What happened to you in 2009

I hope you haven’t bought tickets for Michael Jackson’s O2 concert was the text I received.

Why?  I replied  Is he dead?

It was a flippant remark, and one I quickly came to regret.

Looks that way was the reply that beeped in to my phone a second later and, turning on Sky News, sure enough there was confirmation.  Michael Jackson was dead.  Thankfully, I hadn’t bought tickets…

Now, on the last day of the year, I find myself wondering what has been the thing that has stood out most for 2009.  Sure, we could look at celebrity deaths, and if that’s what you’re interested in then the list is depressingly long, as it is every year: Keith Floyd, Farrah Fawcett, Patrick Swayze, Brittany Murphy, Patrick McGoohan, Stephen Gately and Wendy Richard are to name just a few.

If that’s what you mark your year by, why not look at the six pages of those who’ve passed away here: http://www.whosdatedwho.com/celebrities/people/list/celebrity-categories.asp?FD=yod&ID=2009

But what else has stood out for you in 2009?  It could be something special that’s happened (at least two of my friends have got engaged over Christmas alone, two more have got married this year, one has had a baby), or it could just be something funny you remember: Jenny Faulkner on GMTV yesterday morning made me chuckle when, remembering her time on Entertainment TV, she pointed out: “I learned that whenever Ben [Co-host Ben Shepherd] had something moist in his hand, it would usually end up in my face.”

Some things will just come back to haunt you for the rest of your life.  Just ask Tiger Woods…

For me, it’s difficult to pinpoint what was the exact highlight of the year.  I managed to get featured in the business section of The Times and also in Private Eye, as well as getting the pub on the television and radio news broadcasts a couple of times.

The disaster of the year is definitely buying the Renault – a deal that looked too good to be true, it certainly turned out to be!  Six and a bit months on and it is still causing me nightmares (look to my next blog over the weekend for details of its insanity during December) but there’ve been good times to, including getting time to spend with the kids over both the Summer and Christmas holidays, something that rarely seems to happen these days.

But when I think back to what has to have been the thing that stood out to me the most in 2009 it still has to be the death of Michael Jackson.  Troubled as he was, he was such a shining star during my teenage years and his death wasn’t so much of a surprise, but certainly a shock.

I wasn’t upset – I don’t do the wailing and the teeth gnashing thing, especially when it comes to somebody I didn’t know at all other than via his music, but it was still probably the biggest event of the past twelve months.

And that made me think that the most outstanding thing that’s happened this year is that we’ve made it to the end – the pub is still trading, despite news stories of so many closing on a daily basis, and the family are well.

So here’s to 2010.  I said at the start of this year that publicans who were still in business by the end of the year would be in a good position to survive in to the future.  I hope that’s true for all you publicans out there who follow this blog; I even hope it’s true for me!  There’s a lot to look forward to in the coming months, so I’ll take this opportunity to wish everybody a happy and prosperous one.

Happy New Year!

Why Isn’t There A Christmas Song At Number One?

The hype and hyperbole surrounding this week’s Number One record for Christmas can hardly have failed to catch anybody’s attention.

First up for the Christmas Number One slot is Joe McElderry, the latest incarnation of Simon Cowell’s relentless televisual approach to making millions out of getting the public to vote for who they think should win the X-Factor contest.

Up against the apparently clean living Joe is Rage Against The Machine, who probably would have stood no chance ordinarily of making it to number one except a rowdy bunch of disillusioned protagonists have set up a Facebook page and asked people to make sure RATM’s “Killing In The Name Of…” beats Cowell’s manufactured beast to the top of the festive charts.

Predictably, Simon Cowell has taken a bit of umbrage to this approach.  As has co-host Cheryl Cole.  And, according to yesterday’s Sun newspaper, so has their progeny, Joe.

They think the attempts by the Facebook crew to beat their young hero to number one are an underhand attempt to undermine their grip on the pop market.  No more shallow, though, I think than spending weeks suckering the general public into paying to vote who they want to win, virtually guaranteeing the number one spot and a place in the record books.

Personally, I have absolutely no knowledge of either band.  I can’t abide watching so-called “Reality TV” and the abhorrent noise that Rage Against The Machine seem to make, not to mention the language they use, puts me off them.

But there’s no denying both are powerful forces and, at last count, RATM appeared to be beating the X-Factor winner in the shoot-out for the festive number one spot.

