Taking A Short Break

Going on holiday to a resort just twenty minutes away from my home is total anathema to me. Even worse is spending a lot of money to do it. Yet, on Monday, that’s exactly what I’ll be doing. I will be travelling the 14.7 miles (roughly 19 minutes driving time, according to Google Maps) from my front door to Center Parcs, where we’ll spend a week just recovering after the rush of the busy Christmas and New Year season in the pub.

To be fair, I know several people who holiday at the same place and live in the same vicinity as me, and they all tell me that it’s wonderful because apparently, once you’re there, you could be anywhere in the world. You would have no idea that home is just a few minutes away.

Well, let me tell you: the weather forecast for next Wednesday – as an example – is exactly zero degrees. That rules out the fact that I might be in the Far East or perhaps South Africa; the coldest it’s due to be in Bangkok on Wednesday is 24 degrees Celsius while Cape Town is expecting a low of 17 and a high of 30 on the same day. It’s also due to be wet at our chosen destination; in contrast, Brunei Darussalam might be expecting some thunder showers this week but they are also experiencing a rather balmy 32 degrees C at the moment.

Of course, at any given moment I’ll be able to sit on the patio of my Woodland Lodge and hear the shriek of an F15-E Strike Eagle fighter jet taking off from the nearby Lakenheath Air Base which, because I know this already, is just 11 miles north of my house.

So, even though my car will be parked in a car park a fair walk from our accommodation and even though there are swimming pools and restaurants and bars all on site, all with their prices adjusted for a captive audience, and even though we’ll be able to cycle serenely through forest lands, I’ll still know that I’m actually only just up the road from my home.

Of course, to rub salt in the wound, I decided I’d read the activity brochure that Center Parcs provide when you book your holiday. Malachy and Jacob both got quite excited by the fact that, whilst on holiday, we can book to go on quad bikes and go-karts, or we can take part in clay pigeon shooting and archery. It all sounds wonderful until you realise that this means being picked up by Grumpy Pete, who will then drive us all the way back to the village where we live in order to go on the activities at Wild Tracks.

When you take all this in to consideration, and then add up the cost, I’m left wondering why I didn’t just book an easyJet flight out to Malaga. A week in Spain would have been cheaper, quieter, far away from home – and the forecast for Wednesday in Nueva Andalucía is sunny and twenty degrees.

So far, the only advantage I can find to nipping up the road for our winter break is this: when the kids start whining “are we there yet?” I’ll be able to turn around and say, emphatically:

“Yes!”

-----------------------------
(See you when we get back.)

How Not To Bring Down The Price Of Fuel

Spam e-mail is the bane of most of our technologically advanced lives. Fortunately, these days, we have wonderfully expensive pieces of software sitting in the background to filter out spam, then our e-mail clients do a little bit to help us out too and, if we’re still blighted by this electronic junk mail, we can always buy a little bit more protection from our anti-virus provider.

To get around all these spam techniques, marketers invented viral e-mail. Simply put, they create a funny story, video or compelling article, then mail it out to a few people with a caveat at the bottom that encourages them to send it on to everybody in their address book. Perennial favourites for this type of marketing are the rather soppy e-mails that tell you that if you don’t forward the mail on to your entire contact list then a spotty little girl living in Outer Speckleborough will visit your house, rub a lettuce on your private parts and infect you with the horrendous Speckles Disease. Some tell you that if you forward it on to five people you will find love, ten people and you’ll solve world peace and if you send it to everybody then by tomorrow you will have had a threesome with Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie. I have tried this one on countless occasions and, let me tell you, it doesn’t work.

Viral marketing is kind of annoying, but the one that really gets my goat at the moment is the e-mail telling everybody that on March 18^th we should all boycott BP Petrol Stations because, by doing that, we’ll somehow force all of the petrol stations in the entire world to lower their prices. This, like the one that promises me sexual gratification from two ladies simultaneously, is what is known in the professional world as a lot of old bollocks.

Oil companies are rather large corporations with a global presence. Mr and Mrs Miggins from number 10 Acacia Avenue might decide that Esso is too expensive so they will avoid them for all of next Monday to prove a point, but this is not really going to make much of a difference to some sheikh in Dubai who’s just signed the cheque for a snow dome in his own back garden.

Then, of course, there is the other point that people seem to forget. You might avoid your local Shell station in protest of their 105.3p per litre price tag (yes, that’s right Mr and Mrs America, that’s the best part of $7.69 per US Gallon so think about that the next time you have to fill up your 4.0 litre Jeep Grand Cherokee) but invariably it’s got nothing to do with Shell – or any other major oil company for that matter – because most roadside petrol stations are owned, managed or leased by an independent person (a franchisee if you like) a bit like I am with the pub.

