About Me

My photo
This person is currently under construction.

Tuesday 9 October 2012

WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!! .....oh, wait, no we're not.


I’ve finally broken free of my original self imposed boundaries – This one’s nothing to do with cars. It’s about conspiracies, and how to deal with them (or more to the point, how I deal with them). This actually started as a comment on someone’s status, but I had so much to say that Facebook melted and didn’t let me post it - Or was it the government trying to silence me?



Regardless, I’ll say it here, where my tinfoil hat protects me from spying satellites and alien mind probes.


I have a massive problem with most conspiracy theories. Not all of them, because some are benign, harmless and fun (The Loch Ness Monster, The Surrey Panther, Brian Blessed, etc). What I have a massive problem with is when people or groups provide potentially distressing pieces of information, stated as fact, based on no evidence whatsoever. I like evidence. Evidence is cool.

Worse still are conspiracy theories based on fabricated evidence, which are, by their very nature, harder to unravel, and at their most destructive, can cause lasting psychological damage.

By way of example, I am now going to do something which, despite my oh-so-grown-up age of 32, I have been scared to even think about since I was twelve. I’m going to write the Lord’s Prayer backwards. I’ll explain why afterwards:

Amen ever and ever for glory the and power the kingdom the is thyne for evil from us deliver but temptation into not us lead and us against trespass who those forgive we as trespasses our us forgive and bread daily our day this us give heaven in is it as earth on done be will thy come kingdom thy name thy be hallowed heaven in art who father our.

Writing that (and subsequently saying it out loud) was like therapy. I’ve been irrationally terrified by the thought of those words, in that order for well over half my life.

Why?

Because when I was twelve, my next door neighbour showed me a book, inside which was a picture of a Nun with bleeding sockets where her eyes once lived. The caption underneath the photograph said something along the lines of “After reciting the Lord’s Prayer backwards, Sister Sledge (may not have been her real name) lost both her eyes in a really nasty way”

I don’t know what the book was called, not that it matters, but the point is that that was all the evidence it took, a page in a ridiculous book, to scar a young boy’s mind enough to permanently terrify him whenever he even accidently thought of the word “Amen”, lest his own mind betray him and recite the whole thing backwards against his will (which, after now writing it down, I realise would have taken some considerable effort on my subconscious’s part).

There were nightmares. Lots of them.

But this is how conspiracies grip us, in the part of our subconscious that doesn’t know any better. The inner child who doesn’t question authority. A book said it, and grown ups write books, and grown ups tell the truth, so it must be true. Now we have the internet, which is essentially the whole world, in a book…… and the biggest double edged sword ever created.

It’s a place that contains articles of such exquisite lunacy and hysteria, that people can lose themselves at the drop of a digital hat (I bet Justin Timberlake wears a digital hat). However, the antidote to this poison – and it is a poison – is more often than not right there as well, on the internet, and just as accessible at the drop of a slightly larger digital hat.

The only problem facing those who are susceptible to conspiracy theories (which is all of us to varying degrees), is that it’s easier to digest dubious facts than it is to research their validity, and to quote Christopher Hitchens “people prefer a junk theory, to no theory at all”.

And why wouldn’t we? As a species we love mystery, we love answers, and we especially love it when those answers are mysterious (Which is why so many of us loved that gobshite ‘Lost’ – myself included until about 2 years after it finished, where the thought suddenly occurred: “Hang on……. That was bollocks!”).

However, for whatever reason, it is our tendency to ‘fill in the blanks’ in acquired knowledge by stuffing it full of any old shit we can dream up at the time – and by doing this; by siding established phenomena with utter fiction, it can give the powerful illusion of truth.

Point in case, someone posted this on Facebook yesterday (and therefore prompted this post):


Go ahead and read the article. It’s fucking ridiculous!

The established phenomena, in this case, is meteors, and what they have the potential to do. Meteors obviously do exist and if one sufficiently large enough smacks us, everyone on the planet would have an adequate excuse for not going to work the next day. Now, couple the fact of meteors existing, with the fiction that one is definitely going to hit us very soon indeed, and all you have to do now is post it on your blog, set the comments to ‘user approved’ (thus giving you the option to filter out any of those pesky comments that disagree with you) and BINGO! You have yourself a bona fide conspiracy theory.

Let’s overlook the fact that this particular article is housed on a website called philosophers-stone.co.uk, and the fact that all the banners advertise stuff like tarot reading and astrology, and the glaring fact that it provides absolutely no sources whatsoever for the claims made within it. It was written by someone. Someone grown up, who is so sure in their writing that what they are saying is true. How can you argue with that? Well, if merely seeing something written down has the ability to satisfy your thirst for knowledge, then you can’t, and I find that massively frustrating.

It doesn’t matter who posted that link, but here’s what Facebook wouldn’t let me say about it:

A Google search on the keywords Asteroid+Antarctica+2012 pulls the same story in various forms from about 10 different websites… all with really sensible names like: plantosurvive2012.com, godlikeproductions.com, and my personal favourite – davidicke.com (where I go for all my rational fact-nuggets).

There are anywhere between 10 - 40,000 amateur astronomers in the UK alone – god knows how many worldwide. Something that big would have been spotted and published by at least one stargazer who isn’t foaming at the mouth and gleefully rubbing their hands in anticipation for Armageddon – ‘The Government’ can’t silence that many people with such an open forum as the internet – Look, they let me post this! (except they didn’t!)

