Plugs

I used to travel to Rochester NY quite a lot. On the sides of their buses they had a sign that said “Does advertising work? It just did”.

This used to annoy me a lot, as you can probably imagine, at least in part because I was never quite sure what the sign was advertising? Advertising space, on the side of a bus? This kind of thing:

So, advertising.

I don’t know. Do you find it as annoying as me? Everything seems to carry advertising these days. Look at sport. On cricket, the batsmen, umpires, bats, stumps, scoreboards, well, everything except the ball, even the grass carry the stuff. Virtually every part of a formula one car, and driver, and mechanics is covered in the stuff. If you use an app on your tablet or phone, the advertising covers the screen. I play a little Words With Friends (aka Scrabble clone). You can’t see the scores as there is a banner headline advert that covers it. After every move you are taken to an advert, usually for a fruit based game. Often you can go back and skip it, but then your device locks up for ten seconds as a punishment.

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Holiday time

A great thing about being retired is the freedom of time. As a teacher, my holidays were school holidays. If you wanted to go away, the prices were the highest and availability was limited. I know airlines are not supposed to charge more when it is school holiday time, but they do, and you can’t blame them. Supply and demand, and all that.

Having every day as a holiday means that I can pick times to go away when it is cheaper. I can pick flights at odd times. I am under no pressure to be back.

I was booking for New York City the other day, for next April. I went eighteen months ago and it is a great time to go. As soon as you venture into May, it suddenly becomes more expensive.

And what is even more annoying is that fees, taxes etc take up more than £500 of my total bill.

What is your favourite holiday destination?