Decided to have a good old RANT post today.. why not.. it can be good for you to let it all out AND I admit, I have stolen the idea from a guy I know called Jeremy who has a whole blog devoted to ranting, it’s called “What’s Gotta Go” and if you like a good rant, then there are some great ones there. 

And so to my rant… today I had to drive to the Severn Bridge (the old one) off the M4 in England from my home in Ammanford, South Wales.. like I often have to do, to pick up my son who has been visiting with his dad during his schools half term break.

Just for interest sake, there are some great pictures here on Wikipedia of various views of said Bridge..

Anywho… at the moment, on the trip to the Bridge, I have to go through a huge network of roadworks on the M4 between Junction 33 and 28 (roadworks are there until 2009, deep joy, not!).

Now as these roadworks, like many on motorways, use a contraflow system which splits some of us over onto the opposite carriageway, I am totally sure most people reading this will be familiar with those wonderful contraptions LOL – well in this one, the contraflow takes us into a single lane, 50mph speed limit and of course no passing anyone..

We are all plodding along like good kiddies at just under the speed limit (we all know the speed limit is not a target officer), nice gaps between the cars, etc, etc, blah, blah.. until about one mile into it!!!

In a nice long reasonably straight part of the contraflow (so you can see well ahead) we all start to slow down, first to 45, then 40, then the two or three cars ahead of me have to apply their brakes a bit sharpish but only for a second and then we are down to 30, oh then we go back up to 35, then 40, then 45 THEN the whole flippin scenario repeats itself AND it repeats itself for the REMAINDER of the contra flow (6 miles in total) – so obviously, by now I am looking ahead trying to see why the heck we are all playing “stop, start, stop, start” and about five cars ahead of me, I can see the tail lights of this 4×4 and ahead of that car I can see… a bloody huge gap!! between the 4×4 and the next set of people going through the contra flow, it’s easy to see, it’s almost dark so we have our lights on of course. 

What is holding this guy up? well.. as far as I could see, nothing! however every now and then, he seems to think the car behind him is a bit close, so he breaks, so we all have to break and yes of course that ends up bringing you closer to the car in front..

Guess what, you can also see the poor chump behind him as he breaks then tries to leave a reasonable distance again but with the erratic speed of said 4×4, you can see he is finding it hard.. by now I look in my rearview mirror and can see a huge tail back of cars as this has a knock on (or should I say a knock back) effect..

Now this is only just past the local areas rush hour.. so there are a ton of cars on the M4, in this freakin contraflow.. the local area by the way being CARDIFF for goodness sake, so we are talking major peeps wanting to get home to their hot din-dins lovelingly prepared for them by er… well Mr or Mrs whoever….

I can see so many shiny white knuckles as drivers grip their steering wheels probably in growing temper or possibly fear, who knows..

But still this guy persists, he must see what is happening in his own rearview mirror, his vehicle is high enough to afford him a wonderful view of the “white knuckle brigade” behind him.. so I have to assume then that he likes to do this to people, in fact, he is enjoying the power this single lane traffic is affording him.. yes he is “Drunk with power” argggggghhhhhhh!!!

You may wonder why I refer to this driver as he, him, etc.. yes it did occur to me at one point.. “is this driver a women,? she is a bit nervous perhaps” and so on… BUT it was a MAN!! oh yes.. when we FINALLY got to the end of the contraflow and got back over to our 3 lane side of the motorway, we all passed the 4×4, every one of us looking to our left as we pass (honest that guy should have been 6 foot under with the looks he got oh and the hand gestures, well, I don’t think I can go into that on this family friendly blog LOL).

I had more to rant about with the rest of the journey regarding “tail gaiters” but I see I have gone on for long enough..

Do come and join me in the comments section and tell me your rant.. go on, get it out of your system, it feels good.. you can rant about drivers if you want, or something completely different.. let’s have a rant session…

Over to you..

ChristyZ has just reported this Amber Alert on her blog “Christy’s Coffee Break”

A 5 year old boy named Adrian Jaimes was abducted from his family car this morning, this has not hit the TV News yet.

Christy is asking people to spread the news via their blogs in order to help find this boy.

You can get more information here at “KXAN.com”

Please help by using the power of the Web 2.0 communities to spread the word, let’s use the internet to try and help this family.

Thanks, Sue

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

EDIT – News on 8th Feb from Christy, the boy has been found!!! YES!!! excellent, if you go to the comment section you will see Christy’s message.

 Thank you to everyone who read this and who helped.

I just had to post some video I took this morning.  I live in the Amman Valley in South Wales, UK and it has been raining for what seems like two weeks non-stop (what’s new I hear you ask LOL).

 Well on my way to take my son to school this morning we drove down the road a little (about half a mile) and past the Amman river, I could not believe what a torrent it was (is) and so I just had to go back with my new, got it for Christmas, digital camera/video thingy (I am so technical).

