Tuesday 30th Jul

I go on a course this morning through my IT volunteer role at the library. Its entitled “Violence and Aggression training”. Not how to be, but how to deal with, given we are dealing with the public. As I can’t be recompensed for mileage, but I can for train travel, I take the local train. It’s not as quick, but looking at my fellow travellers it makes me see why I’m in no rush to be a commuter. Lord they look miserable, and their work days haven’t even started.

The course itself is fairly typical and I only pick up a couple of useful pieces of information, but seeing my fellow attendees makes me realise what a great job some people do in very difficult circumstances, and for relatively little pay. It also confirms how poorly organised and run local councils still are, with a lot of the management still living, heads in the sand, in the dark ages.

I grab a coffee from Wetherspoons on the way back to get the train. I’d paid 95p for coffee in a local Wetherspoons on Saturday, and here I was being charged £1.15, a 20% price increase, for the same drink 10 miles down the road. The interesting point is the area I was now in, would be considered by some – and reflected by housing prices – to be much better that where I’d been at the weekend. Obviously Wetherspoons, and I am sure other chains, price according to the local income.

11pm sees Mrs P, myself and other parents waiting outside school, for the coach bringing our daughters back from Morocco, or Heathrow in this case. Looking at the coach I don’t immediately recognise the eldest, as all the girls look very similar after two weeks roughing it. She has had a great time, and has plenty of stories and photos to share with us. First though its home to bed, and to see her brother, who typically for a teenage boy preferred to wait at home.

Yours glad to have the eldest back home safe.

Jay