It’s All Due To That Bloody Covid, Again

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Apologies for the lateness of this post, but I’ve not long got back from Norwich.

“Norwich?  Why have you spent two and a half hours driving to that fair town which once hosted ‘The Quiz Of The Week’ and another two and a half hours driving home again?”, I hear you ask.

Well, I’ll tell you: it was to take eldest and only daughter for her driving test.

Due to a shortage of driving test examiners (many of them left and retrained during Covid times, I’m told, and the numbers have yet to get back to normal), there is nothing available in this area.

Nuffin’.

For the past six-months, she has been signed up to do her test in Norwich (where there seems to be a glut of examiners) in the hope of getting a cancellation a bit nearer to home.

But, no joy.

She even paid for an app that alerts her when a cancellation comes up, but it seems that if you don’t press that Accept button within 30 seconds of it coming through, you lose out to someone else who is quicker off the mark.

And, it’s not just round these parts that people are having trouble booking a driving test. It seems it’s over much of the country – Norwich excepted.

I saw on the news a little while back the tale of a young lad from Reading who booked his test in Glasgow, because he couldn’t get anywhere, any nearer, any time soon. And someone who works with my daughter, dragged herself all the way up to Blackpool, for the same reason.

I don’t know how much is involved in becoming a driving examiner, but as they are in such demand, I would have thought people would be jumping at the chance.

And so, anyway… how did she do?

She passed.

Thank heavens.

Old Fogey FM

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When making any journeys of a reasonable distance in my car, I tend to listen to a range of podcasts and comedy shows, to keep me entertained and stop me from falling asleep.

However, my daughter’s car only has a radio for entertainment.

And, a bit of a rubbish one at that! The DAB side of things doesn’t work and so we are restricted to whatever can be picked up on FM (maybe I should have paid extra and got the radio fixed as well as the headlight).

And I say ‘we’ but I mean ‘me’, as she spends much of the journey into work, fast asleep.

Anyway.

My usual goto station is Classic FM or sometimes I’ll listen to a bit of chat with Nick Ferrari on LBC, but both of those stations drive me mad with the amount of adverts. Every ten minutes or so, you are forced to listen to the same adverts. Again and again. Drives me mad.

So, if I don’t want to listen to adverts (and I don’t), that just leaves the BBC stations.

Our local – Three Counties Radio – does my head in as well.  Stupid people phoning in to give their stupid opinions on stupid things. Mostly.

Radio 4? Well, that’s alright if there is a major news story or two to listen to, otherwise I find it a bit dull in the morning.

Radio 1 and its inane Smashey & Nicey jocks? I’ve not listened to that since my balls dropped and I’ve no intention of starting again now.

Radio 3 is bit too heavy for me, classical-wise, so I tend to give it a miss.

That just leaves Radio 2.  The station for the oldies. And so, I’ve been giving it a try these past few weeks and I have to say I’m quite enjoying it.  Obviously, I’m only listening to the Breakfast Show as I drive to and from Watford, but I have to say I really quite like the style of the presenter (I don’t think we call them DJs anymore) Zoe Ball and I’m enjoying much of the music played on there.

I’ve turned into my dad.

Porch Pirates

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On the way back from our morning walk, each day, Saber and I pass some houses in a small close.

One of the houses has a storm porch that covers the front door and the window to one side of it.

Under the window and on the step of the storm porch are a couple of large plant pots – not that I have ever seen anything growing out of them.

But, taped to the inside of the window glass is an A4 sized piece of paper and printed on that paper in a large font – large enough that I can read it easily from the footpath as we walk past – are the words “Delivery Drivers: Please Hide Parcels Behind Plant Pots”.

If I were a passing porch thief, I’d be tempted to take a look behind those pots each day to see if my luck was in.

Now, I don’t know if they have ever had anything stolen from their porch, but maybe a smaller, more discreet piece of paper – that can’t be read from twenty-five feet away – would be a better bet.