Turning to credible sources then, NASA run a program called the Near Earth Object Program, with something called the JPL Sentry System – a project that tracks near orbit meteorites and calculates their potential collision courses – a cosmic risk assessment if you like. As it stands, all projections for meteorite collisions within the next 100 years present 0 - 1 on the impact risk scale (a scale of 0-10, where pants should be shit at around 5 upwards).

Worryingly, there is a potential collision anticipated with an asteroid called 1950 DA, but not until 2880 – I’ll pop the kettle on while we wait.

There will always be conspiracy theories, for the simple fact that the rapidity at which they are devised far outstrips the speed at which they can be debunked.

Plus astronomers, scientists, historians and governments have got better and more important things to do than sit around reassuring everyone that we’re not, in fact, going to get hit by an asteroid in 2012, and despite what the Daily Mail says, you can’t get Cancer from EVERYTHING!, the Holocaust did happen, and that there are not plans afoot to create a New World Order.

Because of the enormity of internet based conspiracy theories out there, it just isn’t possible to spend as much time, money and effort as is needed to refute them all (and it is my theory that conspiracy theorists know this), so here’s my guidelines for dealing with them in general:

1.      Who told you? Are they the sort of person that likes conspiracy theories? Only you can be the judge of the volume of salt that should be pinched when accepting information from this person, but if conspiracies are their thing, chances are that credible channels of information gathering aint their stomping ground.
2.      Where was the information sourced from? Was it a reliable news organisation or was it from some website with the word “conspiracy” or something as equally obvious in the URL? You can go ahead and ignore it if it was the latter. This is certainly not a measure of truth, but national, local and independent news sources tend not to get caught up in conspiracy theories for the simple reason that there is bugger all tangible evidence for most of them.
3.      If you can be bothered, check the sources yourself –Try and disprove everything, even if it’s stuff you want to be true (especially if it is). Sometimes when doing this I draw a blank, and I can’t find anything that disputes what I’ve been told…. If this happens to you, don’t panic! It brings me neatly on to my last point;
4.      Does it sound like horse shit? If it does, chances are, it is.

I apply this mental checklist to everything from Astrology to Tarot cards, organised religion to UFO’s, Ouija Boards to Hover Boards. If it doesn’t meet the right criteria for each point, I happily discard it with wanton abandon. I hope you do too.

I realise that this post has the potential to prompt responses along the lines of:

“The New World Order is happening – look at this website: www.thenewworldorderisrealandnotmadeup.com”

To those people, I say this: Go ahead and build your bunker, stock up on tinned food & bog roll, and don your tinfoil hat. I’ll be down the pub if you need me…..

…..Wait!..... WHAT’S THIS COMING OUT OF MY EYES???????..........

www.facebook.com/Ihavewrites
Twitter: @Ihavewrites 



Saturday 29 September 2012

The Really Wild Show

One of the greatest things about my job - apart from the tiny motorbike, flashy cars and the occasional disproportionately generous tip - is that during my many nighttime jaunts in the sprawling Sussex countryside, I get to see wildlife.... Shitloads of it.

I'm not just talking about the occasional glimpse of a fox or fleeting glance of a squirrel. I'm talking about animals that you know exist, but you've only really ever seen on tv being fondled by Terry Nutkins (may he rest in peace).

Take last night for example. There I was riding down a private little country lane at 1 o'clock in the morning, minding my own business, when SMACK! A badger with a death wish pelted out of the hedgerow and head-butted the side of my bike. I made a noise that I can only liken to a small girl suddenly, and unexpectedly having ice cubes poured down her back. As for the badger, well it disappeared pretty quick back from whence it came. I reckon it got off pretty lightly with a sore noggin and something to tell the grandchildren.

Distressing as this was for all parties involved, it doesn't come close to the distress I endured a couple of weeks ago on the way back from another job.

I'm no stranger to occasionally seeing animals hit and killed by vehicles - goes with the territory of the job unfortunately - although I've only ever been in one vehicle that's been involved in such a collision.

Maybe you have too? Maybe you've witnessed an unfortunate moggy meet it's maker under the wheels of your Nissan Primera? Maybe you've caught the demise of a pheasant as it bounces with ill grace off the bumper of your Toyota Corolla? Perhaps you have brought about the termination of bountiful bunnies in your Landrover Discovery? Well, you ain't seen nothing until you're in a transit van that's just hit a full grown deer at 40mph. Such is my only ever experience of direct roadkill. It was a long time ago.... I don't like talking about it.

But let's get back to what happened a couple of weeks ago....

So there I am once again, riding back home from a job over Ditchling Beacon (one of Sussex's finest viewing points) on a beautiful clear night - another fabulous thing about working so late in the countryside is that there is seldom any light pollution, and I rate a clear starry night high on my list of all time favourite things, sandwiched in between sand and sandwiches - when all of a sudden the car in front of me shudders, swerves, and completely fails to avoid the rabbit that has just leaped out in front of it. Normally, I wouldn't have stopped, were it not for seeing the poor little fucker's front legs still trying to do something about the fact that it's back legs were no longer three dimensional. They had length, breadth, but no depth. I turned round, rode over to the mess of legs and fur and weighed my options.

I needed to kill this thing quick, so I wanted to make sure that whatever I did, it stood no chance of surviving. I thought about putting it back in the road and taking a run up with the bike, but I figured that I couldn't guarantee it's death, and I'd probably be poking bits of rabbit out of my mud guard forever more.

