn’t Neolithic mans fault? What could they have done to prevent it? How did they cause it?

It seems to me as a reasonably intelligent member of the local community that we live on a planet, and that planet operates in cycles. We have the cycle of day and night, the cycle of seasons, the annual cycle. Forensic archaeologists (did I just make that up?) tell us that the planet has suffered in the past from both heat and cold.

So is it so unreasonable to assume that the planet heats up and warms down every now and then as well (unless you believe in creationism, in which case you’re on a different planet).

I remember from my physics days at school a few choice phrases. Stuff like “for every force there is an equal and opposite reaction”, or that energy is not made, it is simply converted from one form to another. So as my small mind analyses this, I can understand that there is some price to pay for running a central heating boiler, switching on three bars of an electric heater or driving to work every day. Somehow, somewhere we must be paying for all that, but I’m just not sure it’s enough to plunge the planet into disarray, yet. I’d go so far to say that we’re probably just the cancer on the planet, and we may make things just a little bit worse than they might be, but not necessarily be totally responsible for everything, not all the time.

From what I can gather, the science of measuring global warming (or that big ice age) is a little immature at the moment. I have no doubt that it will improve in terms of accuracy and continue to gather momentum as time passes, but I can’t help but feel that were all being manipulated by some strange force out there.

Now who could possibly gain from all this?

I’m taxed to death. The nanny state has more involvement in my life that any other country. More laws are produced than ever before. We live in a surveillance society and have more cameras per citizen than any other country (don’t look at the aircam project; it’s exempt and just for fun), and we are about to bring in a new national ID card system. Well that’s all our problems solved isn’t it.

Footnote to employers: In order to help reduce my carbon footprint I am prepared and offering to work from home with immediate effect, right now and forever. That means that you won’t see me, and I wont have to look at you.

The eagle eyed amongst you may have noticed that I’m doing a little of aerial photography. Well it’s been at least three days before I mentioned it, so here we go again.

So this farmer dude from around the corner at home comes to see me. He’s interested in the aerial photographs and what I’ve been up to, however he’s really concerned that I’m working for the government and that I’m spying on the farmers and landowners.

With the farm subsidy payments about to start flowing following the three year botched government IT project cock up, I guess it’s no surprise that this group of land owners are afraid that the government will be looking for any way they can to withhold payment.

I explained that the government did not need any tangible reason to withhold payments as the last three years had shown.

His concern then went on to express that the government may be sending out inspectors to check on what’s going on.

So, is there a spy in the camp?

It looks to me like the government only has to look at Google Earth to see what’s going on. There really is no need to knock on doors anymore.

If any government agencies are interested though, I’d be happy to supply updated imagery of any area at reasonable rates.

Your spy in the air – Dave Eff

Just the other day my wife took the kids to the hairdressers for the usual hair do. No big deal there, two trims and we're done.

More like, I was done. One hundred and twenty quid!

What?!?!?!

So they sat in Tony and Guy, sipping their cappuccinos, reading the latest fashion magazines, being pampered, having a head massage and having their highlights touched up.

Errm, like, what happened to the good old fashioned pudding bowl?

So I went to discuss this with my soon to be seventeen year old son, to try to explain that they were bleeding me dry, and that this couldn’t possibly go on forever. Unfortunately he was with his pedicurist and couldn’t fit me in until a week on Thursday at 14:25.