Queen - Hot Space (2011 Remastered Version: 2CD) - CD1 - Track 11

I entirely adore that song, stays in my head for ages and reminds me of the movie Girl next door, which I really liked because in the end everybody was a winner.
So it’s been a little while, and you may think that I have forgotten all about you. But the truth is: I have really…
To say life has been busy is an understatement, and at this rate the first free weekend I will have will land sometime in February. I go to work to have a break, like someone who has already had children (not that I have, or am about to). And to further my ignoring of you, work is not the kind of place one blogs instead of working. I would dearly love to discuss the randomness of my 9-5 day, but I cannot. Not to discuss the work you understand, because that is stratospherically boring – but to discuss the people and the non-work occurrences, like the phantom menace who uses (and abuses) the gents located next to my office. Last time he visited he left such an impression it flooded out onto the floors, and made even the building corridors unpleasant places to be.
In other news -perhaps more pertinent news in fact – Vicky and I are apparently about to make the single most important purchase of our lives so far. No pressure then.
All this leaving the nest stuff seemed a lot easier before you had to consider room sizes, locations, neighbours, parking, future planning, decoration, gardens, area and a myriad of other things one simply must consider before buying essentially some bricks, mortar and grass.
We only just started looking, and as such have only seen a handful of houses. In that handful we have already seen some we like, and some we don’t. The issue of location is rearing its ugly head, we have no intention of looking outside our little towns couple of square miles, but how far is too far from our parents? And more importantly, how close is too close?
Of the houses we have seen two stick out as favourites, only thing is one I favour and one Vicky favours.
I prefer a house that needs work, and could do with a fairly large extension into an already paltry garden. Although the house and land it sits on are not ideal, they are workable and it is located smack bang in-between our respective parents, on a quiet road and near a park (for the future, you understand).
Vicky prefers a much more perfect house, with a large garden and drive, including a garage and space for a workshop. However this house is located further away from where we are now, walk-able but at a distance that poor weather would make unpleasant. It is also located close to a major road, and possibly about to become a cut-through for a large new housing estate going up further along the road.
Both of us see the benefits in the other house, neither of us are dead set on the houses we favour. These are early days, and we haven’t seen that many houses yet, but it’s a worrying indication of how hard this decision is going to be.
Of course, a by-product of this house-buying thing is that Vicky is quite insistent that we cut down spending on vehicular hobbies. I personally think she could do with a new car, something sporty and efficient that’s easy to manoeuvre in town and small enough to park easily whilst still being practical and having four functioning doors. So hot hatches basically. I am aware that this limits the options to mostly silly, wheelspinny front-wheel-drive-ness but there are some oddball other options – such as a BMW 1 Series like mums, or an Audi hatch with Quattro. Unfortunately they are both expensive, where as new or used the current model Skoda Fabia VRS is not. It comes as standard with a fuel-sipping 1.4l Turbocharged petrol engine and a clever automatic gearbox (although I would rather a manual). I have yet to convince Vicky that a purchase of any car is viable, let alone a brand and model she actively dislikes (but they have changed now- and it does come with electric windows). Any help on the subject is most welcome; any help that does not fall upon deaf ears would be actively encouraged.

Sanctimonious

The other day -quite out of the blue- Vicky turned to me and suggested we exercise at least twice a week. The reasons for this momentous decision were unclear, either she couldn’t fit into something she owns or she is suggesting I am too fat. Clearly it could not possibly be the latter as I am in the peak of physical fitness…

Anyway I suggested that she use Daisy’s bike and we go out riding, she upped the ante by insisting this must be done twice a week. There were -as I tried immediately to point out- some considerable flaws in her plan. Firstly Daisy’s bike is of the ‘antique’ variety, which means it’s made of pig iron and presumably (given its weight) then filled with molten lead. In addition to this setback it had no gears (so we thought), no brakes, two flat tires, mudguards whose only apparent job was to rub on the flat tires and prevent them moving. Finally and rather fantastically it was also equipped [burdened] with a set of dynamo-powered front and rear lights (which didn’t work).

Never the less, she insisted if I put right some of the reparable problems with the bike she would ride it and not complain.

I guess I should make clear at this point that I actually own a bicycle, which I bought from Bob for the princely sum of £50 and that works fine – admittedly I can’t really touch the floor when sat on the saddle, and any attempt to put both feet on the floor could only result in pain even when not perched on the saddle. It was purchased because I stupidly said if only I had a bike I would ride in and out of work, unfortunately for me Bob overheard; I gained a bike and had to think of a new excuse.

As I figured this to be a mere whim -a phase that would soon wither and die- I got to work and straightened or repaired all the problems with Daisy’s bike, bar its incredible weight and lack of gears, because at the time I didn’t think it had any.

On our first outing on a weekday afternoon we happened to pass Chris Douglas’s house, and I was relieved to see he was outside and provided a perfect excuse to stop and chat for a while. He, being an enthusiastic outdoors-ist was ecstatic to see that we were using our bicycles and immediately insisted we should not be distracted by him and hopped on his bike to join us. Although this development was deeply displeasing to me, it did mean I had someone to talk to whilst waiting for Vicky at the top of any and all hills. It would seem that largely due to the weight and lack of gearing Daisy’s bike became a bit of a liability on anything other than a downhill slope, and resulted in plenty of breaks and time for me and Chris to discuss the bike in question and discover that it had in fact got a gearbox. Gearbox you say? Don’t I mean ‘gears’? No. I do not. It has what can only be described as a car-type three speed gearbox, honestly I looked it up and it could just as easily been a cross section of Doc Browns Flux capacitor. During the considerable amount of time Chris and I had to discuss this we both agreed that neither of us could be bothered to fix it.

As our first ride went very well indeed, Chris insisted we go out the next day for a much longer ride with him, Callum and Ella. In addition Bob also happened to call and joined us en-route, dressed like a professional bicyclist much to my amusement. It was on this day that I noticed that almost everyone else’s bike had hydraulic disk brakes front and rear, unlike my primitive pad-to-wheel type. Feeling a little outdone I did formally complain to Bob about the cheap shit bike he had sold me but he pretended not to hear me. This I find impossible, because he has ears that make gliders blush.