Maybe a severe blow to the head then? Maybe not. Rabbit heads are pretty tough, and although I did have steel toecap boots on, again I could not guarantee it's demise, and I really didn't want to go searching a nearby hedgerow to see if the rabbit I just booted into it was dead or not.
Stamp on it? Too gory!
Grab it's back legs and smash it's head on the floor? See stamp on it.

In the end I crouched down and gingerly gathered it up in my hands - it didn't even protest - lay it out flat on my lap with its head facing away from me and Karate chopped the back of its neck as hard as I could. That did the trick, instantly.

Unpleasant, but utterly necessary. In retrospect, I'm perversely proud of my actions - even the bit where I launched it into a nearby field to get it as far away from the road as possible, thus avoiding any harm that could potentially befall any would-be scavenger if the carcass had remained by the roadside. True, I didn't necessarily have to drop-kick it, but my throwing arm is dreadful.

However, these horrific scenarios are exceptions to the norm. I am more often than not but a mere observer to the comings and goings of the nocturnal wildlife community. Hedgehogs, rabbits, badgers, foxes, deer, bats, rats and mice are but a few of my woodland friends that happily hop, scuttle, waddle, flap, slink and prance around me as I go about my nightly business. It's brilliant!

I've just recently seen an owl for the first time.

I saw it whilst riding down the moonlit high street of one of Sussex's many impossibly quaint villages, and there it was, sat atop a sign that advertised that this particular impossibly quaint Sussex village welcomed careful drivers. It was facing away from me, but it's head turned to observe me as i approached in that way that only owls and people possessed by Satan can do. I passed it, turned round and slowly inched back towards the sign. Me and the owl regarded each other for a while.

Then, without warning it stretched its massive wings and took off towards me. I shat myself! However, it merely sailed over my head and disappeared into the night. It was an amazing thing to see (the owl that is, not me shitting myself).

Anyway, I'm off out again later and the weather looks good. I wonder what the Sussex countryside has in store for me tonight?


Wednesday 5 September 2012

Toyota Prius as driven by Rambo.

Sometime I seriously wonder if I could live by foraging, hunting/fishing and brewing.

I’m talking about swapping my regular meals and trips to the off-licence for dandelion & nettle salads, rabbit stews, fish pies and ‘Jake’s Kidney Abuser’ home-made ale. This idea regularly grips me to the point of distraction. It’s not an uncommon occurrence for me to spend hours fantasising about myself as some sort of Ray Mears/Rambo survivalist type, wandering the woodlands and lakelands of my mind’s landscape, imitating complicated bird song, bringing down mighty stags with my trusty handmade crossbow, and retiring to my palatial tree house where I then crush juniper berries with my bare hands to make gin (I think after which point, I smoke a pipe. Which I made.) All of this, by the way, is happening to the soundtrack of Lord of the Rings.

Hopelessly childish beyond reason, I know, but I can’t help it. I love all that shit. Here’s the thing though: I’m crap at most of it!

I’m not really sure what plants you can eat, I can’t build anything, I tried shooting a rabbit once, but missed – terribly, I’ve caught 1 fish in 2 years of fishing……. and I don’t smoke. So that leaves brewing, which is something that I don’t know if I can or can’t do, cos I’ve never really tried it. My dad does it – in fact I was furnished with a couple of bottles of delicious wild plum wine the last time I visited him, which lit the fires of interest in the whole enterprise, and got me very pissed.

The idea of making beer/wine/absinthe at home intrigues me. If I do it right, I’ll never have to pay off-licence prices again (however, if I get it wrong I could go blind – swings and roundabouts). The trouble is that I have zero space to accommodate the micro-brewery I’ve got my eye on - It’s all buckets and test tubes and yeast (oh my!). I live in a top flat with no garden, and we’re already at spatial capacity, what with having a 10 year old girl and a 7 month old baby filling up every available nook and cranny with toys and nappies and JLS cd’s.

So, my options are:

  1. Ask someone in my local area to house my crazy concoctions – I can’t offer any money, but if you do live in the Fiveways area of Brighton, and have a spare cupboard, you can have half of the poisonous ditch water I will inevitably produce as payment for your services.
  2. Move house to somewhere bigger – This is actually on the agenda, pending us saving up a deposit. This is happening slowly but surely…. While our yearly earnings might not give our bank manager an erection, we’re managing to claw a few pennies a month into a savings account. However, if I want to be brewing up a batch of “Beer Battered” – a name I’ve just thought of, but will definitely be using – within the next couple of years, I will have to refer exclusively to option 1.

So while I wait for the offers to roll in, I’ll fill you in on what’s gone on since I last updated this here blog…..

I know it’s been ages since my last post. I seem to remember saying some time ago that I would have a ton of stuff to write about now that I’ve moved away from exclusively talking about cars – turns out I was wrong…. There appears to be bugger all left in my head when you take the cars away (apart from the occasional ‘Jake of the Jungle’ fantasy).

I’ve driven a ton of cars since the Bentley, but none as classy or fast, so there’s really been nothing decent to write about on that front for ages. That said, my friend wrote this on her facebook the other day:

Had to drive a Prius today. Must be the only car in the world where you need an engineering degree just to start it!

She’s not wrong! I had the same experience not so long ago. For once I was collecting someone who wasn’t pissed, moreover that he’d just had an operation that prevented him from driving (I didn’t ask what he’d had done, but from the way he was limping, it wouldn’t have surprised me if a surgeon had just done something inexcusable to his happy sack). He asked me if I’d ever driven a Prius before. “No” came my reply, “But I’ve driven a lot of other cars before, how different could this one be?”

