Paddy fields

Number 2 in my new series: 'Road cones and flooding'.

My car needs something called Ad Blue. Even though Google is but a mouse-click away all I can tell you is that the engine needs a supply of this to run - or maybe it's something to do with the catalytic converter, idk - and from time to time it threatens to run out and the car makes this horrendous beep to encourage me to get it topped up. (And it's rare for me to say anything disparaging about a beep.)

The Audi garage at Blackburn used to charge me to top up the Ad Blue but after I sacked them off for trying to rip me off over a service I found out from the garage that I moved to that I get it as part of the warranty. 

Anyway, I drove over to Lindale today to get it topped up. The car has to be driven off to the service centre for this arcane procedure to take place so I had a little mooch around the showroom. Why are cars getting so big? Some of these new fellows surely wouldn't fit in a parking bay. 

The drive back to the office is along the A590, passing along the southern edge of the Lakes, with the Lyth Valley to the left and Morecambe Bay to the right. The sight of the flooded fields reminded me of the paddy fields when I was growing up in Hong Kong. Thinking about it, there can't have been that many paddy fields on the island, so maybe I mostly saw them on Lantau and in the New Territories. 

I may be too lazy to Google Ad Blue but I did just have a crisis of confidence about the term 'paddy fields' so I checked that and it turns out I haven't just made it up. I wonder where it comes from?

****
-11.4 kgs
Reading: 'The Sound Of Tomorrow' by Mark Brend