A Preview of Easter

With a full week to go to the first of consecutive four day weekends, a manic mass of humanity thronged Tesco and, later, Sainsburys. I understand why they were shopping so fervently. In all the days ahead right up to Bank Holiday Monday, the shops are closing only on Easter Sunday - in a ridiculous sop to a minority superstition - and so anyone who has not stocked up adequately with Pringles or Pampers could so easily starve to death or end up with the Social Services round. Let me sketch a typical Tesco car park scene to explain my irritation bordering on ire. We arrived when it was already busy and selected an outside space whilsit almost everyone else fought over the already over-subscribed covered spaces. A Peugot 206 or something similar was in a space with spaces either side. We could not go in the nearer of these because the (grand)mother was taking ten minutes with the door wide open fastening grandchild into childseat. Mummy/daughter was in the car but had left her trolley in the other space, an act of banal selfishness which she seemed to think was perfectly natural. I think she was preparing for verbal combat when I passed a comment prior to taking the offending trolley back to the pen. It took me one minute and, with her mother still faffing around on the other side, I think she might have had time to do that. I did not engage her further. One can not reason with the unreasonable.

I am dismayed and puzzled that a decision has been made to revisit the plan to abolish cheques from 2018. That is seven years time, not tomorrow. The remaining two people who want to use cheques will both be dead by then. There is nothing to review, this is a bullet which should be bitten whilst progress is made with EFT and contactless cards.

I am also dismayed and puzzled by the antipathy and suspicion directed to photographers on both sides of the Atlantic and probably elsewhere. So, let's get a few things straight. There is nothing inherently wrong or suspicious about taking photographs of buildings, buses, aircraft, cats, street art or anything. One of the things I have learned from posting to Flickr is that it is depressingly difficult to take anything original. In fact for almost any given subject you can name there are invariably thousands of pictures already on Flickr and in hundreds of other places on the internet. Whatever the perceptions of transport enthusiasts, architecture fans or anyone with unfamiliar hobbies, the fact is that there is limitless information about anything and everything and pictures of those same things in the electronic world we all inhabit.

I shall probably take some photographs on these three weekends and in between whilst simultaneously avoiding the 18m cars expected to be on the roads. I don't know what those photographs will be but I doubt I shall be undertaking any futile journeys to overcrowded destinations reached late and left early. However, I hope you all enjoy your leisure in your own ways.