Madness, madness, they call it madness

It’s been a strange sort of a day today. It started particularly early because Ned had to get up to go canoeing with his chums. Over the past couple of years they have been canoeing the Thames in weekend stages, and this weekend's jaunt is the last non-tidal section. Anyhow, his alarm went off at 5am and I kicked him out of bed. The alarm also went off a 5.10am because he’d set it on ‘snooze’ and I woke then too. I got up at 6.30 to take the dogs out for a good run before work so hopefully they’d settle till the Boy got up – lunchtime-ish was my guess.

I left work a bit earlier than usual because I wasn’t sure if he would have remembered to take them out this afternoon, and I didn’t like to think of the poor things sitting there with their legs crossed from 8.30 this morning till a quarter to five. (It seems he hadn’t let me down, so that’s good.) There was a different feel to the traffic at the earlier time, though – it seemed as though all the loonies were out. (My own driving is, of course, faultless ;) )There was a suicidal scooterist riding at 40 mph who, whenever someone tried to overtake him would swerve into the centre of the road and scare the living daylights out of the driver, especially when there was traffic coming in the opposite direction. There were a couple of people for whom a refresher course on the Highway Code wouldn’t come amiss (speed limits vary for a reason – driving at 45 mph on the open road (limit 60 mph) and also through villages (limit 30 mph) demonstrates blissful ignorance of the world outside that tin box); and the person who was merrily driving along with his dog leaning out of the side window, ears flapping in the breeze. I wonder if he gave a thought to the possibility that, if he had a crash, or even braked sharply, the dog would at best be seriously injured, and at worst decapitated?

I never did find out if the Boy had been skiving or not - anyone in officialdom at school last night was keeping well away from the rest of us. When I saw who the 'official guest' was, I dared Boy to say "We must stop meeting like this" when he received his prize, because it was the same bloke (local MP) who presented him with his last prize several years ago. But he thought it would draw attention to himself - and being up on stage doesn't I suppose?