Vehicular oasis

I had the pleasure of having to visit Belgrave Square in London last week. If you didn't know, it's located in Westminster and is one of those truly salubrious parts of London which is filled with the kind of huge, pillar-fronted buildings you see in old films. They are impressive stuccoed buildings with big windows, high ceilings and feeling of true grandeur.

It's also where many of the foreign embassies are. Wikipedia describes it thus: Belgrave Square is one the largest and grandest 19th Century squares in London. And it's not just the buildings that exude a sense of wealth and luxury. The whole place is rammed full of Bentley's, Range Rovers, Porsches, Ferraris andAston Martins.

So as I strolled past Gordon Ramsey's Boxwood Cafe and the 5 star Berkeley Knightsbridge hotel towards Belgrave Square, I felt like I was the underclass, entering a world of caviar, fur coats and million pound deals. The array of exquisite cars lining the street only served to heighten my sense of inferiority.

And then my saviour appeared, partly in shadow, beneath an ornate, cast-iron street lamp.  I felt worthy again. I was not inferior. I was an equal to all of those around me in this alien, billion pound (dollar, euro) world. There, nestled between a  Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren Roadster and a Bentley Continental GTC, was an 'M' reg Proton Saga. In red. And rust. Even better, it was parked in a permit holders' space.

Joy filled me heart. This alien turd of vehicles had sneaked into the hallowed land of the international playboy, film star and corporate banker and said "bollocks to the lot of you" I patted it's manky bonnet and continued onwards past a yellow Lamborghini, smiling to myself.


Proton 1 - 0  Financial excess

Name that car

I just bought a new car. Well I say new, I've never actually bought a brand new one because I've never had enough money floating around in my bank account to do so. When I say 'new' I mean 'new to me'. It's actually three years old, but at least it's a lot newer than my previous, valiant car - Keith.

Aaah, I see some of you flinched at that bit.

People who give car names are, to put it politely 'sad', 'stupid' and 'annoying'. So, yes, I'm one of those people. The new car is called Terry by the way. My boss at work gets really bent out of shape when she hears me discussing the vehicular attributes of Keith and Terry. She really, really hates it and has a rather strong dislike of people who do such things. So this begs the question "why do it"?

Hmmm. Well, personally I just like to give a bit if character to something I spend a great deal of time with. Like a wife or girlfriend. Oh - a bit more flinching there. But think about it. Think of all the long journeys, exciting adventures, sad, dreary road trips, naughty fun, escapes from near-death and sharing of all the seasons, weather and life-changing moments that you experience whilst in your car.

It's hard not to associate some of the most profound moments in your life with your trusty metal steed. I've laughed, cried, shouted, whimpered, sung, screamed, snored, chatted, argued, kissed, hugged, sworn (rather a lot) and daydreamed in Keith. Why on Earth would I not feel an affinity with him. Yes 'him'. My mate. My soulmate. My caring, sharing automobile. Yes I give my cars names. Because they give me so much more in return.

Now where are my car keys....

Nail or no nail?

I've had my car for nearly six and a half years of it's seven-year life. And now I'm at that crucial stage in a motor's life when things start to go wrong. Big things. And all at the same time.

In truth, nothing major has gone wrong yet and since I've had the car it's been fantastic in the reliability, bits-not-falling-off department. However, the old girl has recently been giving me a few clues that indicate that some serious failures are not too far off. For example, when turning my steering wheel full lock to the right, I get a sort of metallic grumbling sound. Sometimes when I put my heater blower on, one of my speakers makes a fizzing sounds. The same speaker fizzes on occasion when the heated rear window is activated. Also, the number of creaks and squeaks seems to increase on a daily basis. My car appears to have developed arthritis along with irritable bowel syndrome, rickets, scurvy and manky hip. Oh and my gear linkage needs replacing soon or else I won't be able to change gear from 1st to 2nd. Or 2nd to 3rd. Or 3rd to 2nd. Or 2nd to 1st.

So I'm now in that quandary of quandaries. Do I spend some fairly serious cash on getting my car back to full health or spend some very serious cash (which I don't have - "oh hello Mr Car Finance") and buy a new(er) one? Hmmmm. Or should I just set fire to it and push it over a cliff into the sea?

Answers on a postcard.

Christmas, cars and cash

Yeah, yeah. I know. I have become the Internet's most inconsistent blogger ... possibly. Well, it's been sort of busy this month. My work is mental right now and I'm working some pretty long days where I have to be nice to moaning people and behave as if I'm having the most fun a human being can have. Yay.

Anyway, I forgot to blog over Xmas itself so sorry and Happy Xmas! Better late than never I say. Unless you're talking about a kidney transplant which is actually better sooner rather than later.