Which is disappointing.  I keep hoping that Shakin’ Stevens will pop out of the woodwork with a remaking of “Merry Christmas, Everyone.”

After all, we’re talking about the Christmas Number One here, not some manufactured artist or a rubbish song that’s only reach infamy through a Social Networking site.

I’ve listened to both songs.  Once.  I don’t like either of them.  They’re not festive.  They don’t make me feel jolly or want to dance around the Christmas tree wearing awful woolly jumpers and drinking mulled wine.  They don’t put me in the mood for Christmas.

And surely, isn’t that the point of the Christmas Number One?

Maybe next year the X-Factor could get them all to sing holiday songs in the lead up to the season and put us all in the mood.  Then again, hopefully not…

What happened to Cliff Richard?  He used to rule the Christmas charts.  Not Simon Cowell.

Why Children Shouldn’t Be Allowed At Nativity Plays

There’s a reason I get all Bah-Humbuggy around this time of year: school nativity plays.

Last week, it was the turn of my six-year-old to perform dutifully – and I say ‘last week’ because it really has taken me a week to recover from it.

Not that the play was terrible, you understand.  After all, we’re talking about a bunch of Year 2 kids here, who pretty much mumble their way through whatever script their teacher has to prompt them through, looking all cute in their dressing gown shepherds costumes whilst mothers all around the room coo, and ah and “aw bless” permanently.

The problem was the fact that I had to attend the afternoon session which, it appeared, meant that I was the only bloke in a school assembly hall full of doting mothers who’d all forgotten they were in their (average age) late twenties and had suddenly turned in to grandmothers.

For those who aren’t aware, my six year old suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome, which – basically – means he has difficulty socialising and can become a little obsessive about things.  Sometimes it also gives him an excuse to get away with just being an awkward sod.

On his Nativity Day, however, he was obsessing about the fact that his dad was going to be in the audience.  He wasn’t bothered about performing in front of me, he just wanted to make sure he could see me from wherever he was on the stage.

Having paid my 50p for the performance’s programme at the door – which turned out to be a red sheet of A4 paper with all the performing kids names on it and not, actually, a programme at all – I sought out my seat.  I’d been reliably informed that Jacob would be second-row centre on the stage so figured an aisle seat would give me a vantage point from which I could see him and, more importantly, from which he could see me.

The hall was already filling up to its capacity so I grabbed a seat roughly half way down the room, right on the aisle itself, so that I was clearly visible from the stage and then set about messing with my phone while I waited for the show to start.  This, of course, meant I missed him as he walked in – and it also meant I hadn’t noticed that the real-life equivalent of Marge Simpson had taken the seat in front of me.

Suddenly, my entire view of the stage was obscured by a bouffant of untidily bunned hair.  It also meant that Jacob couldn’t see me.  I leant to the right and saw that he was scanning the audience for me so tried to catch his eye and raise my hand.  At that point, Marge moved to the right, obliterating my view.

I leaned to the left, tried once again to make eye contact with my son, and then Marge leaned to the left.

The show started, and Jacob and I hadn’t yet communicated with each other.  Every now and then I caught a glimpse of him, looking around the room with increasingly panicked eyes.  Each time I moved to try and get a clear shot at him, Marge moved to block me.  It was as if she was magnetically attached to my swivelling head.

Naturally, my constant movements were beginning to irritate the hell out of the mother behind me.  “Oh for God’s sake,” she hissed.  “Can’t you just sit still?”

“No!”  I hissed back.  “I’m trying to make sure my son knows I’m here and the woman with the big hair in front keeps moving.”

Marge heard me – which probably meant the head teacher did too – and promptly turned to glare at me.  My loud hint didn’t seem to have worked, however, as once again I tried to move to catch Jacob’s attention and she moved to prevent me.

By now, the play was underway but I had no clue as to what was going on as I had become feverishly occupied with making eye contact with Jacob.  I was just on the verge of standing up and calling “cooey!” to him when I managed to dummy right then left quickly enough to fool Marge’s hair.  She stayed right, I stayed left and Jacob’s eyes met mine.

They lit up, he stood up, and the next thing I knew he was doing the sailor’s dance he’d been unsure of doing.

I was happy.  Now, I could sit back and it didn’t matter if we didn’t see each other any more through the play.

