The Journey Home

We knew the weather wasn't going to be great for driving but I certainly wasn't expecting to be awoken by the sound of thunder at 8am this morning! The rain was hurtling down and at one point, we had considered staying a bit longer until the storm had passed.

Thankfully, it passed relatively quickly and I even managed to pop down to the village shop to stock up on the basics for my gran that we'd eaten over the last few days. We got caught up in a fair few traffic jams on the way back and I suspect that was mainly down to the weather and the dense fog in particular. We passed a collision on the M4 involving a lorry and although there didn't appear to be too much damage, it was enough to warrant a tow truck - and to tow an HGV, that was one huge truck!

A welcome lunch stop in Barry to drop of my grandma before heading back home to Birmingham and my turn to spring into action and help her with the TV. The problems that the digital switch over has caused for her seem to never end! I had to explain to her how to use the stop, play, pause, fast forward and rewind buttons on the remote as until now she had been fast forwarding to the end of a program to get back to the TV rather than pressing the stop button. I don't know if she is losing her marbles a bit because this system isn't new and she must have used it on a VCR before. I then had to swap the boxes under her TV around so that she could use the remote without the coffee table getting in the way.

After another couple of jams on the motorway, we finally arrived home and back to civilisation. After just one day, my mobile phone decided that it didn't like connecting to the internet in Wales and so I was out of contact with the world for a couple of days. I now arrive home to find that, well... nothing has changed really! As it is the summer holidays, there was no deluge of emails in my university inbox, and since I've spread my personal email accounts over so many providers, there was no hoard in those inboxes either.

As it has been so easy to cope for these few days without internet access, it makes me less and less likely to go spending a huge amount of money on a smartphone any time soon (unless I suddenly come into some money). This month has been a bit expensive what with my MOT, car repairs, car tax, car insurance and other spur of the moment purchases. This is all before my next lot of rent, contents insurance for the forthcoming year and freshers week expenses. My next big purchase is likely to be a PVR for the TV unless by the time I get back our internet speed has significantly increased.