We all know that there are people in this world that are pretty stupid. Yet on occasion I still find myself lost for words having witnessed an act where the only possible words could be “wow… the human race really is doomed…”.

Yesterday Sarah and I went shopping in Brighton (an act of sheer stupidity in itself I grant you). We parked up, went shopping and returned to the car park where we joined the queue to pay for parking. The woman at the front inserted her ticket into the machine whereupon it displayed the message ‘Please try again’ and kept her ticket. The cause of this had been that she inserted the ticket the wrong way up. despite the clear instructions on the machine.
She pressed the intercom button and explained to the nice man (who she presumably thought lived inside the machine – wizard of oz stylie) that she couldn’t get her ticket back. He pressed a few magical buttons and out popped the ticket. “please try it again madam” he said.
This process repeated 3 times. On the third occasion he said he’d raise the exit barrier for her when she got there. He’d charge her for the ticket now, so could she please read him the numbers off of the ticket, and then press where it said ‘ticket loss’ on the top right of the screen. Rather than interpreting this as ‘read the ticket, then press the button’ she chose to interpret it as ‘hold the ticket up against the screen’. She did this so that her friend, the wizard inside the machine, would clearly be able to read the ticket for himself.
No-one in the queue could help, since we were all standing agape at her stupidity.
Eventually she figured it out, said “I hope you lot have better luck than I did” and wandered off.
We waited our turn, paid and returned to our car. As we drove out we passed her, about 30 feet from the ticket machine, presumably waiting for the little men under the car bonnet to bring her car to her.

I feel like my IQ has dropped just from having witnessed it.

Ok, so as promised, you can view the updated photo album (with less crap to trawl through) of our holiday in Devon by clicking here.

On a completely different topic, Sarah cleared out some of her stuff in the study yesterday and came across a literary work of mine from some time ago. I think I was probably around the age of 9 at the time. It’s series 2, episode 1 of the ‘James Carrot’ saga. I have no idea what happened to series 1, or if I ever wrote any more in this series. But anyway without further delay, Ladies and gentleman, I present ‘James Carrot – License Renewed’ by Robert Pannell aged 9 (approx)

(Click on the images to view larger)

(The missing line from the bottom of the page says “The story continues in the next book in the series”)

The contents of this post and, in fact, this entire website are © 2006 Rob Pannell. So don’t even think about nicking my wicked story…

The end of my time off work is nearing, and the depression that goes with it has struck. I’m feeling very lethargic today and am generally bumming about. We thought we might go swimming today, but I felt that it’d be a wate of money, because I’m only in the mood to float about and not actually put effort into things (like actually swimming or anything). Shortly after this we got very enthusiastic about going to the cinema as I have a £5 voucher for Odeon. We checked the website and it seems there is nothing even slightly worth watching.

My mood is not aided by the fact that yesterday we went to woolworth’s in Seaford where I bought ‘From Russia With Love’ for the Playstation 2 (which is an amazing game, I love it). And when the checkout girl scanned it, the age warning alarm beeped and she said “Are you over 16?”

Am I over 16? I’m 23 and married!

Thankfully she was the usual woolworths type of employee with the “not my department” attitude. Up to this point she hadn’t even taken the time to look at me, so I probably shouldn’t be too concerned about it. I did feel really crap for about an hour though.

Incidentally, another recent purchase for the PS2 is ‘Just Cause’. It too is seriously good and I’d reccomend it.

As fast as it came around, it has also gone around. Yes I’m back, annd have spectacularly failed to remember the things I wanted to blog about. I knew I should have written them down.

But fear not, as I have uploaded the photos to snapish. You can view them by Clicking here. If you don’t want to register with snapfish, then log in with the following:
email: guest@kaineworld.co.uk
password: photos

I haven’t reviewed or edited the photos at all, I literally got home and uploaded them. so once I have done so, I will update the album, and write a detailed blog of the holiday.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome my sister, Louisa, to the blogging community. She has now followed my example and begun her own blog. Visit it at loustarsblog.blogspot.com.

Time until I go on holiday to devon:

(if it says 0, then I’m already gone!) and so until I return, I imagine this will be my final post.
But fear not, as I shall be packing a notepad and pen (and probably my laptop) and so will attempt to write a few entries while I am away, which I’ll post here on my return.

Don’t forget about me while I’m gone!