Except that Marge had brought along little Maggie.  Only, unlike Maggie in the TV show, this girl didn’t have a dummy.  Or the wherewithal to keep her tiny trap shut.  Instead, she decided she was bored and therefore began to scream and cry.  Marge, desperate to make sure she didn’t miss a moment of whichever cherub was hers on the stage, ignored her screaming child.

And ignored it.

And ignored it.

You couldn’t hear what the six year olds up front were saying or singing because of this baby, but it kept on being allowed to wail and nobody said a word about it.  It was just accepted; other children in the audience actually took up the call of their comrade.

At one point it actually paused for breath, but you still couldn’t hear the stage because in that moment of pause all you could hear were other mothers going “aw, bless, doesn’t he look cute.”  “Look at her, isn’t she adorable.”

And then little Maggie started wailing again.

At some point I think I daydreamed of shooting both mother and child, but instead I made a mental note to suggest to the head teacher that children who aren’t performing shouldn’t be allowed along to the plays.

Eventually, after forty five minutes, Jacob’s school nativity finished and they all marched off the stage.

I still have no idea what it was about, and the programme’s utterly useless as it doesn’t actually tell me anything.  But, as the children marched up the aisle and back to their classroom, Jacob stepped out of line and gave me a hug.  “Thank you for coming to my play, Daddy,” he said seriously, then bumped fists with me and wandered off.

Aw.  Bless.

Should Jenson Button Have Won X-Factor?

Can you remember who came second in the 2007 BBC Sports Personality of the Year?

What about in 2008?

On both occasions it was a Formula One driver: Lewis Hamilton.

In fairness, can you actually remember who won the title in both of those years?  In `07 it was boxer Joe Calzaghe and in `08 it was Chris Hoy.

To be honest, despite the fact that I’m something of a slightly obsessive motorsport fanatic, I didn’t believe that Hamilton deserved the award in 2007, although I was somewhat surprised he didn’t win it given the media furore surrounding his first year in the sport.

But that’s why I didn’t think he should have won it then anyway – it was his first year in the sport.  What he achieved that year was certainly, undeniably, meteoric in a sport that sees so many newbies beaten to a pulp by their more experienced, and much richer, team-mates.  And he did have that little argument with Alonso, who threw his toys out of the pram because McLaren appeared to be favouring their prodigal son.

2008 was a little closer to call.  Winning his first Formula One World Title in only his second year of competing certainly proved he has the talent and the ability to take on the statistics of the mighty Michael Schumacher, but he did find himself up against Chris Hoy, who just happened to have won three impressive gold medals at that summer’s Olympic Games.

This year, though, the smart money was on another F1 driver, Jenson Button, to win the prestigious BBC award.  Why?  At the start of this year Button, team-mate Barrichello, and the hundreds employed at Brackley’s Honda F1 factory, didn’t have a team to race for.  He was effectively out of a job, and the odds were against him finding a competitive seat in another team.

Eventually, Ross Brawn and Nick Fry came through with a financial deal that saw the team able to turn up in Australia for the season opening race.  A deal was done with Mercedes for an engine that had to then be shoe-horned into a chassis that was designed for a Honda engine, and the bookies had Button at a hundred to one to win the title.

The odds, as they say, were stacked against him and rebranded team Brawn GP.

Yet, despite financial worries, uncertainty over the shotgun marriage of engine and chassis, driver and team triumphed in the face of adversity.  Button himself took a massive pay cut to assist the team and funded much of his own transport.  Some might argue that he’s rich and he had no choice if he wanted to stay driving in Formula One, and that’s true, but it also shows the level of commitment he was prepared to put in.

The reward was success, and his first championship after ten years of trying that had been beleaguered by awkward team-mates, truculent team bosses, some dodgy management decisions, and a somewhat unflattering playboy image cultivated by both the driver himself and the tabloid media.

You could forgive Ryan Giggs, then, for looking awkwardly surprised when he was announced as the 2009 BBC Sports Personality of the Year, pushing Button in to second place.

The result left many wondering how it had happened.

There are a couple of possibilities, ignoring the glaringly obvious one that many people simply don’t think Formula One is a sport, and that the car does most of the hard work.

The first is that Ryan Giggs is a footballer – and, as we all know because The Sun tells us so, there is nothing in the world more important than football.  This means every teenager with a mobile phone will have been calling in to vote for Giggs because his was the only name they recognised on the list.

The second is that the BBC made the hideously poor decision to broadcast Sunday’s Sports Personality of the Year, which relies on viewers to vote during the course of the show for who they want to win, at exactly the same time as the X-Factor final was being shown on ITV.