 This is one of the videos I got, the river from about a mile further up goes down in steps and those steps of course, with this much power and amount of water cause the “Washing Machine Effect” – so if there are any “Extreme Canoeists” in this area then get your butts down here.. it would be nice to video you.. But your braver than I if you do..

As some of you will have noticed I am new to blogging. I have to say I am enjoying it immensely, I know I have a lot.. let’s say that again for effect.. A LOT to learn but I am so enjoying that process.. yes even when about a week ago, I lost my blog.. arghhhhh!!! how does that make you feel? I will tell you… sooo bad!!!

The reason I can now look back on that and still enjoy this whole process is because I made a stupid error with something techy **sweats and reaches for Valium at mere thought of it** BUT it was me, yes ME! that figured out what I did and then put it right.. (we won’t mention the hours, nay, days of anguish it took me to get to that result) but I am sure you can imagine (or I hope you can) the wonderful sense of achievement that bought me.. mind you, my 11 year old son Jonathan is still recovering and now considering two options:

1) Can he get himself fostered or

2) How easy is it to “Divorce” ones parents..

Because all he remembers about me losing my blog, is a VERY grumpy Mother that he quickly and astutely learnt not to go anywhere near unless perhaps he cut himself with a sharp object, or smelt fire or some other emergency type scenario which fortunately did not happen [see authors notes below post].. and then this total mad woman running around his house and yelling, “Yes!, Yes!, I saved it” rushing up to him and hugging and kissing him (I did note him checking me for sharp objects) and then skipping – yes skipping!! up and down our (in the words of Dr Cox from Scrubs) verrrrryyyy long corridor singing and screaming at the top of my “let’s face it” reaaaaaaaallllly not very good voice…

Anyway, I digress from my original point of this story.. my growing enjoyment and sense of achievement of my new found blogging world… One thing I have not enjoyed up until today.. was the feeling of “Billy No Mates”.

Now if you are from the UK I know you will not need me to explain what that means but if your from anywhere else.. and oh I’m guessing your from the USA – just a wild stab in the dark there you understand (lol) then you might be sitting there now saying “I’m with Jonathan, get this mad woman out of my life” or something along those lines… so let me explain the meaning of ‘Billy No Mates’.. The Wallflower at the dance..The poor kid in the corner at the local youth centre (English spelling of centre, live with it LOL )

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I just wanted to pay tribute to a wonderful man – George Osmond – who died today aged 90.

Because of George, we had (and still have) The Osmonds, because of The Osmonds and in particular for me, Donny.. there are hundreds of people now connected in love and friendship across the world. Because of them, I joined Donny’s fan club online a few years ago.. through that fan club I have met so many wonderful people who have become my friends.. they have done favors for me and I for them. I have friends in America who are so very dear to me and if it were not for the Osmonds and all they stood for – honesty, loyalty, never judging anyone, family values, so many things quiet apart from their Entertainment careers – I would never have come into contact with these people and been able to go to America and meet them.. these friends are now my lifeline..

So I thank you George for wanting the best for your family.. for wanting to pay to help your two eldest sons with their hearing.. if you and Olive had not decided to do that so many decades ago, there would never have been “The Osmonds” – I thank you for teaching your family the values they live by today and that we “40 somethings” all learnt about in our early teens, you gave us then a good guide and a good set of rules to live by.. we have all had hard times one way or another but had your example to follow and we took what we learnt with us into our adult lives and it helped so much.

A little ditty I heard about George and Olive – when The Osmonds were so famous over here in the UK in the 70’s – I heard that both Mother and Father Osmond (that is how they are known and referred to by both family and fans alike and its the way the Osmond want it) would often look out for the young teenage girls they would see on the streets of London, always stopping and making sure they were ok, could they get home, did their parents know where they were.. listening to the young teenagers stories, sometimes heartbreaking ones, keeping in contact with them via letters, so many things.

Olive Osmond created the “One Heart Foundation” for children and as well as looking after her own family she did a lot for many hundreds of children.

Their children are a wonderful tribute to them, when you meet up with an Osmond you are always treated with respect, never like a fan, in fact they like to call their fans, “Friends” – gosh I could go on and on here..

It is a very sad day, I have to say, I kind of thought George would always be around – silly I know… I will treasure the fact that in 2003 I was receiving some awards from Melaleuca in the UK and the awards were being presented by Donny, he had bought his Father over with him and Father Osmond sat in his wheelchair at the back of the huge room.. I was lucky enough to be getting several awards and so went up to get them from Donny and each time I had to work my way back to my seat, well on one occasion, I knew George was at the back, I managed to go by his wheelchair and I just kneeled down and said “Father, I do hope you don’t mind but may I please give you a kiss on the cheek?” and he said, of course you can my dear but why, and I just said, well just because.. I kissed his cheek and went on my way, I will treasure that memory.

So George, you will be so missed by many hundreds of people around the world – thank you for what you did, thank you for lending us your family and for the things you taught all of us.

The one comfort we all have is to know that now you are back in the arms of your sweetheart, Olive.

Sue – one of your friends

Official Family Announcement