Room 409: Ain't technology grand?!

When I worked on Submarines the only contact we had from home was a weekly familygram, 40 words a week written by a nominated loved one which was read and vetted by at least half a dozen people before it reached me, often heavily edited as bad news (and for that matter good news) might be unsettling. A consequence of this was that I tended to be very out of touch with what was going on at home and when I finally got home I was constantly surprised by how much had changed in a comparatively short period of time. I could often be seen walking down the road drawing strange glances from passers by worried that I might be an escapee from the local mental asylum as I wondered what had happened to my favourite pub (I'm sure I left it here?) or where I could buy some nice veg for dinner as the green grocers had become a mobile phone shop seemingly overnight. Driving was even worse, many is the time I have suffered road rage from irate drivers as I have suddenly discovered that the turn I want no longer exists or someone has seen fit to install traffic lights on a road I thought I knew like the back of my hand...

Nowadays its all different, when I wake up in the morning I help myself to a cup of coffee before I sit down and read the emails in my constantly overflowing inbox, trying to sift the relevant stuff from all the global emails (I really don't care if the red astra reg no a123 456 has left his lights on) and spam which fills it. At lunchtime I enjoy taking a bit of time out to read the daily news and sports headlines and in the evening I often make a phone call home, today was no different, but...

I couldn't help asking myself as I flicked through the raft of depressing news stories on the BBC website "is this really better?" Over the last couple of trips we have suffered some fairly catastrophic failures of our satellite system* which has rendered us unable to communicate by telephone without great expense, without internet and without email and to be honest its only really the email that I have missed. Oh don't get me wrong, its great to be able to speak on the phone but its not vital, email is a fact of life nowadays and it is difficult to achieve anything work wise without it, its also great to get personal emails and to know that everything back at home is OK, but its no replacement for real letters on real paper with your girls scent on them so you are instantly taken to another place when you open the envelope. No I don't miss it that much.

Speaking of the news, obviously the biggest story of the day for us based in the UK was the chancellors first budget... Is there any truth to the story that Golden Brown asked for his budget speech with the immortal line "Chancellor Darling, will you now make your budget announcement"? I hope so!

So anyway, in his budget Darling announced that we are great, nothing to worry about, honest guv... gonna chuck some extra duty on the gas guzzlers that'll sort them out... Oh and we are going to curb binge drinking by sticking 14p on a bottle of wine, that ought to do it! Certainly the hoodies down my way are renowned for hanging around outside the local offy, and can often be overheard to say things like "Wayne darling what have you got there?" "a cheeky little rouge Dwayne, would you care for some?" "No thanks Wayne, I think I'll stick with the pinot grigio but if you are after any more later I heard that Shane is outside tesco with a vintage chat de pape"

OK so they can't but I mean come on! Not content with destroying local pubs with its blanket ban on smoking our delightful nanny, sorry government now wants to price people out of boozers too... Keep 'em off the streets and save money on coppers... hold on is that the thought police I hear coming down the street...

There was one nice story in the news today though which I thought I would share with you just because it made me smile... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7291501.stm