Whilst the BBC’s show brought in a fraction more than four million viewers, ITV’s flagship show got almost five times that amount.

With everybody hellbent on making sure Joe McElderry won and thus lining Simon Cowell’s pockets with even more gold, they forgot to switch to the other channel and vote for any of the ten worthy candidates for the Sports Personality award.

I have no idea if a racing driver will be in the running for next year’s Sports Personality award but it strikes me that, if the BBC want people to actually watch the show in 2010, they’re going to have to either block all ITV signals or pick a date that doesn’t conflict with the nation’s obsession with the X-Factor.

Alternatively, employ Cowell to radically overhaul – and judge – the 2010 BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

Oi, Santa Claus…! Where’s my f***ing bike?

Watching my children attempt to write their Christmas wish lists to Father Christmas this week I couldn’t help but wonder why kids actually bother these days.  Malachy has already announced that he knows it’s us that put the Christmas presents under the tree and therefore his letter to the North Pole was more of a Final Demand, while Jacob decided it was too hard to write a letter and just pushed the paper to one side and went back to watching Spongebob Squarepants.

Well, I still believe in Father Christmas – indeed, he visited the pub yesterday – so I thought I’d give it a go for myself, just in case he’s got the North Pole hooked up to the ‘net finally.

Here goes:

Dear Father Christmas,

I really have been a very good boy this year – in fact, I’ve kept myself out of so much trouble that I’m actually hoping for two oranges in my stocking this year rather than the measly none I got last year.  But let’s not linger on that.

It’s been quite a good year, actually.  Business has been a bit tight but Ali and I’ve worked pretty hard to keep everything together so I hope you’ll see to it that when you unload your sack down my chimney on Christmas Eve something here can be in it.  (And if, as my nine year old son seems to think, you’re not really real, then maybe somebody else reading this can be generous enough to think one or two things here might make good gifts.)

It has also been a while since I’ve written you a letter, but I thought I’d get this one in to you quickly as, according to Gordon Brown, global warming means you might not make it to next year…

Ta muchly,

Mark

Wish list: (mostly found in this month’s Stuff magazine, admittedly)

Aspiral Clock – www.aspiralclocks.com

I quite like unusual time pieces – you should see some of the watches I have, one even tells the time in binary – so this one would fit my collection perfectly.  Admittedly, at £350 it’s a touch expensive, but they do say that for that price they guarantee to have it delivered to the North Pole before you get out delivering.  And who wouldn’t want a clock that tells time by twisting on the wall while a ball-bearing maintains its position to tell the time?  Pure, costly genius.

 North Face E-Tip Gloves - http://fwd.five.tv/gadgets/sports/mountain/north-face-e-tip-gloves

At some point in the coming year, I’m going to change my mobile phone and, despite my liking for normal telephones which have buttons on them to press to get it to do things, the chances are that the industry’s hellbent approach to technology means that whatever I do get next will have a touch screen.  The problem with touch screens is that when it’s cold, the new technology can’t recognise your touches.  So to send a text message or make a call you’ll have to take your gloves off.  Annoying when it’s freezing outside.  Now, admittedly, I won’t be changing my phone until summer so I don’t actually need these gloves until next winter, but I’ll have forgotten about them by then so I’d like them now.  And, at twenty quid, they’re not actually that expensive!  Cool.

Sony Ericsson Satio - http://www.sonyericsson.com/cws/products/mobilephones/overview/satio?cc=gb&lc=en

Now, I know my mobile isn’t due for renewal until summer next year, but I’ve already thought long and hard about what to replace my existing W980 phone with.  You see, I think the iPhone’s great, but do I really need one?  No – because I live and work in a pub and rarely see the outside world.  I am also never more than five feet away from a desktop or laptop computer that’s connected directly to the Internet, which is infinitely better than anything the iPhone can chuck at me.  But what I do want from a mobile is a good camera – I had a Sony with a great camera on it a couple of phones back and I really miss it.  Their new Satio has a mind-boggling 12.1 megapixel camera built in and, whilst a bit chunky, will surely use less space in my pocket than carrying both my current phone and my ageing Pentax Optio S50 digital camera.  So I’ve either got to wait ‘til summer, or some generous benefactor can spend £450 on a contract free one for me for Christmas…

PowerMat - http://www.powermateu.com/pm_uk

In this modern world of so many rechargeable devices, I really do get fed up with having to search around for somewhere to plug my mobile or my MP3 player in to charge them up.  Or the camera.  Or Ali’s personal marital aids.  Living in a building built in 1704, there really aren’t enough electric sockets to keep up with all the personal paraphernalia our modern lives desire.  But help is at hand – I want a PowerMat.  It uses one socket and you literally just put whatever needs charging on to the top of it and it’ll charge it up by the power of osmosis.  Or witchcraft.  I haven’t actually worked out how it works, but it’s the sort of magic that even my uncle wouldn’t understand.  

