Life goes on....for some

Well, a few more days have passed since Monsieur Merde tried and failed to send Jack off to meet his maker. Sleep is still not coming too easily and now at last after what, 10 days, the aches and pains have subsided to a point where a daily dosage of Ibuprofen is no longer necessary. The car has also been authorised to be repaired at around £4500, which gives an indication I guess of the damage done. Lucky it was only a month old then.


One of the strange things is the way Kid and Pie have reacted to the whole thing. I’m not sure if its genetic pragmatism inherited from their Mum, the fact that neither drive or just the malleable nature of the teenage mind rendering its repair process to be quicker, but after the initial hysteria and shock dissipated, both have just got back on with their lives with minimum fuss. This makes me feel even worse, because it’s taken me so long for the shock to get to the point where normality is in sight.

Is it age and our greater sense of mortality that does this to us? Have I tripped unwittingly over yet another apparent disadvantage of ageing? Or is it an advantage, one which feeds an increasing sense of awareness around danger, perhaps even paranoia? Is this why parents fuss so much, because as we get older and ‘one day closer to death’, as Pink Floyd so memorably sang, that our appreciation of the tenuous grip we all have on life is even more acute?

On another Floyd note, I’d just like to express my own sadness at the passing of Richard Wright, a key member of my all time favourite band. Richard Wright was the quiet one of the band, happily sitting in the background and courting publicity unwittingly, and yet providing some of the best creative input, contributing to the ‘sound’ of Pink Floyd which so set them aside from anything before or since. He was 65, no age to die, and throughout all of the troubles fought publicly and privately by the band, he was the one who’s dignity and charm stood out. His death puts paid to any true reunion of this great band. Roger Waters and Dave Gilmour have bickered and prevaricated over such a reunion for years now, well now it’s too late. And that’s a shame as a lot of fans have never seen them or had the chance to bid them adieu. I’ve seen them 6 times in all, and each was utterly awesome, far more than just a rock concert, more a piece of performance art. Music sits a poorer place with Richard Wright’s loss.


Later , GJ.

PS – happier posts to come, but there’s an exam coming up (eeeek) and yet another week in France revising. Then life will hopefully be truly back to normal

Lucky indeed

Hmm, why would someone park their car right in front of 44 tonne HGV you might ask? After all the picture suggests some plucky motorist making a stance against some empty headed trucker out looking for the next ordinary driver he can terrorise. Or perhaps the picture was taken in France and the driver of the yellow car has found a space in front of a lorry to park in as he goes off to the market or beach. Believe me, parking in France is often just like this.



Or, it could be this.


Driving back from The Grandmaster and Audrey's place on Saturday afternoon, bimbling along at 70 on the M25 between junctions 11 and 10, anti-clockwise I was in lane 2 overtaking a French lorry driving on the inside lane at around 65. I wasn't whizzing past him as the traffic was quite heavy and I was behind another lorry, but I was doing around 5mph more than Monsieur Merde (look it up on a french translation site). Kid and Pie were happily listening to their iPods and Hellsbells was settling back for a comfy doze. I was listening to Planet Rock on a low volume so as not to wake Hellsbells.

That's when it happened. The stretch of the M25 we were on had no hard shoulder and we were about a mile from the A3 turn off. That's when we felt the first impact. Monsieur Merde, presumably like most HGV drivers, a person who presumably believes himself a professional driver had decided to move into our lane. The flaw in his planned move was in not checking for the presence of a BRIGHT FUCKING YELLOW SEAT LEON!

The first impact hit Hellsbells door. We know this because Pie was looking out that side at the time. This knocked us at an angle to Monsiuer Merde and his 44-tonne killing machine and the second impact on Kids door swung us into a skid from which we ended up pinned to the front of his juggernaut at 65mph at a right angle to the direction of our actual travel!

The next 20 seconds, which seemed like an eternity were the most terrifying of my entire life, and undoubtedly those oh Hellsbells, Kid and Pie. We travelled like this for around 350 yards with plumes of tyre smoke all around us, the screeching noise matched only by the crunching of metal collapsing under the sheer force of his momentum and that of Hellsbells and the girls.

As far as I could see, we were dead, or at the least severely injured. The one thing I remember is looking out of the passenger side past Hellsbells and seeing nothing but the front end of a 44-tonne murder machine blocking the entire view.

Eventually we could sense that we were slowing down and Monsieur Merde, showing some degree of belated skill had eventually managed to push us into the hard shoulder, but this has to be tempered with the fact that we were PINNED TO HIS FUCKING CAB and where he went, we went.