The poor beleaguered forecourt owner has to buy his petrol in from the oil company, who probably charge him a fair price. He then has to account for the tax that is applied to fuel and, suddenly, in order to make a living, pay his rent, his utility bills and the overnight clerks who have to put up with having guns waved in their faces, he has to charge you £1.10 a litre; except he doesn’t, he keeps the price below that a little bit and hopes you’ll buy an over-priced Costa Coffee from him instead in order to make up the difference. Then, of course, you decide to shun him because he has the sign of an oil baron above his premises that an e-mail you received last Sunday instructed you to avoid and he is left with two choices: declare bankruptcy, or put his prices up in order to make up the difference of what he is now losing. The oil company will simply find another tenant to take his place, charge them for the assets of the business, and go about waiting for you to do it to another unfortunate soul.

Picking on an oil company simply won’t work. Because very few of the sites are owned or managed by the companies themselves targeting their brand won’t work; if you want to pick on a logo, choose the supermarkets. Tesco and their henchmen would be far more affected by a boycott than the oil companies themselves would be.

You can reject the poor chap down at the corner station all you want, but he still has to take the money to pass that tax on to the Government – and that’s where the problem lies. It isn’t the oil company’s fault that we are paying over a pound a litre for our fuel. Rather, it’s the taxation. In 2007, fuel tax (including VAT) amounted to 69.7% on a litre of unleaded and 67.3% for diesel.

Perhaps, rather than proscribing the oil companies as evil ne’er-do-wells sitting in their large castles surrounded by a moat of slick black stuff, a stand should be taken against the Government. This was tried in September 2000 but, because we’re not French, we didn’t have the balls to stand our ground and, when we couldn’t get petrol from the pumps, we became annoyed with each other rather than those who’d caused the protest in the first place.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not an anarchist or a minority pro-fuel taxation activist. I do believe the oil companies could do something to help with prices and, like many of us frustrated motorists, I don’t have a clue as to how to go about getting an answer to the problem. But I do know that sending me an e-mail telling me to avoid BP the next time I need to fill my car up isn’t going to do anything.

You could go and set up a petition on the Government’s website, lobbying them for a reduction in fuel tax, but I suspect they’d rather see Jeremy Clarkson as Prime Minister before they’d agree to take a chunk out of their income. You could go and drive slowly on the M1 in order to cause chaos on the motorways, but I imagine that Polish lorry drivers would probably use the hard shoulder to pass you anyway. Or maybe they’d just ram you. Perhaps you could go and sit outside oil refineries, preventing tankers from getting out but, when the local petrol station runs out of petrol and the price of fuel still hasn’t come down, your wife is likely to come down and join the throng of people throwing bottles at you instead.

I’ve not written this for any other reason than I needed to have a rant after receiving three e-mails on the same topic in less than one hour. Writing it doesn’t solve any problems, won’t prevent the price of beer going up in the next budget and certainly won’t invoke a plague of rampant lettuces in your back garden if you fail to send it on to a hundred other people. What it did do, however, was make me feel a whole lot better for venting my frustration.

You can forward it on if you like but, even if it does actually land in Bill Gates’ inbox, he won’t send you ten dollars for the pleasure of mentioning his name and it certainly won’t entice two Hollywood starlets to get down and dirty with you before the day is out.

I don’t know how to resolve this issue either but, in case it helps, I’m going to go and sign the petition for Jeremy Clarkson to be Prime Minister. It probably won’t get any better, but it’ll be a hell of a lot more fun and we won’t have to put up with cricket.

***

Click here to sign the petition to make Jeremy Clarkson Prime Minister. Interestingly, 41'482 people so far support his manifesto whilst only 70 people have signed a petition saying they don't want him in charge...

Tragic Magic Gets A Refund

I hate shopping. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that it is one of the activities that I loathe, with a passion. Yet, amazingly, and after thirteen years together, this still comes as a complete and utter shock to my wife. Every time we end up browsing stores she gets visibly more and more angry with my glassy eyed acknowledgement to each of the items she has shown me and then becomes infuriated when I point out to her that, after walking through thirteen different shops and being shown thirty eight different variations on a pink blouse with floral pattern, I am utterly bored.

Consequently, I am somewhat crap at actually purchasing gifts. I will put off going shopping until the last possible moment and then will wander round and round the shopping centres until, frustratingly, I have to ring her and ask what she would really like for her birthday/Christmas/valentine’s present. This results in her huffing and puffing down the telephone at me before announcing that I should just not bother buying anything at all and then I feel guilty and go in search of the best present I can possibly find, despite preferring to sit in a Starbucks mashing blueberry muffins into my nostrils.

Eventually, I will dash in to a few shops whose names I’m familiar with that I know she likes, and will emerge resplendent with clothes or CDs or books, all of which – it will turn out on the day I give the gift – to be of an artist she doesn’t like, a novel she’s already got or an item of clothing that’s two sizes too small.

