Capt SpaceBat

“Act on CO2″ said the voice from the television and so - easily-led person that I am - I went to a search engine and entered that very phrase.  Over 24,000 results matched my query, the majority of them on the first page were UK government sites giving advice on reduction of one’s carbon dioxide footprint.  This is itself is very gratifying, showing that the Government is starting to get its message across and that its search engine optimisation strategy has been pretty successful so far.

Having an enquiring mind and a keen devotee of wordplay, the permutations of the words I heard ran through my head: “Acton CO2″ was thee most obvious pun, then I thought “that’s not Acton’s postcode, it should be Acton W3.”  This, I realised was in last in part to the mass of geocoding that I have been working on recently. CO2 seemed familiar: then it struck me that it was my sister’s root postcode.  Having spouted on recently about the importance of accepting onesself and one’s seiblings and valuing the importance of having living relatives, it was with some joy that I answered the phone to my sister this evening.  Without going into details, we discussed her forthcoming joint birthday & reunion party: the whys, wheres and wherefores were mulled over and I confessed that I would be unlikely to make it - distance, alcohol, other people and my paranoia militating against such adventures into the darkest corners of southern eastern England.

My wife, having heard a rough analysis of our conversation and spotting 4 of my areas of cowardice, suggested “why don’t we go? it would be fun to meet up at a party!” - a brilliant idea as we would meet at a happy event without any pressure on any of us.  So, I hope that it will still be a surprise for her, a joy for all of us and a good starting point for future meetings and a developing relationship.  Which is nice.