In the past 24 hours I have learned 2 things (3, if you count the discovery that a significant number of women on internet dating sites are a little bit strange. Yes I am going to meet the person - as the old saying goes; "curiosity got the cat laid". Or something like that.)
Thing number 1 was a bit yucky. I learned how to use a nit comb - First-Born's school has suffered an outbreak of head-lice which means nightly checking of the child's hair for the creatures, along with dark mutterings about getting said child's hair cut considerably shorter. First-Born, an embryonic environmentalist, dislikes all this: "But you'll kill them"
Me: "Thats right"
She: "But they haven't done anything to you. Why do you have to kill them?"
Me: "Because they'll make you itch"
She: "Can't you put them in the garden or something?"
Me: "I don't have a garden. And if I did, they wouldn't like it; most gardens aren't noted for their hairyness"
She: (huff) "Well, its still wrong to kill a living creature..."
Luckily I didn't find any.
Did I mention that she's decided to be a vegetarian? Since her diet consists of fruit and cheese sandwiches, this isn't much of a jump. I'm just relieved that the British Government finally banned fox-hunting, otherwise she'd be dragging me along to hunt saboteur meetings in a few years time.
Thing number 2 was the dark side of Cruise Control (the optional extra for automobiles, not the appallingly bad sequel to Speed that even Keanu Reeves bailed out of.) I should explain that is the first time I've owned an automatic car (most cars in the UK tend to be manual shift) so I've been having fun playing with it. The way the needle spins around the speedometer with very little interaction from me (aside from stamping on the go-fast pedal) is very entertaining. In fact, the speed at which the car accelerates without the usual frantic drama is quite breathtaking - if I had a pipe and a pair of slippers, I could almost be in a Jaguar (everyone should drive a fast Jaguar once in their lives; its like sitting on an old Chesterfield sofa in the drawing room of an English stately home, onto which somebody has strapped a couple of Saturn V moon rockets.)
But I digress. Plonking the car on an empty motorway and engaging cruise control at 130mph (210kph) is hugely fun. The problem comes if you forget to turn it off after leaving the motorway. One applies the brakes and proceeds to manually operate the gas as one negotiates the narrow country lanes to one's office. One comes to a straight bit, and one's hand inadvertently brushes the 'Resume' button. Remember what I said about the stealthy way the car accelerates? "Hmmm," I thought, "That next corner seems to be coming up a bit fast", as indeed it might, seeing as the car was now travelling at 90mph and accelerating.
So I got to try out the Anti-lock Braking System, and the Traction Control System all at once. Lucky me.