His smile said it all. After what seemed like five minutes of the most frantic button pushing, horn blasting, windscreen wiper activating, radio tuning madness, he politely provided me with the list – yes list – of actions one needs to perform in order to start and drive his stupid bloody car. Right foot goes here, left hand goes there, press that button for 2 seconds, pull that lever, left foot up, right foot down, grab your partner, and dosey doe.

Once it got up and running, the Prius was actually a lovely car to drive…… until you stop at traffic lights, at which point the engine cuts out and you shit yourself at the thought of having to do all that twatting around to get the thing started again.

Fear not! It’s an oh-so-smug emissions saving device that turns the engine off when it’s stationary. Put your foot back on the gas *tip’s his hat to his American readers* and the engine starts and you’re off again. I had real difficulty coming to terms with this feature – it just felt like I kept stalling it, at which I would automatically apologise. We didn’t talk much, and I’m not surprised considering that I was saying sorry for no reason at every set of lights.

But back to the beer. If somehow a space is procured and I manage to brew anything half drinkable, I will of course review it here. If anyone out there brews their own, all tips/tricks and recipes would be appreciated J
Please leave comments below or on my facebook page www.facebook.com/ihavewrites

In the mean time, I’ll be out in a field munching grass and bothering rabbits.…… anything to get away from JLS.

Thursday 5 July 2012

The Bentley GT Continental (yes, really!)

Ok, so you’ve got a Bentley GT Continental…..

Shania Twain, in her 1997 hit ‘That don’t impress me much’ seemed to suggest that a Brad Pit lookalike rocket scientist with a supersonic car wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting underneath that skin tight, leopard-print Sith Lord outfit, unless they also possessed a certain something that would ‘keep [her] warm in the middle of the night’.

If you’re reading this Shania, I’m an average looking, under qualified, Local Authority officer with a battered Ford Fiesta, but I’ve got a hot water bottle… just saying. However, if the Bentley GT Continental doesn’t impress Shania Twain, then she’s a moron. It’s amazing!

I got the call for the job while having lunch at my Grandma’s house (her of Austen Allegro fame), with the wife and kids. I was going to turn it down, on account of the pick up being miles away, until my boss told me what I’d be driving:

Are you sure I can’t tempt you Jake? I’ve got a couple of jobs for you and the first one is a brand new Bentley.”

I ditched my family quicker than someone who found out he wasn’t the father on the Jeremy Kyle show.

My Grandma said something about her driving the wife and kids home later, but I couldn’t really hear her from where my car was parked down the drive…… and I wasn’t really listening anyway. I raced back to Brighton, where I haphazardly parked my car in the street adjacent to my house (actually, it looked more abandoned than parked).  Once home, I yanked my trusty miniature motorised steed from the communal hallway where I keep it, and tore away to meet my destiny.

I spotted the beast as soon as I arrived at the pick up point. It stood out a mile from the rest of the mediocre specimens littering the car park. A jet-black monsterpiece!
Those Porsche 911 nerves came back in spades, but I marshalled my trepidation as best I could. The door opened with a piston-like hiss, and closed with a ‘clunk’ that sounded – I can put it no other way – smug.

Brand new, the Bentley costs as much as half a house does, so I won’t be nipping to the cash point, then skipping to my local Bentley dealership any time soon.

The first thing I noticed about the inside of the car, apart from it being bloody gorgeous, was that it had a timepiece – not a clock, not a watch – a Bentley signature timepiece embedded in the dashboard. That alone was probably worth more than both of my kidneys. As I stepped in and sat down, I was informed that the leather that coated pretty much all of the interior was hand-stitched. I hoped, beyond hope, that this work was undertaken ethically, however I had a sinking suspicion that it was probably done by underprivileged Taiwanese children. I made a mental note to do something charitable and worthwhile later to redress the karmic balance.

I was actually surprised, and mildly disappointed, that the car wasn’t equipped with some sort of retina scanner or voice recognition system for starting it. All it had was a boring red button on the dashboard. I reached out and fired up the engine. The noise the thing made was unearthly. It was like all the cats in the world started purring at once, through a festival sound system. I revved the engine to the nodding approval of the obviously proud owner. The cats were replaced with dragons.

“We could turn right out of the park. That’s the quickest way home but it’s all built up and residential that way. Or you could go left and join the by-pass…. if you want to put your foot down?”

Being the consummate professional driver that I am, I obviously turned right.

But let’s say – hypothetically – that I turned left instead…..

I would have probably discovered that the Bentley GT Continental  gets up to a hundred miles an hour faster than I can say ‘fuck me, I’m doing a hundred miles an hour’. This is down to the car possessing something called a ‘6 litre, V12’ engine. This should mean more to me than it does – it probably means more to you than it does me. All I know is that it’s not the most economical of creatures, averaging at around 12-15 miles per gallon. If Mother Nature were to own a car, I would be very surprised if it were a Bentley GT Continental. It’d probably be a Honda Jazz.

After dropping off the customer, I unpacked my bike and scooted off to my next job, picking up yet another feckin’ top spec Range Rover. YAWN!!!

In conclusion then: Driving a Bentley GT Continental was an experience I’ll not forget in a hurry, plus I got to do it for free.

In your face, Bentley!


Twitter: @Ihavewrites



Friday 29 June 2012

Buses and Jet-Ski's and Poop (Oh my!)

