Beach Books 2011

This is the collection of books that I finished on holiday this summer:

1. Unseen Academicals, Terry Pratchett	2. Jigs & Reels, Joanne Harris	3. Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
4. Shakespeare, Bill Bryson	5. The Social Animal: A Story of How Success Happens, David Brooks	6. Fury, Salman Rushdie
7. Notwithstanding, Louis de Bernieres	8. Paradise Lost - Smyrna 1922, Giles Milton	9. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson

I read a couple of these on an Amazon Kindle 3G and can report that it's perfectly legible in bright sunlight such as is found on the beach in Greece:
 
Commission received on Amazon sales using the links above will benefit
Petersfield Curry Club

Bloody hell

Why is it so difficult, even in the age of Google, to find the answer to a simple question such as when I can get blood taken for an NHS blood test ordered by my GP?  Last time, he told me to go to Frimley Park Hospital, on my way to work, so as not to lose half a day's productivity.  Frimley Park reluctantly took the sample, saying I should really have been directed to the new Aldershot Centre for Health.

Now it's time to go again.  The Aldershot Centre for Health looks excellent, judging by the pictures on the web.  It's apparently the largest primary health centre in the UK, according to its nice little brochure that also identifies what floor has what service.  But nowhere can I find the opening hours for the phlebotomy/pathology (blood test) service.  The NHS Hampshire web site has a search facility but searches like 'blood test', 'blood test hours', 'blood test opening', 'pathology', and so on either take you to a list of policy documents, screening information, or the 'What's on site at Aldershot Centre for Health' page - which doesn't give any hours (and also lacks a map).  This really could and should be improved.

Give football referees the 10 metre rule and the power to sin-bin

Uruguay v France, the second match of the 2010 FIFA World Cup was a dire 0-0 draw, largely because the referee, who had a good game and made lots of good decisions, was hampered by players who stood their ground arguing the toss after free kicks were awarded.  This shouldn't be allowed.  It's just a professional foul, stopping any quick attacks, running the clock down, or giving enough time for defensive walls to set up.  

If players had to move immediately to 10 metres distance from the point where the kick is awarded, much of this nonsense would go away. If trouble makers could be removed for an immediate sin bin, discipline would get even better.  And how about a red card for diving?

Not a hope.  

How far to a Shell station?

Shell now has a service station locator on its UK website that allows you to plan a journey and produce a map and list all of the Shell stations adjacent to the route. This is a good improvement - they used to allow you only to search by road or town/postcode. I wrote in 2005 to say

It's great to give customers a route for their journey - it would be even better to show the Shell stations on the way.

and further...

I couldn't find any sensible way through the search facilities on your site to work out where on a trip from Hindhead to Durham and back I could fill up with Shell fuel. I know that there are some Shell service areas but I wanted to know where they are. As a driver I don't know which towns/cities/postcodes I'm passing near, so searching by these is useless.

My suggestion: a simple table on your site would have been a big help. It only needs to show
- number of motorway/Ax(M) road,
- name of service area and operator
- which junctions it lies between
- Optimax (now V Power), etc.

I used another website - 5 minutes away (from the motorway) - and eventually tracked down a few.

But now the application produces a map. Hooray! But a stroke of un-genius - the list of service stations is in something that looks related to alphabetical order rather than in the order you'd encounter them on the journey. And the map print-out doesn't scale to show all the labels, so you're back to guesswork again. You can see a pdf (123 KB) of a journey plan from Hindhead to Newcastle here.

Some progress, some still needed. Suggestion: let's have the service stations in the right order for the journey!