Thursday March 31, 2005

Three into two won't go

On my way home I leave the M3 motorway and join the Bracknell road. Shortly after doing so there is a major junction patrolled by traffic lights. As you approach the junction an extra lane appears from the right. Now in the UK no tarmac is left unused, it is almost a criminal act to do so. So folks use it. The trouble is after you get over the lights the extra lane disapears in the length of two cars. So when the lights are against you what happens is a few people use that lane. Then the lights change. The first car if they get a move on will beat the car in the middle lane to the remaining tarmac after the lights. The second won't and of course there is the customary British scramble and tustle before the two vehicles merge. This pattern repeats itself until there are no more cars in the third lane. Meanwhile all the cars behind this are left wondering why when the lights are green they are going nowhere.

I just do not understand what purpose this lane is there for, except to invite trouble on our roads.

Dan Brown - Angels and Demons

This is the last of the four Dan Brown books I have read. In some ways it is the best of all four. However it is spoiled by the ending which is a jumbled mess. How Langdon who survives this book to appear in the Da Vinci code can fall out of a helicopter, make a parachute out of a hankerchief and then use it to guide himself to the raging Tiber, fall in and then be plucked out unconscious but alive is a mystery to me. I think a better ending could have been written with more with a closer grip on reality. However there is one twist at the end which was very unexpected and clever.

Langdon as usual is dragged into a conspiracy this time involving anti-matter which a secretive scientist in CERN has managed to make. It gets stolen of course and the criminals this time are the Illuminati who are out to blitz the Vatican , and the front runners in the Papal election and anyone else who gets in their way. Langdon of course has to have a pretty sidekick who works with him in this story. She was the adopted child of the secretive scientist.

So all in all a good read, shame about the ending.