While I may suffer the boyish good looks of Justin Beiber, and the upper body physique of an Olympic pommel-horse gold medallist, pretty much everything from my thighs down is knackered. I’ve got connective tissue damage in my right foot, and an irritated ligament in my left knee.

When either of them flair up, I start to walk like Mr Tumnus. When both of them do, I just don't walk.

I’ve had the knee thing, on and off, since I was about 13, but because my Local Authority roll as 'Pointless Desk-based Pleb' has been temporarily superseded by another, much more active position (one that only causes me to consider injecting Cillit Bang directly into my eyeballs once every other day, rather than every hour, of every day, which was customary), this has recently caused the front of my left knee to swell up like walnut, and my right foot to sporadically and painfully relinquish some of it’s responsibility in keeping me upright.

Still, the new job is only a secondment for 3 months, one of which has passed already. Plus it’s such a welcome diversion from the norm that I’ll happily put up with hurty feet and gammy legs in the ongoing pursuit of job satisfaction.

Without going into specifics, the new role requires me to go out and about, roaming the streets of Brighton & Hove in a big hi-viz bomber jacket, which makes me feel like a Policeman, but makes me look like a Lollipop Lady.

The little green van I eluded to in my last post is only sometimes available to me so its more often the case that I have to grab my work-issued, free travel pass (thank you tax payer), and hop from bus to bus as I traverse our fine city.

As a way to pass the time aboard my diesel chariots, I often whip out my iPhone - other smart phones are available...but none of them are as good – and play one of the many thumb-swipey mini-games that I own. They generally cost about 69p a pop, and I’ve spent a cumulative fortune on them, and they’re all the same:
Aim ‘object thing’ in direction of ‘target thing’, swipe thumb back to increase power to propel ‘object thing’, release thumb and watch ‘object thing’ – be it a missile, rag-doll, screwed up ball of paper or disgruntled bird – as it shoots towards ‘target thing’ and yet another 5 seconds of ‘life thing’ slips, unnoticed, out the back door of existence.

Thousands of us are addicted to these little pieces of pointless software, and we continue to commit fragments of our souls to oblivion on a daily basis. Others may have even bettered my score on Save The Pencil (but I doubt it).

Take now for example. I'm currently sitting on a stony beach on a hot summer's day (I like stony beaches. They are a great leveller of people. You may be six and a half feet tall, with a rippling 6 pack and biceps the size of rugby balls, but on a stony beach in bare feet, everyone walks like a twat - with the exception of Joe Addison, who is a mentallist and does everything in bare feet.).

Anyway, here I am on a beautiful day in a beautiful place, and the only thing I'm considering is 'have I got enough time to complete my current level on 3D Mini-golf  before I go back to work'. The only reason I'm not doing it now is because I chose to write about it instead.

Bugger it, let's engage reality for a change. What's going on around me?

Well, there's someone zipping around on a jet-ski about a hundred yards out to sea. Jet-ski's look fun. If I ever get to have a go on one, I will of course review the experience here, although I can probably give you a bit of a preview now:

"....then I hit the water, face first, at 50mph...."

"....I screamed at the swimmers to move, but it was too late...."

"...they had to close the pier for 3 hours to cut me out of the wreckage..."

All I need now is someone with a jet-ski to facilitate my inevitable catastrophe. Any takers? No?

I realise that this post isn’t really going anywhere, which is why I’ll end it with the most fantastic anecdote I heard recently:

A friend recently hired a chalet in a resort in France. Both him and his Grandma were staying there – although he was only staying for a week, while his nan was staying on for longer. On his last day, he felt the urge to go to the toilet and subsequently had the most enormous poop; no doubt a result of the previous week’s gluttony and fine French dining. Upon pulling the chain he soon realised that the small chalet toilet was unable to cope with his transaction. He tried again, and again, and again. Each time the bowl would fill with water, but slowly drain away, leaving the mucky prize behind. This left him with 2 choices: He could either tell his Grandma and leave her to deal with it, or he could seek the assistance of someone who he would probably never see again in his life. So, faced with this lesser of two evils, he went to get one of the maids that serviced the chalets. He barely spoke a word of French but managed, through wild gesticulation, to get a maid to follow him back to his bathroom where he lifted the toilet seat, pointed at the offending item, and said in his best French accent “regard”, upon which he pulled the chain, and the whole thing just flushed away normally…….. Now imagine that you are the maid. What just happened?


Friday 15 June 2012

Can I be a Cool Rider?

At about midday today, we (the great Brightonian public) experienced a modicum of sunshine through a letter-box sized gap in the clouds – I know! In mid June! Who’d have thought it?

I happened to be out on the road at the time, pootling around in the little green Escort van that my Local Authority day job often requires me to use. Driving it makes me feel like an environmentally conscious Postman Pat.

Anyway, at the appointed hour, the clouds parted and sunlight smacked the windscreen, which caused the ambient temperature in the van to rise almost instantly, forcing me to reach for the partially snapped window winder by my knee (no expense sparing spared, when it comes to tax payer’s money). As the wind forced its way into the van and hit me in the face, I was presented with the same thought that often presents itself when I experience a cool breeze on a hot day:

God, I really want a motorbike! (uttered as a yearning statement, rather than an actual prayer – note the absent prefix of ‘Dear’)

A proper motorbike! Not that tiny thing I ride for Chauffeur Monkey, which is, in essence, a child’s toy. I want a proper motorbike with a proper engine. I want something that could not be overtaken by, if such a thing were able to travel, a washing machine – which I worked out some time ago, our washing machine at home could achieve just over 50mph on maximum spin if the drum were in contact with the floor. The long winter evenings just fly past at my house….