I digress. Christmas was very jolly and my wife adores her new iPod Nano which I bought her. In fact she covets it rather like a lioness with a new cub but with less growling and picking it up in her mouth. Anyway, I enjoyed spending my cash on my family and friends. 'Cash for kindness' I like to think of it as.

Boxing Day was a joy too. I worked a ten hour day. At least there were plenty of other poor sods working too which cheered me up no end. God, I sound like a right miserable bastard don't I? My apologies. It must be my age. 41 is one of those ages that's neither here nor there. It's not "the big 4-0" and it's not even mid-forties. It's sort "the big 4-0 plus one. Mind you, I'm quite keen on being an anonymous age. I think I'll become even keener as I get older.

So that's Christmas and cash mentioned. What about the car? Well driving home from worl last night my car developed a very alarming and serious-sounding noise from around the front wheel/suspension area. It's a hard sound to describe but it reminded me of a metal tin full of bolts and bits of piping, being shaken with fervour every time I went over a bump in the road. I'm no mechanic, but I'm sure this is not a good noise. Furthermore, I'm fairly confident that it's an expensive noise. Yay again.

I shall keep you posted on the situation. Rest assured, it's going to be bad news and very costly news. Which is a good thing ... for you. You see, although we don't like to admit it, other people's misfortune often makes us feel better. It's that "well it could be worse, I could be in his/her situation. It's the sort of thing you say when you get a slightly higher than expected gas bill, only to then see a news item where some poor bugger's house has just blown up following a gas leak. You get the idea.

So dear reader, my festive cheer to you is the gift of my vehicular misery. Whatever traumas or stresses you've had over Xmas, just wait until you hear about my car. That will put a smile on your face as the year draws to a close. I hope my Vauxhall-inspired misfortune brings you joy!

Yay again ... again.

Writers' block

I used to be SO good. My postings on YBATYD occured every few days. Then I had a break. Now I'm back, I seem to have lost my flow. What's that all about then?

Well it must be one of two things: 1. Absolutely bugger all is happening that's worth writing about, or, 2. Plenty is happening but I just can't put it into words.

This is clearly a problem for a blogger.

Perhaps I'm just trying a tad hard. Trying to come up with amusing, exciting and eminently readable stuff, when in fact, the mundane stuff is what actually turns out to be the funniest. I've just been looking back at some of my musings from my 'golden era' in 2006. I wrote about all sorts of crap and most of it was really quite amusing. So I'm hoping that will inspire me again.

It's not as if there's not been plenty happening in the world recently: wildfires in California, postal and rail strikes in the UK, famous people dying and the funniest thing ever on the telly. Hang on, that last one is a cracker..

... If you have never watched or even heard of Top Gear then I'd ignore this posting and go and have a cup of coffee or milk the cat. On Sunday's Top Gear, old Jezza Clarkson did one of the funniest things I've seen on telly. Jeremy introduced a almost unheard of 1950's car called the Peel P50. It was/is the smallest production car in the world. It's only 54"(137cm) long 41" (104 cm) wide. Jeremy decided to drive it to work. He is 6' 5" (198 cm) tall. I shall say no more other than this is brilliant television. Oh, and when I say he drives it to work, I mean he also drives it in work.

Enjoy

Ketchup

Ooops. Forgot to post these last few days so here's a quick catchup/ketchup (geddit?) on what's been going on in my oh-so-hectic life:

Sunday - er, not much. Went for some grub at my in-laws
Monday - opened a new savings account, got a new exhaust fitted for my car and went to a baby-gothtastic gig; namely My Chemical Romance, which made me wish I'd worn more eyeliner
Tuesday - er, work

So, as you can see, it's non-stop action. However, it doesn't stop there. Tomorrow it's ten pin bowling, Friday, a bit of theatre, Saturday we're having a tree chopped down and Sunday, more eating out with relatives. This is all going to have to stop. I'm 41 for God's sake and I need to take it easy.

Someone fetch my pipe, slippers and copy of 'Herbacious Borders' monthly.

Under pressure

My wife and I were out in her car yesterday. We were just loading the car with shopping when I noticed that one of her rear tyres looked pretty soft. Thus, we headed off to a nearby garage where we sidled up to the air pump.

The first three tyres all needed a bit of topping up, but then we got to the fourth one. On her car, the pressure required for the rear tyres is 28psi. We attached the air hose to the tyre nozzle. Instantly, you get a readout of the current tyre pressure on the machine. It said '7'. I thought there was a digit missing. The readout blinked and displayed '7'. The tyre, which should have been at 28psi was at 7psi. That's a quarter / 25% of what it should have been. Spectacular. I asked my wife if she'd felt like she'd been driving a boat recently and she admitted that the car had seemed a tad "spongy". A tad spongy? It's a surprise the bloody car wasn't cornering on it's sills.

