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Alternatives to Speed

Picture the scene. I'm driving sedately in my family car across the desolate moors of Derbyshire, in particular the High Peak area of North West England, the far side of Macclesfield. It's a long, fairly straight road, but there are some vicious bends in it, and if you take them too fast you can end up in the ditch, your car a write-off. Maybe that's why some sections of the road have a 50 miles per hour speed limit. It's known as a dangerous place to drive, and also fairly renowned for having more than its fair share of motorbike traffic. (It seems the 'Easy Riders' like the twists and turns and enjoy the risk. They're asked not to: there are posters at intervals along the road warning them to slow down. They regularly ignore the injunctions. So motor bike riders regularly crash, especially in wet weather.)

This day I'm talking about is fortunately dry. I'm keeping up a good speed, but well within the limit. I don't want to dawdle, because I know that it can annoy those people following. Sure enough, that day, there is a car a few metres behind me, pressing hard, trying to get past. He seems in a bit of a hurry, so, as I want to be helpful, I go as fast as I can (or, strictly speaking, as fast as we are both allowed). He doesn't care about that, he just wants to get ahead. Not surprisingly, he seizes the first chance he can get. As we come down round a bend, he swings out and hammers past me, his engine racing. He didn't judge it very well. The road ahead seemed clear for a while, but a car comes round the bend ahead of us, and my overtaker has to pull in abruptly in order to avoid a collision.

Firstly, he took a chance, an unnecessary risk, simply in order to get ahead. It doesn't help his journey. A mile further on is a junction and I caught him up there. Slightly further on are traffic lights, and he was forced to stop there too. So, simply because he didn't like his position on the road behind me he put all our lives at risk. If he had crashed his car, it might have caused me to come off the road too, plus the people in the car coming towards us. The slightest misjudgement could have been fatal. Being in pole position didn't speed up his journey because it's such a winding road that he couldn't build up enough speed to really get ahead of me. That was a mistake.

Still, let's be fair. He had a car that looked impressive. It was more modern than mine, and made all the right noises. Surely he was entitled to race it? Not if his bad driving put our lives at risk. Second, not if he broke the law, i.e. the speed limits, which were clearly marked and surely there for all our sakes. Anyway, let's think about that. Do we know it was his car? It might have belonged to his employer. Would his boss have encouraged him to hammer his vehicle, knowing it would shorten the serviceable life of the car? What if more likely the car belonged to the bank? Yes, we don't like to think about it, but it's a fact that when we 'buy' things on credit then they don't actually belong to us, not until they're paid off. 'His' car might be yet another consumer possession that the man was able to use, but hadn't quite paid for yet and therefore didn't actually own.

Fourthly, why was he in such a hurry anyway? Now, his employer might be involved at this stage. Maybe he had given the man orders about being at such-and-such a place, to meet a certain person at such a time. Me, I was ambling along because it was early afternoon. I had fulfilled my appointments for the day and was heading home. (The joys of self-employment!) So, our 'boy racer', in his brand new car, isn't a person to be envied all that much, if his time is not his own, and he is 'racing' to perform business that won't actually make him rich and is someone else's priority.

What a disappointment! I may be guessing, but I think that young man in his shiny car was pretty full of himself. He was gunning the engine and assuming that other drivers were envying him, his flash motor and his fast-paced lifestyle. He would be horrified to hear that observers were, in reality, feeling sorry for him, the stresses placed upon him and the way he was wasting his time and energy. Sound familiar? How many of us want to be admired? There's an obvious way to get that. Just go out and do something worthwhile. It might be difficult, of course. But don't expect that you can take the easy way out and simply show off your glossy possessions for the populace in order to earn their admiration automatically. Their pity, maybe, but driving fast cars recklessly, as part of a non-stop, busy lifestyle, is simply a sign of bad time-keeping. Nothing to admire there.

Mike Scantlebury is an Internet Author, with books, stories and self-help material to his credit. He currently lives in Manchester, England, home to a famous soccer team called Manchester United and many fine singers like Morrisey and Graham Nash. Check out further details at his Information site. Try http://www.mikescantlebury.info

posted by nwwhimy @ 5:16 PM 0 comments

A Gift Basket for Faraway Family Members

I know very well what it's like to have family who live far away. When I was growing up, my grandparents and aunts/uncles and cousins lived across the ocean. When I had my own kids, their grandparents and aunts/ uncles lived on the other side of the country. Now that my sister has 2 small children, the youngest of whom I've never met, this being far away has hit me again. How can we show far away family, especially when children are involved, that we want to be close and stay connected?

We could design a gift basket for family members who live far away, just to say we care. We would put into it several mementos that make the distance between us seem smaller.

If we have young children, we could send grandparents a digital picture frame. In case you're wondering what a digital picture frame is; it is a device about the size and shape of a picture frame that has a LCD screen. The screen displays multiple photos in a slide show format, and it connects to the Internet via the phone line to download new pictures and information to display. You use your computer to upload photos to a website and every day the frame uses the phone line to connect to the website and download any new photos. This is an ideal way to send digital photos of the family to grandparents who lack a computer and/or the skills to use one.

We could also include a DVD, or a video depending on the equipment we and they have, of some recent activity; perhaps our child scoring a goal at soccer or performing in a recital, or even just a family picnic or something like that. Photos are great, certainly better than nothing, but they just don't show you what the child is really like as well as video does. They don't give you as much of a feeling of being there as a movie does. We could also include a tape (either audiotape or videotape) of our child giving the recipient a special message.

Of course we could always send regular photos too. One idea to make a photo special is to cut out the shape of the children (the important part) and have it glued onto a plastic block so that it stands upright by itself. Another idea is to frame the photo in a magnetic frame that is suitable for the holiday so that it is easy to put on the fridge. I have one on my fridge right now that is a heart frame for Valentines Day. You can often get these at places like Target. We could include a picture the child has drawn or painted, or even a small thing the child has made himself if the child likes to do crafts.

Of course, most of these ideas are not just for children and grandparents, although I know that the time when you feel the farthest away from your family is when either you are a child away from grandparents, or you are away from a small child, especially a grandchild. These ideas can be applied to any faraway family members. When family members move away is when they most need to know that we're thinking of them. A gift basket would be a great way to reassure them of this.

Tracy Crowe loves to feel connected and closer to her family.

posted by nwwhimy @ 8:56 AM 0 comments