It is at this point I must, in order to justify the reasons behind this post, make the single most embarrassing confession I’ve ever put into print:

I used to bunk off school. That’s not the embarrassing part – lots of kids used to bunk off at my school, or to use Sheffield’s finest learning establishment, Newfield Secondary School’s colloquial terminology,‘wag it’:

(the following typical conversation between my schoolmate and me should be visualised and conducted in your best Bernard Manning accent)

“Are you waggin’ it today Jake?”

“I’m waggin’ it. Are you waggin’ it?”

“I’m defo waggin’ it. Wanna wag it round mine? Me mam’s not in”

“Aye! Let’s wag it”

And with that, we’d pool our loose change, buy ten B&H (plus a packet of Rizlas for making ‘butt-rollies’ when we’d finished all the fags), and head to my erstwhile school chum’s mother-free house to watch for the thousandth time – I kid you not – Grease 2!

In my defence, it was always his idea to watch it (he shall remain nameless to prevent any undue distress and/or possible legal action). However, and to my utter discredit, I never objected. While the majority of my peers were gaining that essential foundational education that would set them on course for their glittering careers, I was, more often than not, to be found in a dingy attic bedroom, smoking copious amounts of cigarettes signing along to ‘Let’s Bowl’.

As a plot device, the cars in the original Grease have been swapped for motorcycles in Grease 2, as if by doing so, no one would suspect that it’s practically the same film as it's predecessor, but in reverse. This time it’s the guy who’s all shy and quiet to begin with, while the girl – Michelle Pfeiffer – is a sassy rock chick on the lookout for a ‘Cool Rider’ to sweep her off her feet.

To save myself further humiliation I will say no more about it, other than the idea of being a ‘Cool Rider’ has permeated my entire life since,and refuses to abate.

As a first attempt at achieving my dream, I once bought a Honda C90 motorbike from someone at school for £20. Alarm bells should have started ringing when he produced it from inside a nearby hedge, but my mum said it was ok for her 14 year old son to buy a motorbike for £20 from someone at school, so those alarm bells had effectively been disconnected from the mains.

It didn’t work (obviously) so I free-wheeled it through the park down to my house, where I was determined that I would teach myself to fix it. I lugged it through the back door, through the kitchen and down to the cellar, where it stayed untouched until I moved out. Best 20 quid I ever spent!

From that point to this, I have periodically thought about owning a proper bike - Usually, as I said, when the wind is in my hair, fuelling the fire of boyhood fantasy. The trouble (or saving grace, depending on how you want to look at it) is that I’ve never really had enough disposable income to buy one, so it’s always been sandwiched in between ‘another tattoo’ and ‘salad tongs’ on my list of priority purchases.

And while I still can’t afford one, sometimes, if I’m out on the Monkey Bike on a clear warm summer’s evening, I close my eyes and just imagine myself astride a Honda Shadow 750, with Michelle Pfeiffer (circa1982) dressed head-to-toe in leather, squeezing me round the waist, as I power off into the sunset.

The fantasy never lasts long however, because believe it or not, it’s incredibly dangerous to close your eyes while riding a motorbike, regardless of it’s size.



Twitter: @Ihavewrites

Wednesday 13 June 2012

The Mercedes E Class Cabriolet Vs a Volkswagon Polo with no clutch!


So, last night was a bit of an action fuelled adventure. Remember the E Class Mercedes I wrote about? You know, the big flashy fanny magnet?

Well I had to do the same job last night, which meant that instead of bombing to the customer on my monkey bike, I was driven to him by one of my monkey colleagues, who would then also drive to the client’s house at the other end in order to pick me up and drive me home. Well, that’s the theory anyway…..

Upon arriving at the client’s house in deepest, darkest Essex at around midnight, I noted with a little dismay that my monkey chum was not awaiting my arrival with the usual self-satisfied grin that says: “I didn’t have to professionally stick to the speed limit like you did in order to get here

Still, without wishing to concern the client, I parked his Merc, bade him farewell and wandered slowly up the road, hoping to get a better signal on my phone in order to call my simian co-worker and find out what was keeping him.

The following conversation took place:

“Hi Jake”

“Alright Neil, did you get stuck in that tailback too?”

“Yep, but I’ve got another problem-ette”

“Riiiiiight? What’s up?”

“My clutch has gone! I’m in gear now…… but….er…. I can’t stop, otherwise the car will die”

“WHAT?”

“Yeah! I’m near you now, but you’re going to have to jump in while the car’s moving”

“O…..k…. What gear are you in?”

“4th”

“Shit!”

There then followed a scene that wouldn’t have been out of place on ‘Police, Camera, Action!

Neil, to his credit did try and slow the car down to the absolute capacity of 4th gear, which turned out to be about 10mph…. any slower and it would have stalled.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had recourse to open a car door whilst sprinting? If you haven’t, but are interested as to what the experience is like, let me put it this way: It’s not something I’ll be doing again in a hurry, but I’m glad I can put it on my CV.

So, the passenger door was now open, but the effort I had spent in the successful bodily coordination of running and door opening had lost me precious ground, and the car was slowly creeping away from me. This coupled with the fact that I am possibly the un-fittest living entity on the planet, meant that what little breath I had left was about to leave me and force all of my major organs to shut down.

Neil tentatively released some pressure from the accelerator and the car slowed a little, but started to shudder under the strain of having to remain in 4th gear at such a relatively slow speed. I made a last-ditch attempt at a sprint and leaped, feet first at the open car door.

