The weather continues miserable. Not raining, but grey and over-cast. There was no ice to scrape off the car this morning, which was all very well, but it is still cold. We have had a few mornings with frost, but nothing to heavy. I bought a can of de-icer spray in Sainsbury's the other week, but it seems to make more mess of the windscreen than if you use just a scraper. It makes visability really bad, as you seem to get a blurry image looking through the windscreen. Also, I'm not to sure of the environmental effects of using this spray. It also has a really pungent smell.
Yesterday I took Sam to work. The roads are a nightmare at around 8-9 a.m. I realise that people are going to work, well, those who are working a 9-5 work-pattern, but some people have really no consideration for other road users. The road along side Eaglestone, that is, from near the Milton Keynes Academy to the hospital, is a 40 miles per hour speed limit. I don't think some people realise this, although it is fairly well signed. There are large signs as you enter and there are sometimes illuminated signs that show the speed you are driving at as you approach, and if you are at the correct speed you get a 'smiling face'. Which is actually, to my way of thinking, better than speed cameras, as these just seem to provoke agression in a lot of drivers. I think you slow down when you see them and then speed up again once you are well past. So, in that sense they defeat the object. Also, it can be said that speed cameras are merely a way to make money, from the fines that they generate. As we drive a relatively small car, a Hyundai Atos, and we don't make a habit of speeding around the place, generally keeping within the speed limit, we have found that you constantly get other car drivers coming up directly behind you as you're driving along, and trying to get you to go faster, or, in a lot of cases, trying to get you to move out of the way. Usually these are the speed freaks who have to drive at full throttle everywhere and seem to disobey every rule of the road, including keeping within the legal speed limits. I have driven around Milton Keynes and had people come up behind me and try to get me to speed up or just attempt to push me off the road so they can go faster and faster. This often happens when I have dropped Carol off at the Academy and I turn out into the road and round the roundabout and back in to Eaglestone, and on several occasions I have had a car come up and virtually touch the rear bumper of the car, just to get me to go faster.
We drove to where Sam works, at around 8.45. There was traffic building up to turn into the carpark at Milton Keynes College (where we park when we go to M.K.C.C.(Milton Keynes Christian Centre), as you're not supposed to park in the residential streets around the church and use the bus service to the carpark over to the church, run as a shuttle service.) Then there was quite a queue going onto the roundabout for Grafton Street which we got through fairly rapidly. The along Grafton Street and into the industrial estate where Maplins is (where Sam works.) Having dropped him off, it's quite difficult getting back into the traffic system in Grafton Street at that hour of the morning, but I generally turn left and back to the roundabout and down the other side of the dual carrage way and home along Chaffron Way and home. This particular morning, as I have already mentioned, there was a real bottleneck at the exit into the college carpark, and I had to slow down because I couldn't see clearly what was ahead, due to the volume of traffic. Suddenly a car drew out of the college exit, and if it wasn't for my instant reaction, I would have collided with the car. Thankfully the Atoz has good brakes, but it didn't do a lot for my nerves. A couple of feet more and there would have definitely been an accident.
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