TWO MORE BUS DESTINATIONS TICKED OFF THE 2017 LIST

Greeting, a long day teatime and I was up at 5am and off down to Northampton, needless to say Mandy didn't take up the offer to come with me but did get all your DVD orders off in the post and there were quite a few as we'd had a flash sale over the weekend. Pushing sales and the steep increase in Youtube advertising revenue has seen us scrape by and pay off the new DVD printer all in one hit which also included the costs from the Balkan trip. So head above water at PMP for another month. Really the new Epson printer has been great and it's easy to create additional disc labels if required although I've no intention of doing 2000 for all our DVDs. Goodness knows how many we've done now and with all the videos which were there before it seems that one life time would have been too short to have done all this./ Northampton started sunny and ended up trying to rain but I stayed dry all day and got home to a soggy Cheshire which at least means the garden doesn't need watering tonight. The drivers at Northampton were particularly friendly and highly commended for their pleasant attitude to me merry waves, smiles and thumbs up and if there were any Poles among them it must have been the good 'uns, well there has to be some!

The bus activity there was frantic to say the least with a nice variety of operators , I was there early enough to catch schools and works services and also had a walk down the Hight St for a change of scene. I was going to have a brew but couldn't find the shop although I stumbled on a Startreck but it's cakes looked pitiful so skipped it and headed down to Bedford and went for a late breakfast earl;y lunch in M&S which wasn't bad and the carrot cake must have been reasonably fresh as it showed signs of being moist, perhaps baked in last 6 months, most of it festers in a chilled store for ever that's why it's tasteless and dry most often. Usual rubbish layout with nowhere to rest a tray and a tall number fort your toasted sandwich adds to the potential catastrophe on the tray which if your hands are full like mine with the camera equipment then its a balance single handed and pray it doesn't all land as a soggy mess, M&S are the worst retailer I use but then I don't use many! Lots of friendly drivers once more, Stagecoach leads the way although the others were all fine, I don't recall anything new for Stagecoach although it's good to see the smaller operators upgrading to new buses.

The trip back up to Cheshire was OK and even though it was rush hour just a bit of a creep at this end of the A50 in Stoke but all was well but going down on the M1 at the A14 road works there was a lorry smacked into a car which was side on to the truck cab, we were very close and managed to slip around the smash but I guess it must have become a long tail back when the police etc arrived to make a mountain out of a mole hill. I though tomorrow I'd have a bash at getting my Irish passport form filled out although I didn't get any reply to me questions which was the same result as 10 years ago, this time I'll just do it send it off and see what happens, no fathers birth cert is the main problem but do have adoption certification which shows his name and nationality as Irish plus I've got his note that acknowledges he is my father plus now DNA back to West Cork and my mothers in London.

In Bedford there were a couple of English people I talked to which is quite rare perhaps the last there, if the boats are ever laid on for repatriation there won't be many houses left occupied there, a couple of drunken Poles gave some hassle at the roundabout on the inner ring road by the new shopping development, they were three sheets gone at lunch time, I asked them if they behaved like that at home in Poland and they said yes, guess they were glad to get rid of them. I was reading about the ethnic cleansing of Europe after WWII, Poland managed to eradicate nearly every single non Pole within their 'new' borders the only country to achieve this, I guess that didn't leave much mix of genes and the inbreeding is coming through. Probably I spend too much time thinking about how much I hate them, fascists never prosper in the long run which I suppose brings us back to May and the election. I remember when Thatcher was gone and people denied ever voting for her, I suppose it will be like that with Dear Leader May Blossom coal dust be upon her. Jeremy seems to have done very well sticking to his principles and not letting the Blairites or Tories get under his beard! One thing I won't be doing Thurs/Friday is waiting up for results, the EU referendum was enough for one life time shock. If we have a Tory minority government wouldn't it be fun to make her squirm and force them to do lots of things they really hate like be considerate to people with disabilities and give NHS workers a pay rise etc. Of course you could just pull the wings off flies etc if that is the direction you find yourself going. Anyway Brexit means ISIS or was it ISIS means Brexit or was it Education, Education, Edu..... sound bites don't taste that good but if pushed 'The pound in your pocket...' was my favourite, those too young look it up. Photos from Northampton early today.