All this enthusiastic bike riding has left Vicky with a single conclusion – she needed to replace her (Daisy’s) old jalopy of a bike. So, bright and early on a Saturday she spoiled my lie-in and demanded we visit Halfords –enabling her to indulge herself and get a bike with working gears and brakes. This turned out to be considerably more palaver than first promised. On the way there a clearly blind chap in a BMW decided that despite my indicator declaring my intentions he would pull out directly in front of me on a roundabout, then stop in clear panic when I jammed the horn on and deployed anchors whilst swerving around the back of him, which I couldn’t do because he had stopped partially pulled out. Quite how he missed the 3 tonne Lolvo with its headlights on is beyond me but then again he didn’t look all that bright and appeared to be going to Popley which goes some way to explaining things.

Once safely at Halfords Vicky wasted very little time selecting a bike with the correct colour scheme (merely a few hours). Then came the fun of purchasing a bike, not something I fully appreciated as mine arrived at my own doorstep in the back of Bob’s car and I gave him cash. Vicky had chosen Hell-frauds because she had a £60 voucher, which the nice staff at Hell-frauds tried to comprehend for a half hour in the sweltering heat before Vicky lost patience and paid outright for the bike.

Stress over we assured them that if they could build a bike so could I and launched a suspiciously un-bike-looking large box into the Lolvo. An uneventful drive home saw the box in the hall and opened… It was certainly full of stuff, but no discernable bike as such. They clearly weren’t kidding, I actually had to build a bike. Using the utterly inferior tools provided in the box and instructions written so poorly that they would have made the Chinese titter I was able to assemble said bike with almost no violence and only four trips to A&E.

So with Vicky’s bike (Badly) assembled and most of the blood mopped up we were ready to set off, but there was a 4-year-old fly in the ointment… Harrison was with Chris and had no bike; even if he did he wouldn’t be able to keep up. So we decided to make a tow along trailer for Harrison to sit in, as a base we used a four wheel cart I use to move extremely heavy items around in the garage and garden. We very creatively used a long curved tube (formerly a trampoline) to connect the trailer to Chris’s bike over the rear wheel, with a pivot at the bike end and a steerable front axle. We put sides on the cart and lined it with old sofa cushions, then put an old car seat base and back in for Harrison to sit on comfortably. He was ecstatic, and eager to get going. Here is a photo of our efforts;

You may notice that Chris looks slightly flustered, well the net result of our bombproof construction is weight – and a lot of it. The cart was made to carry 500+Kgs, and consists of a sturdy steel frame sat on wide air filled tires. With the not inconsiderable weight of the cushions and child as well it led to a rather… sedate pace set by Chris, except on downhill slopes where the weight pushed beyond the capacity of Chris’s fancy hydraulic disk brakes and made the cart fishtail dramatically. Harrison of course, loved every second – Chris less so.

In other news I have been walking home from work every day (except Fridays), and I figured I would return my bike helmet to work so I could use the free ‘site bikes’ provided by my company to get around their property. This seemed like an excellent idea, up until I got to work…

You see, there are turnstiles all over the place, and not the wimpy three bar type that people hop over when catching the tube in London – the integrated-in-a-fence-or-wall type which cannot be entered or exited without being completely inside each section on your own (there is no way two people could fit in one) more like a no-return revolving door I guess. To add complexity when entering or exiting a card must be swiped and a pin number entered. In my infinite wisdom I had attached my helmet to the back of my backpack, which I neglected to remove when entering the turnstile. What happened next was broadly as follows, me and backpack in one section, helmet in another. This was made slightly more embarrassing by the permanently present staff member overseeing the doors, the meeting taking place on sofas just opposite the turnstiles and the fact I didn’t realise until trying to walk away from the turnstile.

(Title): Sanctimonious;
pious, smug, hypocritical, too good to be true, self-righteous, self-satisfied, goody-goody (informal) , holier-than-thou.
Example: He writes smug, sanctimonious rubbish.

(Clipped excerpt from the Collins Thesaurus)

It’s only crazy if you answer too...

A few e-mail trails I have been sending to people to stave away (Or perhaps given some of the content magnify) insanity whilst sat at a desk all day. No more internet trawling, no stories about the random things that happen at work…L Because I have spared you so little time of late I figured these may make you titter (fantastic word that, titter) and offset your undoubted feeling of abandonment. Of course, the e-mail addresses are fictitious so as to protect the privacy of my unknowing friends and family, and the occasional detail may be omitted for the same reason but as the only people likely to be reading this are the same people involved in making it it’s probably of little consequence.

Unlucky Day.com

From: My Cousin [mailto:******@hotmail.com]
To: Me@supersecretsquirrelcompany.co.uk
Subject: EXTERNAL: FW: EXTERNAL: RE: .

 Uh oh, Today your sister had an appointment with the Doctor, on arriving home she was somewhat upset to find her car missing, even more upset at seeing 3 other cars that you could have used., but our saga does not end there. Finding that she could not reach the pedals on your bike, she had to walk to the Doctors. It was during this epic journey that the heavens decided to open up with a downpour more common in the rainforests of Brazil, the individual raindrops were the size of a two pence piece, suffice to say she got drenched, soaked and then had to run the gauntlet at the surgery of patients helpfully pointing out that it was raining outside.

Having called her to see what she was planning for dinner, I discovered that there is a doubt as to your parentage, but was quite relieved to hear that you were going to provide dinner tonight, as you sister is now ensconced on my sofa with no intention of moving for at least 15 hours.  I look forward to see what you are planning for dinner.

From: Me@supersecretsquirrelcompany.co.uk
To: ******@hotmail.com
Subject: RE: EXTERNAL: FW: EXTERNAL: RE: .

