List: The Cotswolds

This weekend, we drove up to the Cotswolds to spend some time with my brother, his wife and their one-year old daughter. Also, I like lists. Here are tens things I learned this weekend:

1. When motorway driving, the primary role of the passenger is not that of navigator. No, when overtaking any motorist who insists on occupying the middle lane despite the slow lane being completely empty, it is the passenger’s duty to enthusiastically label the offending driver a “tool” and shakes one’s fist in their direction.
2. Babies are douche-bags. They invariably do a big smelly poo the moment they’ve had their nappy changed.
3. Babies are evil geniuses. They force my brother to repeatedly deal with smelly poo when all they offer by means of recompense is an adorably-cute palms-up shrug.
4. Unless you live in Bangalore or Moscow, London traffic is a bigger nightmare than you can possibly imagine. The queue to get on the M40, right outside the SEGA building, took AGES.
5. “Hedgehogs on carts” are simply spiky wheels on golf-club trolleys. Man, was I disappointed. I sat watching that saucer of milk for hours, too.
6. Rock Band 2 is ace, but in dire need of two things: Firstly, an “it’s my first time” mode, which gives a newbie a 20-second tutorial mid-song, while the rest of band get on with the business of rocking on down; Secondly, and possibly more importantly, some Starship tracks.
   
7. Every parent is under the delusion that their little bug-eyed, slack-jawed poo machine is heaven-sent. My little niece, however, genuinely is the cutest thing on the planet. And not just because she looks like some kind of Aryan wunderkind, but because she’s developed an affinity for drumming before even bothering to learn to talk. See also point 4.
   
8. No-one, no matter how upstanding a citizen, can resist being a bit of a dick to a floppy-haired toff in an open-top sports car.
   
9. Some record exec needs to snap up the guy behind the Beautiful Katamari music, write a few throw-away English lyrics and hand them to Kylie. I don’t see any possible way it could fail to produce less than ten consecutive number-1 hits.
   
10. Anything repeated often enough, no matter how inane, becomes funny if beer has been consumed. And so’s your face.