I landed, with unsurprisingly little finesse, on the passenger seat at which point Neil and I burst into child-like guffaws as I closed the door and we sped away.

It was the closest I think I will ever feel to being in an action movie. Not a good action movie mind; I’m thinking more Action Jackson, than Commando.

But our adventure was not over yet……..

“Neil, even if we manage to make it to the Dartford bridge without stopping, we’re going to have to at least slow to a crawl for the barrier to let us through”

“Yeah… I’m not sure how we’re going to manage that, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it”

“I see what you did there”

Thankfully we managed to avoid any major hazards between Essex and the M25, other than a set of traffic lights that were decent enough to remain green until we passed them. I have never before thanked a set of traffic lights with such enthusiasm.

“I’ve had an idea” said Neil as we started to climb the Dartford bridge.

“Go on…”

“If I can match the engine speed with the gears, there’s a possibility I can put it in a lower gear as we approach the barrier”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“The gears are moving at a certain speed. If I can match that speed with the engine, I might be able to jam it into a lower gear without the clutch”

“mm-hmm, and what happens if that doesn’t work?”

“It might get a bit Thelma and Louise-y

“I’m not being Thelma”

As we started our descent on the other side of the bridge, Neil slipped the car into neutral and we began to coast towards our inevitable doom with a sort of tense contemplation. Alanis Morissette's ‘Ironic’ was quietly seeping out of the radio as we drew closer. I wondered if anything about our situation was ironic, and decided that it probably wasn’t. However, seeing as Alanis Morissette has no idea what irony is, perhaps that fact alone would perversely inject irony into our own situation. Probably not!

It’s a shit song anyway. And not in an ironic way.

Resigning ourselves to the fact that one of us would soon probably have to jump out and walk across multiple lanes of motorway traffic to bother some night patrol person and explain that our car was properly fucked and couldn’t move, we trepidatiously crept up to the barrier.

After 10pm the Dartford toll is free so the barrier dutifully sprung open as we hit the pressure plate at about 2mph. It was at this exact moment that Neil screamed:

“I’VE FOUND SECOND GEAR!!!”

With that, we lurched forward and then powered out onto the motorway to a cacophony of crunching as Neil successfully managed to also find 3rd, 4th and 5th gear without the aid of that pesky clutch.

As the motorway lanes narrowed to the usual three, we passed a trio of ‘lads’ on the hard shoulder in a souped-up, but very much broken-down Citroën Saxo.

IT’S LIKE RAAAAIIIIEEEENNN, ON YOUR WEDDING DAY……

The rest of the journey was pretty uneventful in comparison. Because of his new found powers of gear changing without a clutch, Neil reckoned that he could drop me off on my road as I live on a hill, as long as he was facing down. He was right!

I’ve not spoken to him today to ask how he parked upon his return home, but I suspect ‘badly’ might adequately sum it up.

Maybe he’ll comment below?



Twitter: @Ihavewrites

Sunday 10 June 2012

Austen Allegro


Well, it’s been a while since my last post, but I didn’t really think I’d get as far as I have with writing this blog anyway.

I love writing, but I never seem to be able to keep it up. Believe it or not (why would you not? It would be the crappest lie ever), there are about 5 other blog pages floating around in cyberspace that I’ve both started and discarded, untouched and I daresay unread since I last looked at them.

I find that thinking about this leads me down an eerie path.

In December 1947 we began to discover fragments of parchment in a cave on the shoreline of the Dead Sea in Israel (‘we’ as in people, not ‘we’ as in me and you. At least, I don’t think I was there…… 1947 was a bit of a blur if I’m honest)

These pieces of manuscript were to make up what are now referred to as the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest accounts to date of Jewish biblical history in writing. They apparently date back to around 150BC, which, without wanting to labour the point, is fucking old.

Why mention this?

Well, because of our incessant need to modernise (‘our’ as in people’s, not ‘our’ as in mine and yours. I still think file’o’faxes are a good idea), in two thousand years from now – long after every computer and every server in existence has crashed or died – unless it has been successfully copied, the vast majority of digitally written information we currently hold will be lost…… forever!

No one is going to dig up a Kindle in 2,000 year’s time and be able to use it to discern anything about how we lived over two millennia ago.

The same goes for pictures. We’re going to lose them too.

Hardly anybody makes hard copy prints of pictures any more. Photo albums are already becoming a thing of the past. As we plough on and continue to digitise everything that we produce, in 2,000 years there could well be no pictorial or written evidence that a civilization from our great grandchildren onwards ever existed if we don’t successfully copy the information we produce.

While the thought of this is slightly unnerving, thankfully it does mean that in 4012 it’s likely that no one is going to stumble across my mainly pointless internet based musings, and use them to construct a model of 21st Century life. I wouldn’t be doing us justice.

So, safe in the knowledge that my cyber ramblings will not survive the test of time, I will continue to brain-spew every now and again as fancy takes me.

I’m beginning to regret being so specific with this blog. I can usually think of a ton of stuff to drivel on about, but to try and squeeze it into a framework that involves cars, something that I don’t actually care about that much, has really managed to stifle my creative juices.

Whilst I fell in love with the idea for this blog, the trouble is that while I do get to drive a load of motors, 90% of them are just average, run of the mill, boring cars. Who wants to hear about an old VW Passat? No? What about a Vauxhall Zafira? Hmm? How about a Ford S-Max? I’m boring myself here.