 That is deeply unfortunate for her. Perhaps if she gave me some warning then I could know not to take her motor vehicle, but as I had no prior knowledge of her arrival and subsequent requirement for said motor vehicle I could not have known. I do of course have a work number, and a work e-mail and I could even have considered it an ‘emergency’ and collected her to go to the doctors, on the proviso that she could pick me up in the afternoon when I finish.

Alas perhaps it is her parentage that should be in question, but to smooth her undoubtedly ruffled feathers I can provide for dinner – as long as dinner is chips and other things found in your freezer and mine, cooked in your oven.

Me

Should be Company Director

Direct: 999

Super Secret Squirrel Company, Everywhere-ville, SS4 1SC

I didn’t know replies had to make sense.co.uk

-----Original Message-----

From: *******.********@hiscompanyemail.com

To:   Me@supersecretsquirrelcompany.co.uk

Subject: EXTERNAL: Out of Office AutoReply: Weekend

 

I will be in a meeting all day with no access to emails , for urgent project assistance please contact Fakefirstname Eccleston (Head of [Stuff]) on [don’t be silly I’m not giving you his bosses contact details.co.uk].

-----Original Message-----

From: Me@supersecretsquirrelcompany.co.uk

To: *******.********@hiscompanyemail.com

Subject: RE: Weekend

How come your boss has a different e-mail address to you? You sure it's correct? Should I e-mail him and ask if you have incorrectly put your company e-mail address on your out of office?

For that matter, why have you got an out of office? We all know your reading your phone in this meeting like everyone else; in fact- I hope you remembered to put it on silent... Oops!

 

Is your boss any relationship to Bernie? If he is can I have a go in an F1 car? I fancy myself as an international rockstar-playboy-racer type. Alternatively I would be happy with a mere 10% of Bernie's wealth. Perhaps I can ask him whilst I let him know about you putting his e-mail address on incorrectly.

Oh scratch that, maybe the spelling problem is caused by your boss - he has spelt Ecclestone incorrectly hasn't he? Missed the 'e' off and everything, just like he missed the end of his own e-mail address on your out of office. He seems a little incompetent. Perhaps you should be his boss. Then again, you can be a bit special too. All this complication is making my head hurt. I am going to lie down whilst the two of you grease up and wrestle for the Bronze in the Special Olympics.

Chow,

Me

Should be Company Director

Direct: 999

Super Secret Squirrel Company, Everywhere-ville, SS4 1SC

   

-----Original Message-----

From: *******.********@hiscompanyemail.com

To:   Me@supersecretsquirrelcompany.co.uk

Subject: EXTERNAL: RE: Weekend

See in red;

How come your boss has a different e-mail address to you? You sure it's correct? ##########Im special ##########Should I e-mail him and ask if you have incorrectly put your company e-mail address on your out of office?#######no########

For that matter, why have you got an out of office? ##########in meetings and have very pressing clients############We all know your reading your phone in this meeting like everyone else; in fact- I hope you remembered to put it on silent... Oops! ###########on the i-pad with feet up at home############

Is your boss any relationship to Bernie? #####no, but worth as much#########If he is can I have a go in an F1 car? #####no######I fancy myself as an international rockstar-playboy-racer type. Alternatively I would be happy with a mere 10% of Bernie's wealth. #########you already have that in inheritance########## Perhaps I can ask him whilst I let him know about you putting his e-mail address on incorrectly. 

Oh scratch that, maybe the spelling problem is caused by your boss - he has spelt Ecclestone incorrectly hasn't he?##########no########## Missed the 'e' off and everything, just like he missed the end of his own e-mail address on your out of office. He seems a little incompetent. Perhaps you should be his boss. Then again, you can be a bit special too. All this complication is making my head hurt. I am going to lie down whilst the two of you grease up and wrestle for the Bronze in the Special Olympics.

Regards

My Friend

Jumped-up job title with silly letters after it

M:  His number

  

The company he works for Ltd

Their address

http://www.website.co.uk

"A really silly and cheesy company motto written inexplicably in quotes"

  

-----Original Message-----

From: Me@supersecretsquirrelcompany.co.uk

To: *******.********@hiscompanyemail.com

Subject: RE: Weekend

I don't get colour in your replies, for some unknown reason. Because of this I reject your reality and substitute my own. Because of this I am no longer driving to Newquay, I shall take the yacht and meet you at the campsite by helicopter - where my loveable unicorn (Derek) will have prepared a fine feast for the little people.

Me

Should be Company Director

Direct: 999

Super Secret Squirrel Company, Everywhere-ville, SS4 1SC

-----Original Message-----

From: *******.********@hiscompanyemail.com

To:   Me@supersecretsquirrelcompany.co.uk

Subject: EXTERNAL: RE: Weekend

You been eating mercury? Mad as a hatter!!

Regards

My Friend

Jumped-up job title with silly letters after it

M:  His number

  

The company he works for Ltd

Their address

http://www.website.co.uk

"A really silly and cheesy company motto written inexplicably in quotes"

-----Original Message-----

From: Me@supersecretsquirrelcompany.co.uk

To: *******.********@hiscompanyemail.com    

Subject: RE: Weekend

I do wear hats occasionally, but as I often find in the summer that they make my head too warm I usually go without. Sometimes in the winter to prevent my head getting too cold I wear hats though, I have two favourites - the one that’s made of fur and has flaps for my ears and the chicken-hat beanie. Both have their merits, obviously the fur hat is warmer and I can also pretend I am a Russian which is nice, except I often find I cannot do that funny squatting-leg-dance that all Russians do and this makes me sad. Sometimes sad enough to take the fur hat off and throw it on the floor. I tried to do the Russian dance on it in disgust once but it didn't work and made me sadder in fact.

When I am sad about the Russian dance I find it better to wear the chicken hat. Not because I want to pretend to be a chicken of course - that would be silly. But it has longer flaps and I can pull them up and war the hat like that kid on the band that was popular briefly after x-talented-new-Zealand or something. But because my hat looks like a chicken it’s a bit better than his. His looks like a tea cosy and not at all like a chicken. 