Either that, or take a leaf from Mark Rober’s book (I just love the stuff this guy does!)

Feeling Hot Hot Hot

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It used to be – in my younger days – that I would ride in all weathers. Mainly because I had to – my motorcycle being the only form of powered transport I had to get me to work.

Nowadays, I ride for fun and have become what they call a ‘Fair weather rider”.

As I say, I ride nowadays for the enjoyment of motorcycling, but I don’t get any enjoyment in riding in the rain or the cold. And so, the bike tends to sit in the garage during the less temperate months of the year.

But, sometimes in these Winter months,  we will get a day that is bright and sunny and which looks like a perfect day for biking. And indeed, that is often confirmed by the number of bikes that are out on the roads.

But not me.

Because, as bright and as sunny as it might be, it’s still bloody cold.

Yes, you can wrap yourself up with layers and I’ve been known before now to go out on my bike, looking like the Michelin Man.  But, once that cold works it’s way into all those layers – and it will – you will be flippin’ freezing.

And so – because I feel I am missing out on some good biking days – I have invested in some heated apparel.

The heated jacket in the photo above is powered from the bike’s battery. Using micro carbon fibre heating elements, it’s light and warm and can be worn under your main jacket. With three heat settings, it is pretty much guaranteed to keep you warm and toasty whilst riding.  All the reviews I have read have been most positive.

I haven’t tried it out yet though, because I have to wire it into the bike first, which means working in the garage.

And it’s too cold in there.

Lighting the way

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Daughter’s car went in to our local Vauxhall dealership for a service and MOT, yesterday.

As it had a couple of advisories from last year, I agreed upfront to get those done.

Calculating it roughly in my head, I expected it to come to somewhere between five and six hundred quid.

But, I received the dreaded phone call halfway through the afternoon. If they ring toward the end of the day, you know that the chances are that everything is OK and the vehicle is ready for collection.  But, those halfway-through-the-day calls? They can only mean one thing: more cost.

Which is exactly what happened here. It had failed it’s MOT. Not spectacularly, but it had failed nonetheless.  Also there were issues with the brake fluid and the coolant,  both  of which needed to be replaced. The main culprit though was the nearside headlight – they were unable to adjust the beam and it looked like the mechanism had failed. It would need a new one.

“We have one in stock. That’ll be six-hundred and sixty-five pounds”.

“A hundred and sixty-five pounds?  Bit pricey for a headlamp, but OK”.

“No. SIX hundred and sixty-five”.

“WHAT?!”

Unfortunately, she needs her car next week and so we haven’t got time to hunt around for one from a breakers yard or anything, and so I agreed to having it done.

Hobson’s Choice.

Total cost at the end of the day?

One thousand, four hundred and forty-four of your English pounds.

Eek!

I have to admit, the car does feel better; the engine feels a bit smoother and driving home from the dealership last night, I could actually see the road in front of me… which was nice.

But, 650 quid.

For a headlight.

For a Corsa.

Mad.

 

 

A Little Prick

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The phone rang last week and the voice on the other end introduced herself as the nurse from our doctor’s surgery.

She wanted to offer me a jab for pneumonia.

“Yet another jab to have every year?” I asked. “Along with the Covid and Flu ones?”

“No”, she said, “this is a single jab that should last your whole life”.

“My whole life? Well, that’s a once-in-a-lifetime offer!  I can’t turn that down!” I said.

And so, yesterday, I paid a quick visit to the surgery and nurse Patricia – for that was her name – injected me with some sort of super serum that is going to protect me for the rest of my life.

One down.

396 other maladies to go.

Motoring Madness

/ masher / 13 Comments

Well, let’s kick this thing off with a bit of a rant, shall we?

Something that has been driving me absolutely barmy for a long time now, but which just seems to be getting worse: traffic.

This past week has been absolutely horrendous for me on the roads.

And by ‘roads’ I mean the M1 motorway.