Pure Sensia - http://www.touchmyradio.com/

All our bedside clocks are broken at the moment.  All of them.  Even my wonderful Ferrari alarm clock – which  wakes me up to the sound of a Ferrari Formula One engine no longer works properly thanks to the troublesome thumbs of my youngest child – and Ali’s appears to not be able to do anything other than play AlphaBeat tracks any more.  But the Pure Sensia would wake you to digital radio, music wirelessly streamed from the Internet, and the first thing I could see when I wake up would be my Twitter feed… Ah, geeky bliss.

YuuWaa – www.yuuwaa.com

My file storage is utterly unreliable.  I have files stored all over the place.  Blogs and pieces written for The Publican magazine are stored on Google Documents somewhere in The Cloud, pictures are stored on an external hard drive, accounts spreadsheets are kept on a USB memory stick that I keep losing and I lost my whole family tree a couple of months when the backup file was the only file I didn’t actually put on a separate drive just before I wiped my laptop to install Windows 7.  With YuuWaa, however, I would have none of these troubles as it provides online storage and local storage via the USB stick, and means I can share files seamlessly with the other machines on my network.  Or even you, my loving friends and family… Might as well go for the top of the range Plus version.  It’s only £29.99

Buzz for the PS3 - http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0017USAPE/?tag=googhydr-21&hvadid=4923246069&ref=pd_sl_3g17qakb64_b

I love my PlayStation 3 – it’s pretty much a media portal these days for everything ever that I want to do.  Did you know, with its web browser, you can actually get Internet porn on the telly?  Oh, and iPlayer.  And now I can download movies to it, too.  But I never, ever, let any of the rest of the family play on it.  It’s mine mine mine.  To be fair, I only wanted the PS3 for Gran Turismo 5, but as that is never going to come out – it would seem – I have to start looking at other uses for it.  And that might mean sharing it with the family.  The Buzz quiz games seem like a good place to start.  There are different types and, with the controllers, means all four of us can play.  Until I win, of course, and then Jacob will throw a strop…

I could probably make this list much longer, but it would only get more expensive…!  Anyhoo, Santa, I hope you can help out.

Ta

Mark.

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Incidentally, you can read my blog on getting the kids to turn the pub’s lights off on The Publican at: http://www.thepublican.com/story.asp?sectioncode=16&storycode=65967

Silverstone Makes A Break Through…

Yippee!  There can hardly be anyone, with the exception of the crew at Donnington, who isn’t pleased to hear the news that’s been announced today: Silverstone has signed a new seventeen year deal with Bernie Ecclestone to host the British Formula One Grand Prix.

Quite right, too.  It shouldn’t have been moved from Silverstone anyway.

To the outsider, Bernie’s reasons for taking the show away from Silverstone were nothing more than spiteful.  He expects an old wartime aerodrome with more history in motor racing than most current F1 drivers have got in their DNA to conform to the same standards as, say, Abu Dhabi, which had a billion dollars thrown at it and, whilst a flashy and extrovert way to end the season, resulted in a damp squib of a race.

It isn’t going to transform over night, but he expected it to, and when the BRDC tried to get him to see sense he threw a hissy fit and gave the race to Donnington, who promptly dug up their track and then ran out of money.

Now Silverstone have both the Moto GP and the British Grand Prix in their calendar for next year, and there are smiles all round the boardroom.

Surely Bernie could do nothing now to scupper their plans to prove they are a worthy host for the show?

Well, yes he could, actually.  Because the race is provisionally scheduled in its traditional slot, which would mean it would fall on Sunday 11th July 2010.  And that’s World Cup Final day.

If England were, by the skin of their teeth, able to make it through to the Final, nobody will want to travel to Silverstone as they’ll all be in the pub praying like crazy the home team can do it for the first time in forty four years.