 

I haven’t eaten any mercurys (Mercuries?) lately; in fact I have never eaten any kind of American-market large-to-mid size vehicles to the best of my memory at all. On long journeys I used to sit in the back of my parents Mercedes and sometimes when very bored I chewed the leathery bit that covers the top of the door. It tasted really bad but left funny impressions below the window. I often hoped that people would see those marks and have a discussion about what made the marks, they would probably wind up agreeing that it must be a pet of some kind (likely a dog) leaving the marks after a long conversation and at that point I could jump out and tell them it was me with a grand flourish.

Speaking of mad I am angry with Derek, he has stolen my left sock and used it to spank the President of Uganda. He and I are both quite upset about it and I would rather you didn’t bring up Derek again.

Me

Should be Company Director

Direct: 999

Super Secret Squirrel Company, Everywhere-ville, SS4 1SC

  

Getting off topic.co.ca

From: *******.********@hiscompanyemail.com

To: Me@supersecretsquirrelcompany.co.uk; Loads of his family and friends
Subject: EXTERNAL: Newquay

What are the plans for leaving?

7am M3/J7 Motorway Bridge??

10-4

Regards

My Friend

Jumped-up job title with silly letters after it

M:  His number

The company he works for Ltd

Their address

http://www.website.co.uk

"A really silly and cheesy company motto written inexplicably in quotes" 

 

From: Me@supersecretsquirrelcompany.co.uk

To: *******.********@hiscompanyemail.com; Loads of his family and friends
Subject: RE: Newquay

7a-what-now?

Perhaps you are confused, and actually mean to say 12pm, otherwise known to army types as 12:00 on that silly 24 hour time system they have. Even though it’s not really 24 hours, its 23 hours and 59 minutes which if you think about it makes no sense at all. If I told a silly-army-type to go somewhere at 24:00 hours they would look at me funny and say ‘do you mean 00:00 hours?’ Then I would point out that their system is silly and they would probably get upset. They may not even go to the specified place at all in fact. How do you say ’00:00’ out loud anyway?

Me

Should be Company Director

Direct: 999

Super Secret Squirrel Company, Everywhere-ville, SS4 1SC

 

From: *******.********@hiscompanyemail.com
To: Me@supersecretsquirrelcompany.co.uk; Loads of his family and friends
Subject: RE: Newquay

Obviously the short time at [The Super Secret Squirrel Company] has institutionalised you already and your not thinking straight.

I’m happy to leave at 7am (07:00 for Dave) on the M3/J7 motorway bridge so anyone that wants to convoy down then see you there!! If not then make our own way down and meet at site!!  Simples!!

How’s that for being blue, iv actually made a decision on my own!!

Regards

My Friend

Jumped-up job title with silly letters after it

M:  His number

The company he works for Ltd

Their address

http://www.website.co.uk

"A really silly and cheesy company motto written inexplicably in quotes"

  

From: His.Sister@hercompanyemail.com
To: Me@supersecretsquirrelcompany.co.uk; *******.********@hiscompanyemail.com; Loads of his family and friends
Subject: RE: Newquay

Well done you - I am very proud of my baby brother...!

Gold star, top in class...;-))

With best regards,
His Sisters Name
A long and complicated job title that sounds important

Mobile: Her number

From: Me@supersecretsquirrelcompany.co.uk

To: *******.********@hiscompanyemail.com; His.Sister@hercompanyemail.com; Loads of his family and friends
Subject: RE: Newquay

I don’t know what time we are leaving, and because of this fact I almost certainly don’t deserve a gold star or to go to the top of the class. I did once go to the top of the class though, it was a long time ago but I remember distinctly going there because I wrote on the blackboard whilst stood there. The whole episode resulted in a brief suspension, and I don’t think my brief foray into top-of-the-class-isum went very well at all.

Although whilst suspended I spent a lot of time watching daytime TV, which at the time was a greatly entertaining mixture of cartoons and, uh, actually it was only cartoons. But they were very good ones, like Hannah-Barbara’s Wacky Races. I would like to think it was this day that helped form my elder years, I often think it would be really cool to have a car from the wacky races – except that caveman one because they had to run all the time.

I like the one from the Addams family types because they had a dragon. I would really like a dragon because then I could use it for many different tasks. It would breathe fire and fly and I would call him Jimmy-the-Dragon. Eventually I would tire of calling him Jimmy-the-Dragon because it’s quite long and he may have stopped listening to me halfway through his name. I would then shorten his name to Jimmy, and a while later to simply Jim. I could fly places on Jim and he would set fire to things for me.

Me

Should be Company Director

Direct: 999

Super Secret Squirrel Company, Everywhere-ville, SS4 1SC

And that’s all I got, these people are surprisingly difficult to provoke into longer conversations, but I will keep trying…

Little bit of good, little bit of bad

As always, its been a while since my last update - in fact I am only making time for this update because I am on holiday and it seemed odd to jump straight in...
So where do I start? I have good excuses for my disappearance - as a brief overview I had a load of temp jobs - a couple of different jobs a week for a bit, then I started a new permanent role I have been waiting 7 months for, but just before that I figured it would be clever to roll my Jeep into a river, we dog and house sat for Vicky's parents for a month and Davey has come to visit. That's about the long and short of it... Do I need to elaborate further?

I guess so then.

In case your wondering by the way the crossbow worked awesomely - and very few people died or got wounded.

So I worked for a short while for Kuhne-Nagel driving a low level forklift into anything less substantial than it but as I didn't want to work nights they decided they didn't need me anymore. Handily though the couple of weeks it took for them to decide that allowed me to go back to work for the rental company again nice easy work. I also got sent to a company called Qualcomm to drive engineers around. Strange job - basically two people (in my case Germans) sit in the back of a mildly modified people carrier (seats removed and tables installed) surrounded by cables, computers or funny aerial things.
They wanted me to simply drive around on the first day - not go anywhere in particular but avoid countryside... A lot harder than it sounds. At one point we ended up in London, and the Germans had a long conversation about how lovely London's old buildings were and how their cities were all ugly and modern... Sorry chaps but you started it... Somewhere in Farnborough we came across a roundabout, on this roundabout ze Germans asked quite firmly if I could simply stop, just sit on the roundabout with my hazards on so they could assess the readings they got in a specific place... They were quite put out when I refused, evidently stopping on a roundabout is fine in Germany provided you switch on your hazards.