Yes, I’m still having to drive my daughter to Watford each morning for work – more on that in a later post, probably – and quite often we get delayed due to an accident on the motorway.

But, this past week we have been delayed EVERY SINGLE BLOODY DAY due to accidents. Every day.

And trying to take alternative routes is pointless, because everybody else does exactly the same and the smaller roads just don’t have the capacity for that amount of traffic.

I have to feel sorry for the good people of Harpenden though: whenever there is a hold-up on the M1, the amount of traffic on Harpenden High Street increases ten-fold, as we all try to crawl our way further south and pick up the motorway a bit futher down.

Now, Friday’s tend to have less traffic and the motorway is usually quite a reasonable journey for us, but last Friday, it was horrendous!  Again.  Another bloody accident.

Not only that, but there was also an accident on the way home, which added another forty minutes to my journey.

Why do we have so many accidents on our roads?  Why can’t people just learn to drive properly? I do wonder how many of these accidents are caused by people talking (or worse) on their phones whilst driving because, I see this happening every day.

And, driving too fast and too close to the car in front. Why is it, that when some people get behind the steering wheel  – and I’m talking about the steering wheels of German cars in the main, here – they suddenly think they have Lewis Hamilton-like driving skills?

Which they don’t.

There is a campaign for the motorway speed limit to be raised to 80MPH. Eighty!

Good lord, please, no!  It’ll only make it worse.  There will be even more accidents.

How many millions of man-hours are lost each week, by us sitting in traffic, going nowhere?

How many accidents are there on the motorways each week? How many fatalities?

Although it’s a pain, in one respect, I don’t mind driving my daughter to work each day, as once she has passed her test, she will be on the motorway herself, driving alongside all those idiots.

And that thought fills me with dread.

 

 

Mini Me

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The first time Son beat me at chess, I put it down to me being caught unawares, what with him having been totally rubbish in all our previous games.

I vowed there and then, to not  let it happen again.

But it did.

We have played a couple of times since then, and he has beaten me each time.

It would seem, the student has become the master (not that I’m particularly good at chess, but I was always better than he was!).

Last night, we went out for a family meal at a steakhouse in Stevenage.  Usually, when we go out to these sorts of places, I am the first to finish my meal – because I don’t fuck about when it comes to food.  But last night, I was only halfway through my 8oz sirloin when I heard Son put his cutlery down. I looked across at his empty plate and raised a quizzical eyebrow. “I was hungry”, he said, nonchalantly.

Afterwards, we went across to the Ten Pin Bowling alley and had a couple of games.  Again, this is something I normally thrash the rest of the family at.  But last night, I had to settle for second place, as Son showed us how it was done. Twice.

At the moment, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I found out that he writes a blog and has a thousand followers!

 

 

Blogging Ennui

/ masher / 9 Comments

Hello.

I need to write something here.

I haven’t written anything in ages.

Well, just over a month, it seems.

But still…

This always happens this time of year: a lack of enthusiasm.

After Christmas, my blogging mojo seems to disappear for a while.

That’s why I keep doing the February blog-a-thon thing: as terrifying as it is, it gets me back into the habit of writing things down… putting pen to paper / fingers to keyboard.

And it really is just a lack of the aforementioned enthusiasm.  Stuff continues to happen and often I’ll think “That’ll be a good piece for the blog”, but I just can’t be bothered to sit down and write it up.

Of course, what I should be doing is noting these occasionally interesting snippets down on a piece of paper. At least then I could use them in February.

But, I don’t note them down. Because I can’t even be bothered to do that.

Even writing this post, is hard. I have just spent the last five minutes with my hands on my head, staring at the screen and wondering what the next line should be.

And, on top of everything (just figured out the next line. This line)… and on top of everything, when I haven’t written in a while, I know about it.

I know about it in my head.

It hangs over me like some form of guilt… like a monkey on my back.

If only that monkey had a typewriter.

