Thursday 7 March 2013

Caffeine Hit


At work today I was listening to the radio, and I heard an advert highlighting the dangers of fatigue while driving. Now, while I appreciate the cause, the advert itself is stupid. The reason for this is, in fact, due to the omission of one word: too. The inclusion of this word would mean I had no reason to find this advert so dumb. The transcript is as follows:

Over 300 people a year are killed in accidents where the driver has fallen asleep at the wheel. Before you feel tired, pull off the road into a services or other safe area. Drink some strong coffee and take a quick nap while the caffeine kicks in. Think! Don’t drive tired.

Personally, the majority of my day is ‘before I feel tired’. At which point do I stop driving and hop myself up on copious amounts of coffee, and then try to force myself to nap while said unnecessary coffee is turning my brain into a veritable firework display, rendering my concentration akin to that of a dog that has just had 50 tennis balls thrown to him? I'm sure there must, equally, be some dangers associated with driving in this state too, no?

There is also a considerable difference between being tired and feeling like you’re going to fall asleep. For example, when I get up for work at 7am I am tired, but I'm not sleepy; I don’t fall back to sleep on the bus and subject the other passengers to my snoring and drooling (to my knowledge I don’t drool or snore, but you get the idea). And what happens if you go from not being tired, not being tired, not being tired, BAM! Comatose. I've missed my chance to drink some strong coffee, and now I'm probably going to kill someone with my sleepiness. If only I’d had that strong coffee before I felt tired, then no-one would have had to die.

Before you feel too tired, pull off the road into a services. That’s all it needs. Actually, I'm not sure I'm too keen on ‘a services’ either. It should be ‘a service station’, ‘a services’ is bad English. Ho hum.

The good news in Peg's world (even though it hasn't really cheered me up because I'm an incurably miserable bitch today) was that I got confirmation of my year-end performance bonus. I'm really chuffed, it will go towards me wedding, and will cover a good few of the big things on my list!

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