And then Bernie will say: “see, I told you nobody was interested in Silverstone.”

I hope that provisional date can be changed, and give the circuit a fighting chance in its first year of a new contract…

England out of the World Cup … Who cares?

If, like me, you’re not one of those football fans then the news that the England team actually qualified for next year’s tournament, and that we have the easiest opening group ever, will probably have left a sinking feeling in your heart and the next seven months until we fail to win the 2010 World Cup will be stretching ahead of you like a yawning chasm.

I probably know more about the footballer’s wives, and the designer-label lingerie that they like to wear for photoshoots in lads’ magazines such as FHM, than I do about footballers or the game itself.

Honestly, I sometimes feel like I’m the only man on Earth who doesn’t know what the Offside Rule is.  Everytime somebody tries to explain it to me, during the next game I watch I cry “Offside, Ref, c’mon, book ‘im, get up you puff!”, only to be told that the Offside Rule means something completely different today.  And it’ll be different again the next time I watch the game.

There are even girls that actually know more about the rules of football than I do.

The last time England won the World Cup, footballs were made out of lead and were apt to give players concussion when they tried to head them in to goals, yet already the cacophony of noise has started in the tabloids about how we can do it THIS TIME!  The weight of expectation on John Terry’s squad is unbelievable, and we haven’t even got to South Africa yet.

So it was with blessed relief that I read the Independent’s take on a countdown to next year’s World Cup in their Sunday edition today.

The print edition looks much better, as they’ve used images, but the online version of the article reads just as well.  In short, they’ve predicted the headlines leading up to next summer’s International tournament and my personal favourite will, apparently, occur on April 17th 2010 (ironically, my birthday):

Wayne Rooney reveals that the crying of his baby son Kai occasionally wakes him up in the night. The Sun asks: "Is this the most evil baby in Britain?"

Perhaps, however, most tellingly the Independent predicts that England will lose on penalties to Argentina during a quarter final game on July 2nd.  On July 3rd the England squad will be denied re-entry in to their country and by July 4th the rest of the world cup will play out, but the UK won’t care any more.

Tongue-in-cheek it might be, but it does accurately portray the hysteria that is about to come to this country during the first half of 2010, and the depression that inevitably follows.

It’s a good read; find it here: http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/the-ios-world-cup-countdown-1835043.html

It’s too expensive searching for Little Green Men

According to the website defencemanagement.com, the Ministry of Defence has stopped keeping an eye out for alien invaders.

Launched in 1950, the MoD’s Extra Terrestrial division apparently dealt with more than 12’000 cases of alien invaders on British soil, but now the department’s been closed – either because aliens don’t really exist, or because it’s becoming too darned expensive to keep an eye on what our intergalactic neighbours are doing.

Amazingly, the last reported alien sighting in the UK came on 10th September this year, when three people in a car in Lennoxtown were faced with a colourful bright light that lasted for two minutes.  Alien encounter, or just the headlights of an oncoming car…?  I suspect we’ll never know, because such phenomenon is now deemed an inappropriate defence resource.

That’s okay: we already know that most aliens land in America anyway, because Hollywood tells us so, and that there’s a secret alien base in China.

So, as we’ve got all the alien bits covered, the Government’s UFO department – which apparently cost £50’000 a year to run and, presumably, wasn’t all that busy – is being disbanded so that resources can be used elsewhere.

The dedicated hotline answerphone and e-mail address, both possibly manned twenty four hours a day by Will Smith, were shut down on December 1st, along with the statement that, whilst the MoD has no opinion on the existence or otherwise of extra-terrestrial life, “in over fifty years, no UFO report has revealed any evidence of a potential threat to the United Kingdom.”

They did also add that there was no defence benefit in continuing to spend money on this department of mad folk and that, anyway, the UK “has no specific capability for identifying the nature of such sightings.”

So it cost us fifty grand a year to keep a telephone answering machine running then, eh?

We can all sleep well in our beds tonight knowing that our money is finally being better spent elsewhere.  And that little green men might still be watching us from afar…

Quick Blog: Tiger Woods and Top Gear … So what?

 

Tiger Woods

Can I be the only person in the world who really isn’t interested in the fact that Tiger Woods has been mucking about with other women?