Whilst all these jobs were going on - in fact whilst all of this was going on we were also dog and house sitting for Vicky's parents as they had gone on a month holiday without taking us with them - how inconsiderate! They had actually gone with Dave on a tour of the East cost of America, including some of the South coast and a quick detour into Canada via Niagara falls.
Whilst they had the time of their lives we held the fort at home with Jed, who had the time of his ever spoiled life wandering between his home and ours. In fact he only spent time at home when we were sleeping or at work, the rest of the time he enjoyed himself at our house where Daisy, Davin and Mum (all bar Daisy claim to be committed dog haterists) spoiled him rotten constantly. Daisy is planning to steal him and Mum showed him off to all her visiting friends, who made a great fuss of him. He did however refuse completely to walk, insisting on being carried the majority of the way to our house even though its less than half a mile. I got lots of bad bad looks for carrying him.

Anyhow after only a few weeks of chopping and changing jobs I got a call for a permanent job, almost immediate start date and matching my old salary. Its nothing glamorous (its actually doing the filing) but its easy responsibility-free work which provided I don't cock up should be redundancy proof.

To celebrate god decided to open the heavens - with a biblical deluge. Feeling the call of fun I went out in the heep to go flood hunting with Chris Douglas and Jed.

This, it turns out was a monumentally stupid idea.

First my exhaust was ripped off and had to be refitted on the roadside (and it was horrible and wet under there). Having fixed the exhaust we decided to do 'one last' flooded road... It turned out something like this:

 

Recovery took 4 hours (on a Monday night starting at 11pm), Three vehicles, at least 10 committed friends and looked something like this:

 

The end result was this:

 

It has been taken apart, dried and reassembled - the rear windows, remote central locking, boot lock, hand throttle and roof rack all no longer work or no longer exist. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

And finally, Cousin Davey is here to stay! So to celebrate we are all leaving to go to France, with Davey and his partner Alisa too. Perhaps more on that in a separate thing.

Lifting, shifting, driving, snowplows, Devon and... A crossbow?

I know, I know, I have been receiving all your complaints... So I have been busy, not had a lot of time to randomly type crap for you people to waste an afternoon reading.

I am sure your hoping for a scintillating review of my ecstatically exciting escapades over the last few weeks but I have bad news - its all pretty damn boring.

Firstly I had to stop working at the car and van rental place for political reasons - the agency employing me and the manager of the rental place fell our over staffing problems (not me) and left me without a job. Handily the rental manager told his new appointed agency (actually his old one, its damned complicated) to employ me so I could continue working for him. They did employ me, but only to find the previous agency had a legal hold on me working for the rental company with any other agency. Due to the good recommendation (see I do work hard) from the rental company guy though I was given an alternative job for a few days whilst they worked out how to employ me at the original place. Confused yet? Well I bloody well am.

Unfortunately for me the alternative work they had for me involved rather a lot more work than a born-to-slack work-shy bum like me is used to. They sent me to a place called Denes Countrywide stores, and told me I would be driving a van delivering store supplies. Denes it turns out would be quite a departure from my norm - I should have guessed when the address they gave me led to literally the square root of nowhere, deep in central Hampshire where people have two heads and eat their young.

I would as promised be driving a van, but also loading and unloading said van, and not to stores either - Denes caters mostly to the equine market, so I would be delivering to stables, studs, and polo yards. Delivering what you ask? Delivering upwards of 60 bags of varied feed or bedding weighing 20-30kgs each. Toss. Perhaps for you -the committed sofa expert- this sounds easy, or maybe your some kind of muscle-Mary sociopath who actively enjoys torturous labour for pennies an hour but for me that's a damned lot - especially when each run usually has 3-7 drop offs and there are time for three runs a day. Talking to one of the other drivers revealed that he reckoned he lifted upwards of nine tonnes a day by the time everything had got off and on his van. Nine tonnes??? I get tired when lifting my f**king fork, let alone one percent of that!

What's that you say? But I get a break driving in between drop offs? Well I enjoy a good drive as much as the next person but how about if you have an over-capacity Mercedes Sprinter LWB high-top van on roads no wider than an iPhone, with occasional lack of tarmac and 25%+ gradients? I know, it just wouldn't be quite right unless the van they gave you also had no discernible handbrake, smelled like a toilet and hadn't been cleaned since the 1800s (deeply impressive, given it was a 2009 van). Also every now and again the ESP and other assorted warning lights all flashed up on the dash, and something under the front sounded completely loose and or broken at every bump in the road.
After just three days I was broken, mind, body and soul - actually stuff the rest of it my spine felt like it had been run over by a tank then put in a blender.
Still its not all bad, the people I worked with were brilliant, they all had the correct amount of appendages and spoke English, albeit with a bit of a farm twang. Another unexpected benefit was the eye candy - stables generally only hire based on looks and dress size it seems, especially the posh ones.

In amongst this chaotic slave labour I also may have accidentally acquired a snowplough with Stevey... Yes a snowplough, attached to a Jeep Grand Cherokee we picked up for parts... Seemed a good idea at the time...



Apologies for the terrible pic, that's the best I got with the plow fitted. It was however an incredible bodge upon bodge, entirely homemade to a standard that made even I -a seasoned bodger of crappy things- could not believe!
Made using the worst welding since Stonehenge was built, out of a couple of old car ramps, some sheet metal, a small electric winch, bull bars off an evidently very rusty Landy Discovery and a couple of trailer wheels. It is now taken apart, we never got to use the plow side of things as the previous owner had removed it and placed it in the boot (how I don't know - it weighed so much I had to take it out in pieces). Anyway the whole chapter is closed, we have already stripped it and weighed it in.