And this, in turn, means that I’ll have to spend another day in town, trudging from shop to shop as she tries to find suitable replacements. If I’m good, and spend my time in each shop nodding sagely and agreeing that I do like the bright stripy top she’s considering replacing the rain mac I bought her with, then I might be treated to a few minutes eyeing up the open crotch fishnet catsuits in Ann Summers.

But I’ve learned today that there is a wonderful wheeze to be had in getting your Christmas presents much cheaper. Before the holidays, retailers were desperately trying to lift flagging seasonal sales by dropping the pants on their prices whilst economic doomsayers pointed out that the world was heading for a catastrophic financial disaster because your next door neighbour hadn’t been out to buy a present for his Aunt. I don’t believe this – I think that a lot of shoppers have got wise to the New Year sales and, after several years of marriage to their spouses, have agreed that instead of buying something for their Christmas Day gifts, they’ll simply enjoy a good bottle of wine and a DVD and then go shopping for each other’s gifts in the New Year.

This is all wrong. You can, indeed, get the gifts you want for your partner, give them on Christmas Day, and still save money. What you need to do is buy the wrong size, like I did. Then, innocently, a couple of weeks later stroll into the shop you bought it from, announce you need to exchange it, and the shop assistant will point out that the item is now in the sale, and so you can have some money back.

This happened to me today. Walking in to a rather expensive lingerie shop in Cambridge’s Grafton Centre, we pointed out that a rather expensive item of underwear that I had given was, perhaps, going to be a bit of a squeeze for even Kate Moss to fit in to, and therefore it needed changing. I left Ali to go with the sales assistant to change the item and stood around looking a little alien as the only man in the shop.

“Can I help you, sir?” a petite young assistant asked, stepping up in front of me and clearly unaware that my wife was already getting seen to by one of her pretty colleagues.

Being caught off guard, I said the first thing that popped in to my mind, as I usually do. “No, it’s okay thank you. I just like standing here looking at the knickers.”

The assistant didn’t even bat one of her heavily mascaraed eye lashes. “In that case, sir, I think it’s time for you to leave.”

Which I did, but not before Ali had got her new item of clothing and I’d got the fourteen pounds difference back between what I’d paid on December 22^nd and what the item was selling at this morning.

Here Comes The Snow. Oh No It Doesn't; Oh Yes It Does...

Last night, I decided to take a 1981 Talbot Sunbeam Lotus for a quick spin, just to make sure it was all working properly. After all, it had been parked in one of my parking bays for about six months without being used and, as its owner had popped over for a couple of hours for some New Year greetings, it was deemed necessary to give it a quick blast.

Despite its age, or the thick layer of dust covering it, the little white car spluttered in to life at the first attempt, backfired a couple of times and then, with a mighty roar, the normally-aspirated version of the engine used in the iconic Lotus Esprit Turbo was ready to go.

And go it could. Even after all these years, the Sunbeam Lotus is still a quick car. It’s a little aged now, and not quite as refined as a modern engine but, in a straight line, and with a little bit of a tune-up, it would probably still scare the pants off a modern day Subaru Imprezza Turbo.

But the Sunbeam, despite being essentially a French car, suffers from something quintessentially British: it panics over the mere thought of snow.

Yesterday the news and weather reports were full of warnings that thick layers of snow would befall the country over night and that, within a day, we were going to see Dennis Quaid clambering over buildings hidden beneath snow drifts so deep they would disguise the full majesty of Canary Wharf. Consequently, the Sunbeam Lotus span its wheels whenever the clutch was released, regardless of what gear you were in, and on the straightest of roads the merest hint of a corner meant that it threatened to chuck you in the ditch if you weren’t concentrating. And all this was happening at less than thirty miles per hour.

So we’ve reached that time of year again when snow becomes the disaster headline de rigeur, cars will crash, trains will stop, the economy will go in to freefall, people will call in to work sick because they sneezed and the Swiss will raise an incredulous eyebrow - and then laugh at us. And all this will happen before a drop of snow even falls. Then, because no snow will actually fall, Greenpeace will arrive on our doorsteps to tell us that Global Warming is messing up our climate and that Kevin Costner is the only person who can save us.

Take this morning, for example. Lying in bed, groaning at the bureaucrats who came up with the stupid idea to return our children to school after the Christmas holidays on a Friday, I listened to the weather report, which was full of snowy calamity. Because of the catastrophes in the clouds, every road was apparently jammed, lorries had turned over and gridlock was threatening the country. The cause of this was not that everybody had just returned to work after the festive season and was still hungover but apparently because the country was under a siege from wintry weather.

Excited, my children gave up trying to get ready for school and went and got their toboggans out, only to run outside and discover that, although the sky was a bit grey and miserable, the ground was otherwise dry.

But, because the weatherman said there was the chance of a bit of snow in the air, the Talbot Sunbeam Lotus is currently sitting in the garage, quivering and wondering which wall it should crash in to first.