I don’t condone the behaviour, you understand, but is it really so important that it has to be splashed all over the front pages of the tabloids?  At the weekend, ITV News dedicated more than three minutes to the fact that Tiger Woods had crashed his Cadillac Escalade in to a fire hydrant to escape his angry wife and only thirty seconds to a story about a terrorist bomb in Russia which killed twenty six people.

I understand sponsors such as Gillette, who are already having a torrid time with Thierry Henry’s blatant handball, being slightly concerned with the image it might give their product (and they must be a little worried about what Roger Federer is going to come up with to top the other two) but, to be honest, what goes on behind closed doors really is none of our business.

That said, having looked at the pictures in the paper today I can’t understand why Woods would have done it in the first place.  I know I prefer blondes, but I wouldn’t have climbed over Erin Nordegren to get to Jaimee Grubbs, Rachel Uchitel or Kalika Moquin.

Which leads me to think that the other three must be offering something his missus ain’t…

Top Gear

Shock horror, the news has been leaked by some bitter spoilsport – who probably didn’t get paid enough for his part in the show – that James May’s ‘dangerous stunt’ on Top Gear last week was faked.

Well blow me over with a solar-powered fan.  It was a bit obvious, wasn’t it?

If you hadn’t guessed that the whole lunacy was just designed to let Hammond fanny about in a Lamborghini, then the bit about them flying in to Norwich Airport’s airspace must have given the game away.  Even my nine-year-old son said that if it had been real the police would have shot him out of the sky.

The point is that the show was providing us with entertainment, and everybody in my pub watching it on Sunday night laughed quite heartily at it.

I say keep up the good work, boys.  We know it’s staged, but we love it.

In November The Renault Used…

It’s amazing to think that I’ve now owned the Vel Satis for six months, almost to the day.  It’s just crept over 65’000 miles and, to be honest, it’s a wonder it’s made it that far, but it’s even more of a wonder to have to announce that, in November, almost nothing went wrong with it.

I say almost, because on one occasion I did push the button to make the driver’s window go all the way down and all it did was budge about an inch.  After that, I had to keep pressing the button to make it go down in one-inch stages until it was all the way down.  I think the traffic warden that was waiting to speak to me would have been happier if I’d just opened the door, but you know how these things go and the next day the window worked absolutely fine.

I have noticed, over the six months of owning the car, that the Vel Satis does seem to suffer from more mood swings than my wife, but at least the last few weeks of ownership have been relatively trouble free.

The biggest problem I now face is dealing with the garage that I purchased the car from.  When I bought it, the salesman told me that I had a six month, 6’000 mile warranty on the car.  That warranty would expire this month and, as I’ve only achieved around five thousand of those miles in that time, I certainly haven’t exceeded any terms that could have been put in place.  Unfortunately, though, upon trying to extract some money out of the garage for the replacement starter motor that broke in October, they pointed out to me that I didn’t have a warranty, and that the salesman lied to me when I purchased the car.

“You wouldn’t believe how many times he’s done this to us,” one young lady at the dealership whined to me in an effort to make me feel placated.  So, if he’s done this to you that many times, why the hell is he still employed?  And, if you’re happy for him to lie in order to close deals, then you are by proxy admitting to offering me a 6-month/6’000 mile warranty, surely?  Or is it that fixing the car is just too darned expensive, I wonder?

Indeed, after several ignored letters to the garage pleading for some form of help with the costs of the car, I’ve had no choice but to start to consider legal action against the garage.  So I guess this part of my blog will soon become the “what happened in court” section.

Here’s hoping it at least behaves itself over Christmas…

Renault Vel Satis 3.5V6 Performance Log

It has to be said that, whilst somewhat reliable during November, the car’s overall economy hasn’t been that great.  One or two longer journeys to see family members did result in 30mpg being returned, but the actual figure at the end of the month is woefully less than that.  As this figure shrinks, I’m beginning to think I should have kept the old Jeep after all.  And mentioning earlier that I’ve now had the car for six months has reminded me that the tax expired on Monday…

Fuel Used: 29.9 gallons (up from 23.4)

Economy: 21.9 miles per gallon (down from 22.4)

Distance: 655.6 miles travelled (up from 521.7)

Average Speed: 29.1 miles per hour (up from 28.5)

Service due in: 13’419 miles

Odometer reading: 65’009 miles

Looking back at the previous version of this blog I noted that in September I’d mentioned the car hadn’t had too many problems, only to be faced with anarchy in October.  Having just mentioned that November was relatively trouble-free, perhaps I’m asking for a kicking this month…