Julie's got it covered.

Now that the weather is finally beginning to warm up, there are a lot more things to see and do with your time off. On the one hand, it's great, because getting out and about means a lot more things around you. By the same token, however, that also means distractions when you're driving. Our dad was notorious for this, which was troubling when the road you were on happened to be little more than a track clinging to one side of a valley...

It does tend to provide a talking point though... hehehe...

Earlier today, Julie and myself were taking a drive through the Sussex countryside. With perfect timing, though, it began to rain at precisely the moment we walked out of the house. Just a few drops at first, but when we got into the car, the spots turned to a spattering, and as we drove away along the seafront, it turned heavier.

Well, crud.
It goes without saying, of course, that the latest weather report had it as being beautifully sunny all day.

I shouldn't moan, really. As we progressed, we passed one of those open-topped tour buses; astonishingly, there were still a couple of determined tourists staring forward defiantly from beneath soggy raincoats. Pillocks. You'd never catch us doing something as asinine as that (*coughs uncomfortably...).

Something else we saw was an open-topped kit car with a Q registration plate.

For persons not in the know, the letter 'Q' is generally not included on a UK car registration plate, as it's considered to be too similar to the number zero. However, for kits, rebuilds and vehicles of unsure origins, the Government whacks a 'Q' right there for everyone to see.

Julie wasn't too worried about that, though. For her, a far more interesting (and fair, I have to admit) point was how wet people inside that car would get. After all, it wasn't even a drop-top (convertible). I pointed out that the interior was probably mostly if not entirely waterproof to some degree. Not only that, if they decided to use it for a shopping run or similar, they could always throw a tarpaulin over the back seat.

Okay. Time to shift gears.

I have a very curious mind, especially when it comes to words. I love how various languages relate to each other, how words can have different meanings but the same historical root, how the English language evolved... well, you get the idea. I'm a word nerd.

When I mentioned to Julie about the possibility of tarpaulin usage, my WN gene switched on and suddenly decided it wanted to know the historical roots of the word. Unfortunately, I wondered this aloud to my wife, someone who has, at best, a most pragmatic approach to the English language.

Well played, love. Well played.

For anyone that is interested in the etymological roots of the word 'tarpaulin', here is the Wikipedia entry.

Of course, if you happen to be anything like myself, you're going to want to look up the entry for 'palling', and thereby doom yourself to hours of chained searches on Wikipedia....