So what else has happened? Well I write this latest missive from a cottage on a hillside in deepest rural Devon, where I am residing on a break with Vicky, her mother and her grandparents. Just a week long break so we will be heading home tomorrow, we were lucky with the weather for the most part with high winds but very little rain. Also lucky as fewer of the locals than expected have been strange backwards mutations.
Wilst on our travels of wildest Devonshire we even came across a little byway and a ford, both of which I have been allowed to venture down in the big lolvo, much to my amusement; Another side benefit of this little getaway has been a lot of shopping - normally something I loathe but here in Devonshire clothes shopping is also mixed with a fair bit of random tool and outdoorsy items... Including a crossbow!!!



I can only imagine the fun that will ensue from using this £15 80lb crossbow... According to the guy at the weapons collection point (Apparently they won't just let you walk out with these things) it will go through a bale of hay! :):):) Happy days!
I was all set to try it out here before getting home -you know, get my monies worth and such- but Vicky took it away and said I am banned until I get home. Boo :(.

I will let you know how it goes... or if i don't then you'll know why.

Nought to busy in no time at all

So its been a while, but unusually its not because I have had nothing to say - its because so much is going on so quickly it has taken me quite by surprise!

I am in fact writing this sentence sat in the back of a Mercedes Sprinter crew cab pickup, hurtling (insane driver) down the A34. So its not because I have forgotten about you, but where do I start?

Last weekend (Easter weekend) I and some friends went to a four day offroading weekend near Wales. Some things are bent, some broken. But the big news is that since last Monday I have been working, actual paid work even! So I will start with the work;

Nothing glamorous, I have been doing temporary work with a vehicle hire company collecting, dropping off anything on four wheels - from Fiestas to 3.5 ton luton body vans. Many things have happened during the short course of my employment so far. For example yesterday I had to drop a new van off to a customer and collect their broken van. When I arrived I found the broken van in 'limp home' mode meaning it could do no more than 2500rpm and it had no power at all. On hills I was reduced to 10mph, and I owe a big apology to the rush hour traffic between Andover and Reading... Sorry about that chaps!

Today I had an early start (7am an hour away from home) and I was to be the 'runner' for four drivers dropping vans off in Colchester, Essex - a few hours drive from the depot. A runner is someone who follows the delivery drivers and takes them home afterwards. Today's drivers were Tom (normal, and my age but drives like a rocket is up his arse), Neil (hereby named Wurzel after the old tv icon he resembles), Farai (Some uncommunicative and hideously scarred little colored chap from South Africa) and Alan (A round and aging windbag who is as politically correct as a Gollywog and an utterly unhinged driver).
Personally I prefer Tom and Alan, Tom is actually normal and it is possible to have conversations with him. Alan is very funny and seems to have first hand experience of every burger van or greasy spoon in southern England. Wurzel talks only occasionally and when he does he strikes you as someone who doesn't interact socially a lot and Farai barely utters a word and its hard to know where to look as his whole face is a bit of a mess. Also when he does talk its uninteligible anyway. He often laughs after saying something uninteligible, I can only assume he is trying to tell jokes so I laugh with him - for all I know he could be insulting my parentage. Speaking of Farai actually we have been trying to work out why he looks like he does, I think he got tortured and fled South Africa - hence his appearance and inclination towards not offering any information about himself. Tom thinks he caught and recovered from (we hope) some exotic desease and feels he is here to take advantage of our relaxed government and claim benefits. Alan believes it is a genetic mutation and that he is also here to claim benefits for being black in the UK. We would bet money on it but as we are all working at this place because we have no money it seemed like the wrong thing to do. See I could have claimed its because we are all too moral to bet on another mans misfortune but frankly that would be a lie.

In addition to the driving work though things have been moving apace (or so it seems) on alternate and even permenant employment. just after starting my current job I got a call from a very eager employment agent who feels I would be a perfect fit for a two month role almost on my doorstep doing sales and general admin, customer support and some warehouse work. It is more per hour than the driving job, stable 09:00-17:30 hours and close enough to walk in - not that I will.The agent said I should be a shoe in for the job as I am the only applicant he is aware of that they are considering. So provided I don't fuck the interview up I could even be turning a job down (sadly the driving job which I am greatly enjoying).
To top it all off I am now only awaiting a security clearance and medical to get a start date for work at an MOD facility as permenant staff, the medical is booked for the 2nd of May and the initial security clearance interview on the 1st of May. Once both have been passed (Still an undisclosed amount of time) then I am ready to start when they are... Hurrah!

Behind the doors approaching lies the rest of my life.... Or something.

It’s been a while, and its awful quiet in here...

 

Well it’s been a while... things here have been progressing at quite a pace... Ha had you all going, nothing moves fast here, nothing but the damned tortoise anyway.

Lets see, well mum finally decided to trade the Lexus in for a newer and smaller vehicle. Gotta move with the times I suppose, with petrol prices in the UK set for another rise (Predicted to be over 1.40 per litre for petrol and 1.50 per litre for diesel soon) the Lexus was becoming more and more untenable to run, even though at 24mpg average it was quite good for a 4.3l V8 saloon. It was also often hamstrung by sheer size, parking bays here are shrinking every time the lines are redone and nowadays after fighting to get it into a space we often found the doors not to have enough room to open without hitting the car next door. The final nail in the coffin however was the fact that it was unable to live up to Lexus’s two core beliefs.

Firstly the service we have experienced from our local Lexus dealer (there is only one within reasonable range of us) has been passable, but never anything approaching good. They have never seemed interested in our business even when we were willing to talk new cars with them. On a few rare occasions they have been rude, and only apologetic and efficient when they were caught out by Lexus UK who happened to call us just after a particularly rude service manager had been unreasonably rude to mum. Unfortunately for him, and the poor Lexus UK rep on the other end of the phone mum let Lexus UK have both barrels and informed Lexus she didn’t want their useless car nor to buy a new one. Reading Lexus called back a couple of days later, eager to put the car they had broken whilst servicing it right.

