A Day In The Life...

Here's some maths for you:

Twenty One.

Do you know what that is?

No?

I'll tell you shall I?

It's the number of hours that the roadworks on the M5 will have cost me by the time they finish. And I begrudge every single one of them!

These roadworks started a few months ago and, for the duration, they have reduced the speed limit from 70mph to 50mph. Not only that, but they're going to continue until spring 2014.  Thats two years of stupid roadworks slowing me down on my way to and from work every day.  Plus every trip into town, every trip to the cinema or the shops, every trip to pick up my anti-sobriety friends.  Bah.

If you'd like that formula above simplified, read on...

So it take 3.4 minutes to travel the four miles of roadworks at the normal speed of 70mph. Because I go in to work early, there's hardly any traffic, so I always manage that speed.  Coming back, I occasionally meet some slow traffic, but not often enough to factor into my calculations (and because it's too hard for me).

At 50 mph, it takes 4.8 minutes.  That's a difference of 1.4 minutes every time I make the trip.

For work that's twice a day, 5 days a week (okay, I sometimes don't make the trip on a Freaky Friday - but if I'm going to do anything Freaky with my Friday, I invariably do, so I'm counting it), 45 weeks a year (allowing for holidays and stuff).

And it's going on for 2 years!

((((((4 miles of stupid roadworks / 50 mph) x 60 mins) - ((4 miles of no roadworks / 70 mph) x 60mins) x 2 trips a day) x 5 days a week) x 45 weeks a year) / 60 mins) x 2 years = 21 damn hours.

Damn you, roadworks.  Damn you for stealing (most of) a day of my life and damn you for making me do maths on my blog!

Here's a list of things I could be doing with that day you stole:

1. Watch Star Wars ten and a half times.

2. Bake a LOT of cakes. Like, shit loads of cakes!

3. Eat a LOT of cakes.

4. Walk to Oxford. With my feet!

5. Drive from Bristol to Aberdeen and back again via York and London.  That's assuming there aren't any roadworks en-route!

6. Perth.  I could fly to Perth.  IN AUSTRALIA!

7. Have a 2.8 minute lie-in every work day!

8. Write about 20 blog posts from scratch!

9. Build my R2-D2 Lego set four times!

Seaking of R2-D2 Lego sets.  If you check back here tomorrow, you may see a new high speed Lego building video.  You know you want it!