Well, it's all inflated now and we actually suspect a slow puncture which we'll have looked at this week. So here's your safety tip for the week dear drivers. Check your tyres. And your oil. And your screenwash. And your lights. And your wipers. And your power steering fluid. And your shock absorbers. And your exhaust. And ...

Oh just get a bicycle.

A roof too Ferrari

I was zipping along a dual carriageway the other day and as I passed a line of slower moving cars, I espied a huge black, Ferrari F430, leading the line. Nothing strange about that you may think. However, the car (top speed of 196MPH) was only doing about 50 MPH.

"Strange" I thought. Then, as I drew level with the mighty Italian stallion, I saw why it was driving so slowly. The Ferrari in question was a convertible. Unfortunately, there seemed to be a bit of a problem with the roof. As I passed the £150,000 supercar I could see that the suited, chisel-jawed and extremely embarrassed driver was steering with one hand and trying to hold the roof down with the other. His fingers were gripping the outside of the roof as he struggled to stop if catching the wind and ripping off completely. There was clearly something badly wrong with the roof-closing mechanism and he appeared to have no option but to keep driving until he either got home or to a garage.

Now I have to say that I don't begrudge people having lots of money. Apart from footballers. However, anyone who buys a car that costs more than our house deserves to be the victim of 'crappy-flappy-roof-syndrome' and yes, I did nearly p*ss myself laughing as I wafted past him in my 1.2L Vauxhall Corsa.

Se ha comprato la a Lamborghini.

Dead stop

I don't usually rob stories off the Tinterweb but this one made me laugh. A 47 year old woman from Wales was caught by a speeding camera doing 41mph on a 30mph road. The problem was that she had only got a provisional licence which meant she was going to be in a bit of bother. So what did she do?

She said she was dead.

When the rozzers wrote to her she bravely ignored the letter. When the court then issued a summons, she wrote back, pretending to be her daughter, saying that her 'mum' had been killed in a car crash. Brilliant. Unfortunately the court were a tad suspicious and she ended up getting nailed by the long arm of the law. Well, I say nailed. She got a pathetic six month suspended sentence. I reckon she should have had both legs lopped off and the phrase 'I'm a crim' tattooed across her face.

Perhaps it's best I'm not a judge.

Oh yeah

Life is good. My neck is feeling better; Birmingham won again; my car is nearly paid for and I've got a whole weekend off. Now you may say that I'm easily pleased and you'd be right. Mind you, I've just had the best part of a whole bottle of classy white wine and I'm listening to iTunes as I type. So, yes, things are pretty good. You want details? No? Well here they are anyway.

Due to the advice from my doctor, sitting bolt upright at work and in my car; doing neck exercises and sleeping with just one (god, that's difficult) pillow have all helped to make me feel ever so slightly human again.

Birmingham (City FC) won again today against local rivals West Brom. In the past few weeks things have been a bit todge for the Blues and there were even rumblings about the boss (Steve Bruce) possibly getting the elbow. However, a trio of victories have changed all that and we are now equal fifth in the league and still in the League Cup.

And yes, after five long years, I make my final payment on my car in mid-November. I shall be several quid better off each month which fills me with considerable joy and self-satisfaction. So what shall I spend my extra cash on? Answers on an email to 'bornthendie@mac.com'.

So, I'm feeling pretty chuffed with myself at the moment which means that something terrible is bound to happen, such as one of my limbs developing deep-vein thrombosis during the night or tribe of murderous, psychopathic Slovakian commis chefs invading the back garden and setting up an open air-cookery school for foreign dissidents. That would be just typical.
I feel, therefore, that I must make the most of things while the going is good and take a few risks.

I'm going to eat the 19 day-old cauliflower that's festering in the fridge.

Crashed rozzer car

Well, I couldn't think of anything interesting to write today, so I cheated. So here's a bit of footage I caught on my mobile phone last year.

What a different world it would be

When I wake up at 5.14am and can't get back to sleep, my mind doesn't half become active. Possibly because at that time of the morning I am still clinically deceased and therefore not quite 'with it'. Anyway, my brain never ceases to amaze and intrigue me so it was no surprise to me when I had the following thought - 'what a different world it would be if cars had never been invented'. Specifically, if the internal combustion engine had never been invented.