I’ll give you an example of how much of a poor choice cars are for me to write about:

My grandma had an Austen Allegro when I was growing up. I have such fond memories of that car. It was green with a rectangle steering wheel and I used to sit on the bonnet (when it was parked, I hasten to add……. Not as some kind of dreadful punishment). That is my review of the Austen Allegro in its entirety.

I recently briefly considered purchasing an Austen Allegro for purely nostalgic purposes, only to discover that The Sun ran a public poll in 2008 which voted the Austen Allegro as the worst car ever made. Ever Made! That’s how ill suited I am to writing about cars.

So what is to become of this blog?

Well I reckon I’ll keep writing, and report on fancy/interesting/unbelievably shit cars as and when I get to drive them, but I think that widening the spectrum of content will do wonders in my ongoing battle against writing apathy.

So from now on you can expect erratic whimsical opinion pieces on pretty much anything that falls out of my cranium. I will try and cram cars into as many posts as possible though. For example, I was thinking of writing a post about Jeremy Kyle, and what type of car I’d most like to run him over with.

I’ve had some really good feedback about this blog, so I hope this change of direction doesn’t dishearten you my dear reader.

I’ll leave you for now with the immortal words* of the great Jerry Springer:

“Until next time, take care of yourselves….. and each other”






*Not to be confused with his other phrase:

“Somebody get me some more Viagra. I can feel my heart slowing down and I’m not red enough”



Twitter: @Ihavewrites


Tuesday 8 May 2012

Jaguar X-Type (via IKEA)


I went to IKEA on Monday. I hate going to IKEA. It's not the store itself I detest (although there is only so much pleasure one can derive from flat-pack furniture made out of heavily laminated chipboard with novelty Scandinavian names, which I swear are just fabricated at Head Office by making up a word with too many hard consonants and shoving some dots on it).

It's the journey there and back that makes me want to punch the whole of humanity in the face.

When you live in Brighton and you have to - one surely never truly wants to - go to IKEA, you have 2 choices of destination:

  1. Up the M23 until you hit Croyden (described as 'London's Garden', mainly by arse holes).
  2. Up the M23 and round the M25 until you hit Thurrock (as well as nearly every other car on the road).
Both journeys invariably turn me into a seething ball of coiled rage.

It's said that society is three square meals away from anarchy. If this is true then it would appear that no one in Croyden has eaten in over a week. It’s a place where every car becomes 'The Enemy', road markings are to be ignored at any cost, and traffic lights are just things that happen to other people.

Then there's the parking when you get there.

Whenever I go shopping I find immense joy in parking right at the back of busy car parks, where I always have a choice of spaces. Nothing could be better described as 'smug' than my face as I walk the relatively short distance from my car to the supermarket, as other drivers who got there before me are still swarming round the entrance desperately trying to park as close as physically possible to the fruit'n'veg aisle.

However, because IKEA is constantly so bloody busy, there is always the inevitable game of 'Hunt the Space' to be played, regardless of where you are in the car park. It's fun for all the family.

"THERE'S ONE, THERE!"
"that’s the bit where you park your trolley Ebs"
"ok..... THERE'S ONE, THERE'S SOMEONE LEAVING"
"No, that other car's waiting to get in"
"oh..... THERE'S ONE"
"that’s the trolley park again Ebs".......

So that's Croyden in a nutshell.

Should we head for Thurrock then and take the M25 instead?

The M25. A place where the tail-gater is to be found in his natural habitat, majestically leaping from car to car in an apparent desperate attempt to mate with them.

I used to think that I was being really clever by saying "I hate people who say they hate people for having just one flaw in their character" (I know, I'm a complete prick), and while I still stand by that rather wanky piece of pseudo-philosophy, you've got to work pretty bloody hard to get into my good books if you are partial to tailgating or use your phone while driving.

I shouldn't have to explain why tailgating makes me angry. Bottom line, if you do it all the time there's a chance you're going to kill someone one day. I'd very much not like it to be me thank you very much. The same thing applies to using a phone while driving.

In fact, the sight of a driver guilty of either of these Offences (and they are Offences, with a capital 'O') makes me want to abandon my own journey, follow them home, and put dog shit through their letterbox (which while also being an Offence with a capital 'O', would be Satisfying with a capital 'S').

However, despite making the 126 mile round trip up to IKEA (we settled on Thurrock in the end, as I just wasn't up for crawling through 'London's Garden' in the Bank Holiday traffic), we didn't buy anything!!

The reason we went in the first place was to pick up a set of shelves for Ebony’s bedroom, but I knew that once we were there Mrs W would no doubt want to ‘get her shop on’. I was all ready to dutifully shuffle round the aisles with my customary fixed grin and my boredom fully suppressed.

However, to her credit we headed straight for the shelves and, with a small pit-stop to service a leaking baby, then ploughed through to the warehouse at the end to claim our novelty named laminated chipboard prize.

The moment we saw it in all its flat-packed glory we both knew it would never fit in our car. There may have been some swearing.

Back on the road empty handed then. More tailgating, more phones and for some reason, lots of personalised number plates. I don’t get the thinking behind personal plates. If you want me to know that you like to waste money, why not just throw a handful of tenners out of your window every few miles?

Well, that's me done for this rather ranty post, but I guess I’d better mention a car before I sign off seeing as that’s the whole reason why this blog exists in the first place. 


Let's see, I drove a Jaguar X-Type for the first time last Saturday. It was alright.



Twitter: @Ihavewrites