What's in a weekend...

Hope you're having a great weekend, although, sadly, it's nearly over.

It's been a warm balmy day today, not too hot (unless, like my friend Middle Aged Gapper, you were running in a 10K race) but pleasant never-the-less. The question is, where has the summer gone? I turned on the goggle box this afternoon before taking my other half a cup of tea in bed around 4 pm (she's on nights) to see football! Football! Football is a winter sport - allegedly. The Ashes series, now finely balanced hasn't even finished yet and on BBC 1 tonight was rugby league - a hitherto winter game now played in bright warm summer sunshine instead of cold, wet muddy parks.

My mother and father say that one day is like another and weekends for them (retired) are the same as any other day. Shops are open on a weekend, a lot of financial services are open now on the phone throughout the weekend and they are absolutely right about the fact that Sundays are no longer 'special'. For people like me who work Monday to Friday nine to five (I've done my share of health damaging shift work thanks) weekends are precious, so precious in fact that I have started to become slightly more lazy, deliberately doing things on a weekday evening, like shopping and cutting the grass in order to take advantage of two days off.

As a kid, I can remember the need for a half day closing of shops in the village (Wednesday afternoon if I remember) and most factories and other places of non retail work would finish on a lunch time on Saturday and the men would get their pay and go to their Saturday afternoon winter pursuit of football, or rugby or other sport or shopping etc., leaving them just one day off per week.

I don't know if you've noticed that now the little darlings are off school, the Internet connections are now somewhat slower than usual, particularly as the wet weather is keeping them indoors. Today's story has a computer theme.

The Army installed a new computer. As a demonstration of its capability, an officer asked the computer's new voice recognition programme, "How far is it from these headquarters to the nearest coast?"
The computer answered in a millisecond, "Seven hundred."
The officer, somewhat confused asked it, "Seven hundred what?"
The computer responded, "Seven hundred, SIR!"

Chat soon

Ta-ra.