Secondly the legendary reliability often mentioned by Japanese manufacturers (Toyota and Lexus in particular) does not seem to apply if the vehicle in question is an LS430 from 2004. Recently the engine light had been coming on, according to the diagnostic computer (I happen to have one handily) one or more of the four lambda probes had failed. This caused several warning triangles to appear on the dash, and disconnected the traction control and stability programs making it difficult to put out at wet and greasy junctions. Coupled to this the car has not been driving correctly for months, it has been back and forth between Lexus Reading and various tire fitters with alignment devices but no one could pinpoint the problem. Eventually Lexus and the tire people blamed each other, and then the Pirelli tires recently fitted for being the culprit. As these tires (245/45-18 all round) were not cheap, and the Bridgestone’s they suggested would be several hundred each we decided to simply ignore the problem. One day I happened to be in a local garage in the car with a friend discussing the cars problems and he insisted I bring it in and put it on a ramp so he could look at it. In minutes based on my description of the way it drove and simply by pushing each corner of the car in turn he found that one of the rear shocks had developed a leak and was the sole cause of the poor driving. We sent it back to Lexus who were pleased to say they would fix the lambda probe and shock for a mere £3000. Along with the broken electrically adjustable steering column (Only up and down, no in and out), schizophrenic parking sensors and non-functioning automatic wipers this all transpired to ruin our faith in the car. We had hoped it would keep going virtually until the end of time, mechanically at least.

So the plus side of all of this I suppose was that we could go car shopping. Now it’s no secret that I really, truly love car shopping – particularly for new metal. It wasn’t quite so simple as just pitching up and agreeing this car or that car would do however, we had several different criteria to meet – each one on its own would be easy enough to match but all of them in a single car? We should have known it just couldn’t be done. Below are the criteria required to match my mother’s next chariot of choice;

1.       Badge – She still won’t admit it, but my mother is a terrible badge snob.

2.       Price – Like anyone else, we had a budget we didn’t want to go over.

3.       Warranty – Because we would be going for a new or nearly new car the warranty would be important, so much so that when it expires the car may be sold on for a new one.

4.       Performance – Some say that on certain days of the week my mother dons a white suit and helmet and wonders off in the direction of Dunsfold Aerodrome, Shortly afterwards the sound of wailing engines and tortured tires wafts back across the tranquil British countryside. All we know is - she could actually be the Stig. The Lexus could do the 0-62mph (0-100kmh) sprint in 6.6 seconds and go on to comfortably cruise way over three figures. It was not uncommon for her to use this performance.

5.       Size – It’s time to downsize, mum wanted a Hatchback car with five doors that would be easy to park and still have space to get out. It also had to be able to fit three generously sized passengers in addition to mum and at the same four large and heavy sewing machines with four persons quilting supplies for a night or weekend.

6.       Refinement – The problem here is that matching the Lexus refinement without ending up with another car as heavy and large as the Lexus itself would be impossible, best hope is that the current crop of hatches has passable refinement.

7.       Fuel economy and running costs – Perhaps not as high a priority for mum as others shopping in this market - we were only looking for an improvement on 24mpg, and £300-£500 per annum to tax.

8.       Equipment – The Lexus was extremely well specified, including satellite navigation and a reverse parking camera amongst other gadgets and gizmos. Again it would be difficult to match the full spec in the hatchback market, and all the more improbable given the budget.

9.       Fuel – Sorry diesel lovers, but you all drive tractors. I own a diesel myself, and it has benefits but frankly every time I start it I always get that feeling that I am a farmer, and I could have had a V8 running on the correct fuel in place of my noisy tractor engine. It had to be a petrol – even if diesels in this market were refined enough (Which none of them are) mum only does ~6000 miles a year, diesels need higher mileages to make sense and can prove unreliable with so few miles.

So, already the list was shortened. The obvious economy brands where mums money would have travelled so much further were ruled out due to their badges not having the ‘right stuff’. Other brands were out of the running as they did not field a suitably small vehicle, they only offered engine or drive train combinations which were undesirable (underpowered or diesel) or their offering was simply out of her budget.

I had a shortlist of the following which we went to see or test drive;

·         Volkswagen Golf 1.4TSI Match – The class default choice, offering fairly reasonable levels of kit and reasonable performance.

·         Toyota Auris Hybrid T-Spirit – Free yearly tax, on paper very cheap to run and in top-spec form with all the options ticked it was still cheaper than many rivals and provided unrivalled equipment levels. Plus we both had an interest in Hybrids, given this vehicle would likely be changed in a few years so battery woes would not worry us the technology was interesting. However it was universally agreed that owning a Hybrid would only be possible if others could not tell immediately that it was one – no goddamn Pious’es.

·         Honda Jazz Hybrid EV-T – Cheapest car on our list initially (Although not by much) its high spec, discreet hybridy cleverness and previous positive experiences with the earlier Jazz endeared us to look at it although it technically belonged to the class below.

·         Lexus CT200h SE – By far the most expensive option, but we hoped to fall in love with the smallest Lexus, for it to beckon us to extend the budget and accept no compromises. We were expecting it to be the closest match to its stablemate-predecessor in refinement and quality feel.

·         BMW 116i SE – Reasonably priced but very stingily specified, any saving would be eliminated by the need to add equipment that really should be standard – shame on you BMW. Should be the best to drive if not the outright quickest.

·         Alfa Romeo Gulietta 1.4l (170) Lusso – It is said that you can never claim to be a true petrol head until you have owned an Alfa Romeo, something about them allures even though their reliability reputation leaves something to be desired. I owned an Alfa 146 for a short while; it looked fantastic and was fizzing with character. No doubt it would have driven fantastically – if 90% of it had not quietly succumbed to rust in every area unseen by the naked eye… But on to the Gulietta, which has been touted as a masterpiece by the motoring press. According to statistics the reliability is expected to match Alfa’s unimpeachable German rivals too. The Gulietta provides unimaginably more performance for the same money as all its rivals and a spec that at least matches and in most cases betters others.