And when it gets like that, the only relief is to write some rubbish and press that PUBLISH button.

Ooh, that feels so good.

Lid

/ masher / 7 Comments

My crash helmet has built-in Bluetooth, allowing me to make and receive phone calls, listen to music or receive directions from Google Maps as I ride. This is – of course – all very useful.

It will also allow me to have conversations with other motorcyclists who are in our riding group and who have the same comms package. Unfortunately, this isn’t so useful, as none of my riding pals have this.

But, anyway…

Anyway, my helmet developed a fault and would not charge correctly. Of course, it has done this six months outside the warranty period.

And so, after much, much scouring of the Internets to see if anyone else has had this issue (and possibly fixed it), I managed to find not one single example of someone else having the same problem.

I decided to contact the manufacturer.  On their website, there was a Support page where I could ask my very simple question: “The LED no longer goes blue when the helmet is fully charged. Any ideas?”

But, to ask this very simple question, I had to traverse a range of text boxes asking for all my details.

I tried to ignore them all: all they needed was my question, the model number of the device and my email address so they could contact me back.

But no… every field was mandatory.

In order to submit my simple question to them I had to fill in each of the following:

First Name
Last Name
Phone Number
Email Address
Home Address
Country
City
Postcode
Model Number
Date Of Purchase
Where Purchased

And then, after giving them all my unnecessary personal details, they asked me to tick a box saying that I agree to their privacy policy!

Of course, I only gave them the bare minimum of genuine info – as I mentioned above – putting fake details into the remaining boxes. And – of course – I used an email address that I reserve for such things, so that my main email doesn’t get spammed more than it already does.

So, I was amused yesterday when I received an email from them saying:

“Dear Timothy Hetherington-Smythe . Thank you for your enquiry. Please try doing a firmware upgrade.”

It annoys me that all these companies feel the need to have all our personal details on their databases.

In turn, it pleases me that several of these companies think they have my details, but in reality, what they have is a load of old rubbish.

The firmware update worked, though. 🙂

 

Hi honey… I’m home!

/ masher / 10 Comments

Not that you’d know that I’ve been away… but I have.

We have.

The current Mrs. Masher and I.

Just returned from a very relaxing, all-inclusive, adults only holiday in Cape Verde.

‘Relaxing’ was the word: we planned to do bugger all and we did bugger all.

Apart from. going out on a catamaran for the day and also on some dune buggies.

Oh, and there was the 4×4 excursion.

And the longwalks in the blazing sun, to bag a couple of Geocaches. Mad dogs and Englishmen and all that!

But, apart from that, our time was mainly spent lazing in and around the pool, drinking beer and knocking back the ol’ cuba libras.

I did plenty of reading: various radio, electronics, computer and motorcycling magazines that I had taken with me, and also some books on my Kindle. I finally got round to reading (and finishing) Animal Farm – any time I mentioned that to any of the many casual acquaintances that we made around the pool, the conversation would always go thusly:

“What’s that you’re reading there?”

“Animal Farm”

“Oh, not the original one, I hope”, they would say with a loud snigger and a wink.  It would seem that for many, the ‘original’ Animal Farm is a porn film about beastiality that was made in the 1980s, and not the George Orwell classic from 1945… which is, of course, what I was reading.

I also whiled away some of the time by listening to music and comedy shows that I had pre-loaded onto my mp3 player.

One day, as I lay giggling on my sunbed, under the shade of a palm tree, the young waiter who was collecting the empty glasses, asked what I was laughing at. “Steptoe & Son”, I said.

“I have not heard of this”, he said.

“It’s sixty years old, so I’m not really surprised”, I replied.

“What is it about?” he continued, his rictus-like smile never dropping.

“It’s about a father and son who work together in London as rag and bone men and…”. His uncomprehending eyes told me there was very little point in explaining any further. “Don’t worry about it”, I said. “Can I have two more beers, please?