September 16 - Day 129 (or 128.5) - If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me. William Shakespeare

I was happily cycling along when I heard a siren and spotted some blue lights in my mirror. What I didn’t know was that the tone of the siren was going to change just as the fire engine overtook me, nearly making me jump out of my saddle - not an easy feat when cycling.

I know one judge of getting older was when you started saying fireman or policeman look too young but I’ve decided a sign of getting older is instead when the sirens seem completely different to how they sounded when I was younger and far more alarming. Having investigated the matter, it is that the sirens have indeed changed - in 2015. All emergency vehicles were fitted with new sirens aimed at helping road users work out the direction from which they were travelling. They also have different sirens to use depending on the traffic circumstances. Now I am not sure if the siren was changed deliberately in this particular fire engine at this moment because being the only thing on the road I might not have noticed as I saw the blue lights and large red vehicle approaching behind me which direction it was coming from, or whether to break the tension after a long shift, it was just amusing watching the expression that would appear on my face.

I’m sure either way there was a result and I am now much more conscious of the need to predict a change in siren in the same way I’ve learnt to predict which drivers are going to nearly knock me off or which squirrels are going to run directly in front of my tyres.

I’ll explain the 128.5 day tomorrow!