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Donna has made a big fuss about the Red cups, so I had to try one. I wasn’t disappointed, except for the temperature, as usual. Starbucks coffee is always too cold – perhaps it is a deliberate ploy to get you to drink up quickly and leave, but if that was the case why provide comfy chairs and wi-fi links? (To encourage people with Mac portables and bandanas around their heads to sit posing in a prominent position, not realising that it just shows that they have no friends and nowhere to call home.)

The observant will have spotted that there is only one red cup (which has ice cubes in to cool down the Earl Grey Tea). Mine is the Chocolate Mint Bliss venti with cream. 

Autumn finally arrives this year half way through November. These isolated streamers of creeper on the bricks caught my eye as I was getting into the car.

Also, this is blogged directly from Flickr, another interesting angle.

Saw this on the pavement today. Not something I’ve ever seen lying around before, especially in a rural Cambridgeshire village. It was over a metre long, and obviously unused.

When I showed this picture to the chaps in the office they provided me with a perfect feed by asking me if I had left it there.

I replied that I’m not in the habit of picking up scrubbers in the street. Thank you, I’ll be here all week. Try the veal. 

So another x-ray later and it still isn’t definitely fractured. The doctor reckons probably 90% certain that it is. To find out for sure would need a bone scan, which involves a dose of radiation equivalent to 180 chest x-rays. The decision is mine, so I opt for the plaster (the several hours hanging around waiting for the radio-active dye to circulate and accumulate is almost as much of a deterrent as the potential cancer).

The difficulty of diagnosis is a good sign. The fracture hasn’t moved, so it should have no problem healing in five weeks. And I can drive with the plaster – which isn’t plaster these days but some magic lightweight setting bandage thing. 

On Tuesday I didn’t even know what a scaphoid was – on Wednesday I was nursing a clinically fractured one.

The problem with playing badminton in the village hall is that the walls are quite close to the edge of the court. Losing your balance whilst chasing for that elusive short shot over the net (and missing it), then stopping your fall with your outstretched-at-90-degree wrist is a textbook way of breaking your scaphoid. I know now that it is one of the carpal bones in your hand.

Hard to tell whether it is fractured initially (the x-rays showed that it was OK, but they often do), I have to wear a splint in case it is (hence the “clinical”) and go back in 10 days time to find out for sure. The suspense!

We were travelling to a small village just south of Northampton. The GPS SatNav was in charge. We were half an hour away when Digital Dorothy, possibly confused by the double roundabaout at the motorway junction, told us to “Turn Left, then make a U turn.”

The driver, slightly distracted by this odd instruction, turned left and left again, and we were headed the wrong way down the M1. 12 miles to the next junction, but still plenty of time. Until we reached the enormous queue and sat stationary for three hours with the engine off (but the ignition on for the radio and demister). Further ahead, a coach and lorry had collided and several cars had become involved. The northbound carriageway was also closed temporarily so that the air ambulance could land.

When the traffic started moving again, we didn’t. Something in the electrics was unhappy, but the radio was still working. The fast lane of the M1, stuck. Fortunately, the cars behind were also stuck and their drivers were quick to offer to push. It is encouraging to know that even with engine management, fuel injection and electronic ignition, a push start will sometimes get you going again. Thanks, guys. We might still be there. 

There is a new version of Picasa which allows posting direct to Blogger, so I thought I’d better try it out.

Here is a picture of the Maths Building at Manchester University. When I visited there in 1970-mumble, they told me that it was leaning and would one day fall down. (Does every university have a “falling down” building?) Seems like that day is finally here. 

I hate that expression. It’s like the cheap sentimentality that you’d find inside a greeting card with a picture of a kitten on the front. It reeks of insincerity. It used to be an American thing, but now it has infiltrated the BBC and it gets my goat.

Where did it come from? As far as I can remember, it used to be used solely by fictional undertakers when referring to the recently deceased. Now it has been extended to include the possibly deceased.

Is it just lazy journalists who can’t be bothered to say “friends and family”? Perhaps there isn’t a single word which encompasses acquaintances, those related by blood, partners both legal and common-law including their blood relations, etc., but as a journalist they should try harder and think up something.

I’ve tried to decide why I hate it so.

I think partly it’s because it is usually associated with the intrusion of reporters on the potentially bereaved, who are awaiting “news of their loved ones”. With a close-up of tears on photogenic faces.

And partly it’s the plain awkwardness of it. “Ones”? Surely there can’t be more than one “one”. Simply saying “loves” should suffice, as in “the loves of your life”, but that makes the hypocrisy a little too visible.

But mostly it is the mawkish implication that you must “love” anybody that you are concerned about. Missing family members might well be unloved and it is entirely possible to empathise with the plight of people who you have never even met. It is the emotional exaggeration for effect which rankles. Everything has to be elevated to a human tragedy.

Don’t get me started on that Lady Diana thing.

I’ve been around this industry for a long time. Such a long time, in fact, that when I was at university the PC hadn’t been invented and the computer which drew pictures needed a separate room all to itself (it was a DEC PDP-11 and it played Lunar Lander with a light pen and Space Wars by toggling switches on the computer box).

So it takes a lot to impress me, yet Google Earth has done just that. It is wrong to give all the kudos to Google, as they bought the existing Keyhole Earth program (and company), but Google did make it a free download. Along with the stunning graphics, and the amazing detail if you are lucky enough to be looking at a high-resolution mapped area, the software is open enough to allow user contributions of locations, live overlays or even detailed 3D buildings. (Loads more at Google Earth Hacks.)

What’s the worst that could happen? Obviously, the Tories getting back in. However bad (New) Labour is, and my quick mental list includes things they have done

• the Iraq war
• University fees

things they said they’d do but haven’t

• electoral reform
• join the Euro

and things they’ve said they will do

• force us to carry and pay for ID cards
• incitement to religious hatred bill,

I am neither too young nor too stupid to remember the last time we had a Conservative government. Despite myself, I still quite like Tony Blair. And I still look forward with anticipation to the 5-day street party when Mrs Thatch finally shuffles off.

Michael Howard tells us not to trust Tony Blair because he “lied”, but we don’t trust Michael Howard because he’s a Conservative. He tells us he’ll clean the hospitals, forgetting to mention that the reason they are dirty is because the Conservatives privatised the cleaners.

What’s the best? I can’t see much wrong with the LibDems. They’re untested, but so are all incoming opposition parties. The trouble is they will never win whilst the voting system is based on first-past-the-post fear ballots.

So I’m hoping for a reduced Labour majority. With the LibDems holding the balance of power. That will do.

My vote won’t count – only if all the Labour and LibDem voters join up can we unseat Jim the farmer’s friend Paice – but I’m still going to use it.