The trick with this one is to imagine a world bereft of all vehicles. No cars, buses, lorries or motorbikes. Instead - horses and carts. However, the rest of the world is just the same. So there are computers, satellite telly, Bush & Blair, Marmite, mobile phones, edible underwear and double-glazing salesmen. So everything is exactly as you see it right now dear reader, except that the roads are full of horses and carts. This takes some thinking about, so here are a few things that popped into my head as I cogitated this morning:

Car tax would become Cart tax. Cart tax would pay for clearance of horse poo
Lorries would become extra large carts pulled by teams of Shire horses
Carts would be made by existing companies like Ford, Toyota, Land Rover and Ferrari
You'd still have to pass a driving test, including a three-point turn with a horse
Petrol stations would instead be Hay depots with different grades and prices of hay
Traffic lights, roundabouts and motorways would still exist
The speed limit in towns would be 6 mph and 12 mph on motorways
Like cars, carts/carriages would have SatNav, CD players, headlights and air con
Drive-Thru MacDonalds'would still exist but would be re-named Trot-Thru's
Youths would still go joyriding, albeit at about 13 mph
Both horses and carts would require a yearly MOT
Kwik-Fit would replace cart wheels along with horseshoes
Some people would still add spoilers and go-faster stripes to their carts

Wouldn't it be amazing to see the world like this? I'm just imagining the large Argos cart pulling up outside my house to deliver the new fridge freezer. Or a couple of boy racers at the traffic lights, just waiting to race each other with their respective second-hand carts. Just think what the M25 would look like at 'rush' hour or your local NCP car park. Fabulous!

I could go on, but I've got to feed Dobbin before I go to Tesco's.

Happy car

Oh happy day. My motor is all better, thanks to the nice car doctors. I'm well chuffed, especially as now I won't have to rely on public transport/cattle trucks to move me around the city. Of course, car-mending comes at a price. This time round it was a rather hefty KRW 332,886. You may notice that I've not given the price in £'s. I just thought it would oh so exciting to give it to you in South Korean Won's. I could just have easily given it to you in Venezualan Bolivars (Be 755,066) which is fine if you live in Venezuala. Not so good if you live Bury St Edmunds.

Anyway, the car is back and my freedom has been restored. Mind you, I have to admit that my rather fabulous wife has actually chauffered me to and from work a couple of times this week. I felt like bloody royalty being driven door to door. The only problem was that my wife felt the need to take the chauffeur role to heart. She's invoiced me for £119.

That's VND 3,574,744.93 (Vietnamese Dong) if you're interested.

Public transport snob?

I think I may be a public transport snob. OK, I know I am. It's not my fault, honestly. The thing is, I've always had a car. As soon as I could drive I saved up like madman and bought my first car. It was a Ford Nail or a Vauxhall Turgid I think and it gave me unbridled, low-speed, leaky, smoky, bald-tyre freedom. It was wonderful.

So imagine my horror when my current car (not a 'Nail' or a 'Turgid') became poorly the other day. Until I can get it to the garage on Friday, it's meant - public transport. Dear God. Now I know millions of people, including you dear reader, utilize buses, trains, trams and rickshaws every day without batting an eyelid.

However, no-one will ever convince me that standing ('cos all the seats are taken) on a packed, sweaty/freezing bus full of fag-smoking baked-beaners, mad old women smelling of tinned fish and hordes of grotty kids yelling "bovvered?" at each other whilst forcing everyone on the bus to endure the latest ditty by Slipknot as it blares out of a tinny mobile phone speaker, is preferable. Preferable to relaxing into my comfy, sweet smelling car as I pop a CD on whilst slipping the gear into waft mode and cruising sedately home. Perfect. So call me a snob, but really, is there anything better than driving yourself to where you want to go?

Taxi!

Vive la 2CV

The Citroen 2CV was, surely the greatest car ever made. I owned two of the quirky little French motors and can honestly say they were the most fun you can have in a car without visiting the back seat. The Citroen 2CV was born in 1939 and was intended for use by French farmers as a way of lugging spuds and sheep over rough terrain. However, the day after production began war was declared which was really inconvenient. Thus, the car had to wait until 1948 to be unveiled to the world. Sacre bleu.

Sadly, the last 2CV's were produced back in 1990 so they are becoming more and more rare. I owned two of them and obviously, I gave them names. These names I felt suited their character and eccentric nature: Stan & Alf. May they rest in peace.

So why were/are these berserk vehicles so great? Here's my list:

The gear stick poked out of the dashboard and all the gears were back to front.
The engine was air-cooled so didn't over heat or freeze in the winter.
It had a crank handle to start the engine if the battery died.
You could take the whole back seat out and use it as a sofa - in fields.
The suspension was so soft you could mount kerbs without noticing.
It could corner faster than any car on the road - really.
You could put a brick on the accelerator to give you cruise control.
The air-conditioning was just two metal panels that lifted up under the windscreen.
The whole roof rolled back so you could have a fantastic convertible.
Everyone pointed and laughed at you - making you feel special.

So next time you see a car like the one in the photo (it's the same as Stan), give the driver a cheery wave, a smile and knowing look that says "you may be a funny little man in a funny little car, but a bit of me, just a bit, is really jealous"

Tres bon.