The picture was taken around 2 minutes after we'd stopped and a sense of normality had kicked back in. The girls were, as you might imagine, hysterical and very badly shaken, but barring a few bruises from seat belts, a bit of higher blood pressure and pulse. They were fine. Hellsbells and myself held it together at the scene and called the police and ambulance as a precaution. In a typically French manner, Monsieur Merde sat in his cab and lit a cigarette.

The Highways Agency officers arrived after 10 minutes and stopped the traffic whilst I drove the car off the front off the lorry and parked it alongside the hard shoulder rather than across it. They kindly took the details and helped sort he incident out, but did you know this? Unless there is a fatality, or serious injury then the police no longer turn up at such major accidents. That's right, the fuckwit coppers who are only too happy to turn up at your side if you do 45 in a 40 zone, can't be fucking arsed to come out to a major accident where either one of the drivers might have been guilty of a crime, perhaps in Monsieur merde's case his tachograph might have shown excessive travel time, or maybe he'd just knocked an aperitif back. Irrelevant, because no-one seemed badly hurt. I can hardly wait until the time a copper pulls me up on a minor driving infringment.

Get this as well. Despite the reasonable amount of traffic, not one person stopped to offer help or witness the incident. Not one. Well, maybe one person did. A french lorry driver in an act of understandable camaraderie stopped to help his compatriot. But did anyone stop to witness for us? No. How the fuck could people have witnessed this and not stopped. How could they have known there were no serious injuries? The Great British Fuckwit, Sun reading, I'm alright Jack pull up the ladder, greedy, self obsessed society showed its' true colours on Saturday. Thatcher was right, there is no such thing as society. She killed it.

The paramedics were fucking excellent as one expects. Calm, reassuring with an attitude of nothing being too much trouble. I thanked them profusely for helping Pie and Kid, especially as Pie was close to passing out through the shock.

As for the car, well badly smashed down the passenger side, all four tyres were taken back to the metal banding. Remember this car is less than a month old and had 800 miles on the clock. That's a lot of new tyre tread to burn though. But, that car didn't flip, didn't spin, didn't buckle. It held the road superbly considering the force it was under. It saved our lives.

SEAT - your little car is a fucking miracle. Luck may have played a part, but so must the design and construction iof the car. 10 years ago, or even in our previous 'second' car the awful Vauxhall Meriva, we'd have been dead. and Grocerjack would really have been unable to 'get off his back, go to town and not let them down. Oh no.'

Later, GJ

Doomed?

Hello, are you all still there? Good, so the world didn't end today, although philosophically speaking who can categorically state it ever existed? Some Cartesian philosophy is always a good thing midweek.

Apparently kids have been panicked into thinking today is the day it all ends. The subject of the Large Hadron Collider switch on today has, if nothing else, diverted us away from the never ending gloom on the weather and economy.



What I do find amusing is that the press are quick to jump on the bandwagon with lurid tales of destruction and doom which of course to the less educated or discerning immediately become fact! Others then quickly don their hair shirts and straw sandals to whine on about what a waste of money the whole thing is and wouldn't the money have been better off spent building hospitals. I've posted enough before about the do gooders who would build a world full of good causes and never would we see such technological marvels as Concorde, The Space Shuttle or the
Channel tunnel. Sometimes we have to build the follies as a way of stretching what we know.

Any good that comes from these things may be unwitting, but surely it's better than the risk averse return to caveman world the do-gooders want. I think great discoveries have often come from experiments designed to discover or theorise on something else.

Anyway, I have my own theory. The Universe was created from the Big Bang.

The Big Bang occurred after the occupants of the previous Universe switched on their Large Hadron Collider.

The late, great Douglas Adams would have been proud.

Later GJ

Back to the Gloom

Well, that's the annual one over for another year. I could have been very creative and write loads whilst away, but basically couldn't be arsed. The OU stuff suffered a bit as well, so its head down for the next few weeks, meaning posts could be sparser than of late. My exam is 13th October after which I will once again be free from the shackles of seemingly interminable study.

Great holiday though, thanks for asking!

Later GJ

So that's it for a while, unless I get any creative urges on holiday. I'm semi-demob happy. I have a small domestic to sort once I arrive in that Kid wants to come home a week early to 'prepare for college' but this sounds a ruse to me. It seems to me that teenage hormones are starting to simmer, no doubt for her, but also for her 'boyfriend' the now regenerated 'Mini Me'.That's regenerated as in going from 4 foot fuck all to an inch or two taller than me in 18 months. I'd still win the fight though! Anyway, me....leave a teenager in the house for a week? Alone? She has two chances, Slim and None, and Slim just rode out of town.

