I drove down Charter Avenue today, between the A45 and Cannon Park. The last time I drove along it the road surface was pretty bad, with quite a lot of potholes. Today the potholes had spread along most of the road. The freezing weather earlier in the month seems to have taken its toll on the road surface. A lot of roads have suffered but this one seems worse than most.

It started snowing yesterday and by the time we left work there about an inch or so had fallen. The main roads on the way home weren't too bad but our road was very slippery. We live on the side of a hill so I had to drive up very carefully. Even so, I could feel the car wanting to slide sideways.

The road was no better this morning. All the pavements were very icy. I walked into town to take some photos of the city centre in the snow.

Click on the thumbnail to view the image

I probably can't blame Friday the 13th but tonights drive home was probably the slowest ever. There had been a crash which closed the M6, causing most of the traffic to divert along local roads. Roads which were normally free-flowing were backed up for miles. It took us a couple of hours to drive the 5 miles home.

Today is proving to be a numerically challenged day. The Daily Mail has problems with years and now this:

There are speed cameras along the A46 in the roadworks near the junction with the M40. The speed limit has been lowered to 40mph and signs light up to warn speeding motorists of the new limit. I was driving at 38mph, according to the speedometer in the car. This didn't stop the sign from flashing at me telling me to slow to 40mph.

There appear to be some strange place names in Shropshire. I noticed these while checking the route to Ironbridge.

To the driver of the pale blue Vauxhall Vectra, who was driving behind me on my journey to work this morning. You were so close to my car I wondered whether you wanted me to open the boot so you could climb inside. I thought you were impatient or in a hurry but when we got to a empty straight bit of road, you failed to overtake. I then realised you weren't in a hurry but were just a dickhead with poor road manners and no concept of road safety.

Our regular drive to Swanns near Allesley, to buy quail food, normally only takes a few minutes. It took rather longer today thanks to some surprise road closures, caused by some kind of road race. We normally drive up Washbrook Lane but it was closed. We turned around and drove the length of Browns Lane and tried a different way but encountered more closed roads.

We weren't the only people caught up in this. We drove about half a mile down one road before we met the road closed barriers. It would have been nice if they had put a sign up further down the road to stop everyone from wasting time and petrol. At least the people manning the barriers helped us find a detour to get to our destination.

One of the people we encountered on our travels lived in the area but didn't know anything about the race or which roads were closed. He was driving around trying to find his way home. The road closures should probably have been better publicised. I realise that closing country lanes doesn't cause as much disruption as closing part of the ring road for the Lady Godiva Half Marathon but it was still an inconvenience to a number of people.

We had a very frustrating drive to work this morning. We left the house a few minutes earlier than normal and got caught up in the school run. There were dozens of cars shuffling about, reversing, doing u-turns and generally impeding traffic and blocking the road. When there was a gap, a lot of the mums in their tiny cars seemed unwilling to try drive through, despite the gap being big enough for a much bigger car.

The worst thing about this is that there are several primary schools in the area and I'm sure most of the kids will live within half a mile, so they could easily be walked to school. Especially on a sunny day like today, when kids should be encouraged to be outside, and not shuttled back and forth in cars.

I might not be the best driver in the world but I try to avoid inconveniencing other people, unlike the person who insisted on doing a u-turn in a very restricted area, holding up the traffic for a minute or so.

Count to ten. Deep breath. Rant over. Calm Down.

Last year I saw one of the Google Street View cars parked on the side of the road. The street view has finally been added to the UK maps. A lot of cities have been covered, including Coventry.

This evening I looked at a few locations, including our current address (the google car went down our road after we left for work but before the bins were emptied) and our old house (the spiky bush next to the front door has been dug up since we left).

The images have been stitched together from multiple photos, which has led to some strange 'artifacts' such as a man buried in the pavement near the Cathedral:

Our car has an on-board fuel consumption monitor which can report fuel usage in real-time. We were driving along the motorway today, doing around 70mph down a slight hill. I lifted my foot off the accelerator to let the car coast down the hill. The fuel economy briefly peaked at 999mpg. If only it could be that efficient all the time.

It took me about an hour to park the car and get to my office this morning. Getting into the car park was easy - my pass card opened the barrier. The car park was full so I tried to leave to go to another car park. Actually the car park was had plenty of spaces but they were all in the roped off empty upper floor of the multi-storey. The top floor had been closed due to the risk of ice.

I drove to the 'out' barrier and swiped my card but the barrier failed to open. A queue of cars started to form behind me. A few other people tried the barrier but it wouldn't open for them either. We phoned security and waited for them to arrive. It took 3 people and a lot of trial and error before they managed to get the barrier open. I eventually managed to leave and find my way to another car park which had some proper spaces, which happened to be a decidedly non-icy top floor of another multi-storey car park.

I'm not used to spending time at home during the week and didn't realise how many annoying useless phone calls we receive. My car was being serviced so I was waiting for the garage to call to say it was ready to collect. Within a couple of hours I had call trying to sell me replacement doors and other home improvements, and a call from BT trying to sell me their broadband package.

I try not to be rude to phone salespeople but I wanted them off the phone as quickly as possible to keep the line clear for the garage to call. Eventually it was ready and I went to collect it.

On the drive to work I encountered a windscreen washing bloke at some traffic lights. Whenever the traffic stopped he would walk out and start cleaning a windscreen, completely uninvited. The lights turned green while he was still faffing about. I couldn't easily get to my wallet so I drove off. He must be used to that kind of thing, but if I wanted to wash my windscreen, I would use the windscreen wipers which have been standard issue on cars since at least the 1930s.

Christmas brings out the usual crap drivers. While we were away we saw one idiot on the A6 south of Stockport. He was driving along perfectly normally then, without warning, he would swerve violently from left to right for a few seconds, then get back to driving normally again. It looked a bit like when racing drivers swerve to warm their tyres before a race. We couldn't decide whether he was a moron, was drunk, or just thought it was funny.

On Top Gear, Jeremy Clarkson has commented on how 'cocks' have started driving Audis instead of BMWs. We saw a prime example of this too. We were driving through a village where there was a 40mph speed limit. A knobhead in a black audi decided that the speed limit didn't apply to him, and he was swerving past the other cars in his haste to get past everyone. We saw a similar moron on the motorway driving a silver Ford Focus, changing lanes every few seconds because he didn't want to drive sensibly behind people at a junction.

We encountered our final knobhead of the season (so far) on our way back home, driving along Holyhead road towards Coventry. A moron in a crappy little Renault was tailgating me. I braked in an attempt to force him to slow down and increase the gap but it didn't work. We finally lost him at a junction where he went a different way. At our last sight of him, he was still driving like a knobhead, tailgating a taxi.

I'm in Stevenage for a few days, on a training course.

The train journey down here was ok. I only had to wait a couple of minutes for each connection. At King's Cross Station, I had a long walk to platform 9 for my train, although I did pass the famous Platform 9¾ on the way. My train was at the platform ready to leave so I didn't have time to stop and take a photo.

Stevenage town centre is a bit of a concrete dump. It's like the worst parts of Coventry town centre, only darker and more desolate.

It was foggy this morning as we drove to the hamster show. Along the M6, we knew Birmingham was out there but couldn't see any sign of it.

The Christmas hamster shows are always a bit special compared to the normal meetings. The hamster club puts on a buffet which always goes down well. There is usually a good turn-out which means more competition which usually means our hamsters don't do as well as normal. We only won the one trophy, for our Winter White hamsters.