·         Audi A3 1.4TSI SE – The engine sounds familiar doesn’t it… That’s because the A3 is a Volkswagen Golf with an ever so slightly higher price tag and added badge prestige.

·         Mini Countryman Cooper S – Can the least mini-mini match up to the others listed? It’s the same price but it does lack some spec (It’s a BMW thing) and don’t tell the nice marketing folks at BMW but it is ugly; there’s no two ways about it.

We started with Honda, and we did have high hopes after testing the original Jazz about 5-6 years ago. Memories of peppy performance and an unbeatably practical interior were enough to overcome the poor refinement the older model had. Reviews stated this latest model -particularly the hybrid model- had massive improvements in refinement. We should have known there could be a problem when the Honda salesman got nervous as soon as the word ‘performance’ was mentioned. On the test drive the Jazz made an unseemly amount of racket when asked to move at any pace above ‘amble’ and screeched like a banshee when mum tried to beat a mobility scooter at a set of traffic lights. As the mobility scooter trundled of into the distance (victorious) we hit a dual carriageway. At 65mph mum moved into the fast lane to pass a lorry... Lots and lots of noise followed, and we lost considerable ground to the lorry before mum was forced to move back into the slow lane. When questioned, the nervous salesman said “Ah but there was an uphill gradient at that point madam”; the enormous uphill gradient that had ground the Honda to a near halt was in fact an incline that wouldn’t affect a cyclist. We left the Honda showroom as quickly as we could get back; clearly the Jazz is not quite the car for mum.

Next on the hit list was Toyota, and in the showroom we picked up on a problem right away. It would seem that during the conversion to hybrid technology the Auris had to have a considerable amount of batteries fitted. This in itself is no problem (Other than the rumour that hybrids explode in accidents due to these batteries) but they have placed all of these batteries in the boot of the Auris, the remaining space could not be used as a post-box. No really, if you shut a toothpick in there it would start to get claustrophobic. This unfortunately ended the Auris’s chances there and then, the standard non-hybrid Auris is so boring we hadn’t actually noticed that we were using one as a bench in the showroom and it was bright red. The dealer tried to offer mum the Pious instead on account of its not unreasonable boot, after we were done laughing at him and generally insulting the other customers looking at the Pious I realised I was looking at Toyotas smaller offering, the Yaris. Although the Yaris is not yet available with Hybrid tech it turns out this is a bonus, as it does in fact have a boot, and a very reasonable one considering even the 5 door version takes up less room than the bonnet of the LS430. We agreed to test drive a top of the range Yaris, the Yaris T-Spirit 1.3VVT-i. It came with more than you could reasonably expect for such a small car, including a full length panoramic sunroof. On top of its high spec it performed admirably on the test drive, feeling nippy although it’s not really that fast and able to hold 70-80mph on a dual carriageway. Refinement was not great, but then again this Yaris with all options tick cost more than £5000 less than any of the other cars we were considering.

Impressed by the Yaris we went to Lexus and were told we could only see the CT200h by appointment, so we booked an extended test drive on a later date.

A few days later we visited Volkswagen, and were very impressed with the Golf- so much so we dismissed the Yaris as not big or refined enough despite the price differential. After Volkswagen we went and collected the Lexus CT200h for a 24hr test drive. To pass the time and waste Lexus’s fuel we ran all our errands for the week, backwards and forwards between the local towns. What we found was that the price premium charged for Hybrids is absolutely not worth it. Not only are hybrids the worst possible ecological purchase due to the pollution created to manufacture them but frankly you really have to be committed to being pretentiously eco-conscious to own them over any of the excellent other conventionally powered eco-options out there. It was slow, noisy unrefined and rode like it had too much weight in the back – which it did (Batteries). So it was up to Audi to convince us that a badge made their car better then the Golf on which it was based, BMW to convince us that theirs was the ‘ultimate driving machine’ and Alfa to convince us that a car with real soul could win our hearts.

Unfortunately for Audi, their car was mediocre and their dealer terrible. At one point my friend (Who came along for moral support) asked how much torque the 1.4l Turbocharged petrol engine had. The dealer responded with: “At least 3000lb-ft of torques, it’s a very powerful engine”. To put that figure in perspective an American M1A2 main battle tank produces 2750lb-ft of torque... The Volkswagen Group 1.4TSI engine as used in the Audi A3 and Volkswagen Golf produces 148lb-ft. To cement his incompetence when mum asked what the noise was as she did a rolling burnout from a junction he told her it was “Rust on the brake disks”. Having ruled out the Audi we went on to BMW, where we were welcomed by a friendly dealer who knew his cars and had a decent sense of humour. We couldn’t help but be impressed with the 1 Series; it drove like a much larger car and had a solid feel to it. In fact, it drove so well it overwhelmed the Golf in every way bar the specification.

From BMW we went to Alfa, where the dealer turned out to be the brother of an old friend and a true petrol head. Whilst the dealer and I talked meaningless paper statistics mum had ratcheted the Alfa up to 95mph in traffic on the motorway. Credit to the dealer, he pretended not to notice. The Alfa was a firecracker, with outright performance that ashamed everything else – even making the Lexus LS430 feel slow and unresponsive. Unfortunately the Alfa badge was too much of a risk for mum, so that leaves us in a class of one...

Mothers new car is a BMW 116i SE in metallic black, which they conveniently happened to have as a 6 month old dealer owned example on their forecourt for £5000 less than it would have cost new.

It drives well, giving unexpectedly good performance from the least powerful engine in the 1 Series range, a 1.6l Twin-scroll turbocharged engine with 138bhp.

So that about sums up buying a new car, not sure how it took me this long to explain it. So what else has been going on? Well I still haven’t managed to find a new job, a few interviews and what must be over 100 applications later. No offers as yet, it’s a tough market.