I had a quiet birthday though. Thanks for asking. It means a lot. A few cards and texts and a few e-cards as well. Nice to know people remember these things. I actually got my present last week the day after they all went to The Money Pit, but started using it from Friday after the new car turned up. Its a Pure Highway in car DAB radio device. It took less than 10 minutes to install, just an aerial and windscreen mount needed putting in place. As I switched it on I braced myself to expect yet another piece of worthless, junk Technology that promised loads and delivered nothing.

Just for once I was proven wrong. This fantastic little device worked immediately. It seeks out a spare unused FM frequency for you, then displays which one to tune your car radio to. When you do this, the words Pure DAB show up in the car radio display (if you have RDS) and hey presto, Planet Rock in crystal clear stereo! I drove in today for the first time in the new car and 'Planet Rocked' all the way. I can get all the DAB stations pretty well, but they all drop at one point on the route for about 30 seconds, but then this is in the middle of bloody nowhere, and with DAB coverage running at around 80% of the country it will occur from time to time. If the FM frequency becomes busy as you move around the country then a single press finds a new one and you simply retune to that. So, after a few minutes of Breakfast on 5 Live, harping on about the bloody Olympics, I decided to kick start my day with Planet Rock and was treated to the delights of Bad Company, The Clash, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Metallica. Music to get the heart started!

I waited for years to hear Radio 1 in FM when the BBC was dragging its feet on rolling it out on FM. By the time it came I was too old for the station. I had hopes that the former incompetent QUANGO, The Radio Authority (now OFCOM) would give Virgin an national FM frequency so I could hear something other than Boy/Girl Bands and Dance rubbish. But no, they decided the 'adult' music market was already well served by the travesty of broadcasting that is local commercial radio. My previous posts on the state of UK radio say it all. It's Pop, Classical or Talk if you wanted national FM coverage. Well, DAB Radio does away with that, as does Internet radio. Anything that weakens OFCOM is good in my view. Radio is too safe and bland in the UK.

Anyway, take it from me, this device is a superb piece of kit and Pure deserve all the plaudits for finally putting an in-car DAB option out to market at a reasonable price (£55 on Amazon).

Anyway, that's it for now, apart from one comment about George W Bush berating China for it's record on Human Rights. Apparently he's not happy that they lock up dissidents and suppress religion.

George, two things. Guantanamo Bay and the victimization of declared Atheists in your own back yard. America, land of the Free? Not for a very long time George.

Pot....kettle anyone?

Later, GJ

Signs of Ageing, pt 2

Just a few observations......

1.) Every day something else aches.

2.) Your wife and kids go away for a week and you eat sensibly and don't go to the pub every night even though you could!

3.) You get up at 7 in the morning when you're NOT working. Even after going to the pub!

4.) There are an increasing number of things that bring a tear to your eye making you look like a soppy old sod. Which of course you are!

5.) Radio 1 is a form of torture.

6.) You can no longer keep time with your air guitar or air drums.

7.) Big Brother makes you reach for the off switch.

8.) A whole night of sleep without getting up for the loo seems a distant but fond memory.

9.) You tut at people who play their music loudly in cars, despite still doing this yourself. Its their choice of music that's the issue of course.

10.) Sex scenes on TV make you leave, or want to leave the room.

11.) You buy clothes because they make you look slim, are comfortable and because you think they make you look younger.

12.) And because they're cheap. Good value. Sensible. Practical.

13.) You never go to the Doctor about just ONE thing any more.

Today is my birthday. I am 47. Fourty-bloody-seven.

Hellsbells, Kid and Pie are sunning themselves in The Money Pit whilst I go to work.

The first flecks of grey in the goatee have been spotted by me, after kidding myself they were blonde. Spartacus, the youngest in my team yesterday asked me how old I was. I'm 3 years younger than her Dad for fucks sake! She then asked me if I colour my hair and was incredulous when I told her I don't. And I genuinely don't! Its still light brown to fair depending on how sunny it is. Is this fact about my hair being 'au naturelle' going to become a surprise to everyone as I .....ahem....mature?

I'm off on Friday for my annual mega-stint at The Money Pit. We have wi-fi there now so who knows, I might get to post a thing or two.

Or maybe not.

Later, GJ

Signs of Ageing, pt1

How very true!

Later, GJ