Category Archives: Life

Mondeo memories

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I got my car back today. Where has it been, you cry? Well, at the end of November a work colleague was a bit too eager to get away and turned a bit too sharply in the work car park, taking out my front right indicator and scraping the paint. Being a Volvo driver, she didn’t even notice until she got home, saw her own scraped paint and put two and two together.

I do so love it when it’s unequivocally, entirely someone else’s fault and there isn’t even a hint of contesting the matter – as it should be when the victim vehicle is unattended and parked squarely within a clearly marked parking space. The car hire company fixed up by her insurers was going to give me a 1 litre clown car, but when they heard what it was replacing they upgraded it to a 3-month old Mondeo at no extra cost (at least, not for me).

As with all new technology, it has ups and downs …

Ups – the Ford heated front window system is nothing short of a marvel in this weather, and even on its own it’s more than enough to swing my vote in favour of getting a Ford when the current car finally has to go, as one day it must. It was great for getting to Hertfordshire and back in the recent inclemency. The door handle (right hand side) and central console (left hand side) were great for resting my elbows on as I drove. Or rather, cruised. With the diesel engine I could pretend I was driving a tractor – sorry, tra’r – while at the same time the excitingly hi-tech dashboard and control-studded steering wheel pressed all the right Gerry Anderson fanboy buttons within me.

Downs – said central console means the handbrake has to be off the centre line, over to the right, and you almost dislocate your wrist getting the right angle to pull it upwards. I usually listen to my iPod via a tape adapter, and as this was too new for a tape player I got to try out the iTrip I once bought myself in a fit of technological experimentation … which was okay, but crackly. The proximity alert, especially in our crowded little back yard, sets off a veritable dawn chorus of differently toned beeps whenever I turn it on and put it into gear, which was quite a surprise the first time. It wouldn’t have done this quite so often if the car wasn’t so darn unnecessarily BIG and therefore already a lot closer to everything else than I would normally park. (And I now find I’ve got so used to it, after just a fortnight, that my ability to judge a safe parking distance has vanished and I want to park feet away from anything.)

But I have to say the good points outweighed the bad, and so it’s probably as well that I have the old car back before I was entirely seduced. It’s not perfect but we have a relationship based on long-term familiarity and trust and affection and an understanding of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Which is as it should be.

Meanwhile I have now been phoned out of the blue by two separate ambulance chasers asking if anyone was hurt. Into every life a little slime must drip.

The rivals, consenting to be photographed together …

Sword arch in the snow

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Memories of T. the Sailor:

– the only 8-year-old in the world to start a sentence with the words “Bearing in mind that …”

– the teenage years: mind of a 40-year-old theologian, sense of humour that can only be described as clinically evil.

– the minor contretemps of a few years ago that almost killed him.

– and this weekend, a sword arch in a blizzard, upon the occasion of his marriage.

As his father-in-law later remarked, it was the snow that drew everyone together. We went up a day earlier than planned with one eye on the weather. 2 hours on the M25: could have been a lot worse. Kings Langley is a pictureskew little place in Herts just off the motorway, where every flat surface has a building on it and the rest is all slopes. I should really have thought a little harder before choosing to park on the quite steep road where the church is, as the snow began to fall … We got out eventually, but only by turning round and going deeper in to get out again further down the valley.
And so it snew and snew. We were inside so didn’t mind that much. The bride however was 40 minutes late, due to the hired Bentley not being able to get up one of those slopes to the house. (It was theorised she might have turned up but no one could see her against the backdrop: maybe the navy contingent could walk around a bit, and she might occlude one of them and become visible.) Eventually she walked from home, and they went away after in a Landrover.
The sword arch were the icing on the icy cake: nine brave men standing at attention as the snow piled up on their heads and shoulders, slightly dreamy expressions suggesting that inwardly they were a long way away in a warm and happy place.

But they snapped to attention at the right moment, and the newly wed couple walked through, and all was well.
The couple were meant to be heading off on honeymoon to Brazil from Heathrow today. I don’t think so.
This car was completely snow free when I parked it, three hours earlier.

It got us there safely, and then up another of those slopes to the reception, and then back home again today at a sedate 50mph down a mostly empty, 2-lanes-mostly-clear M25 and M40. Shame it’s only a hire car – looking forward with interest to seeing what the regular one can do for us next weekend.

Dawn Treader forebodings

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I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was a pretty good stab at the original novel, with added action which was still part of the original plot (mostly). Prince Caspianwas likewise, but with a lot more additional plot, there being a lot less original plot to work with. But the extra plot slotted in well and I liked it. It even drove home the point Lewis was trying to make: trust Aslan.

But I wondered even then what they would do with Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It’s a picaresque novel, a series of only loosely connected adventures. It’s also the one where the kids from our world really are surplus to requirements. They are along for the ride. Caspian could easily have done this all on his own and told his friends about it when they met up again in The Last Battle. How, I wondered (with some trepidation) would they turn that into a Hollywood movie?

The answer, apparently, according to Rober Ebert, is they’ve turned it into a bloody quest.

I suppose it was inevitable – it may even have been the only thing they could do. And I hope it works, because it’s my favourite of the novels, and if this tanks then there might be no Silver Chair, which would be a shame and which really is a proper quest adventure. (I would love them to get Alan Rickman as Puddleglum … but they probably won’t.)

But even so. To quote Mr Ebert: “Narnia is threatened by evil forces from the mysterious Dark Island, which no one has seen but everyone has heard about. There is a matter of seven missing magical swords representing the Lords of Telmar, which were given to Narnia by Aslan the Lion (voice of Liam Neeson) and must be brought together again to break a spell that imprisons the lords.” Gak, gak, gak, and eek.

It may yet work. I may even watch it, but probably not in the cinema unless there’s a 2D version. Yup, to rub it all in, it’s 3D. Meh. But! Even if it doesn’t stink completely, if it doesn’t have the Dufflepuds, and doesn’t have Eustace the dragon, and most especially if it doesn’t have Reep finally getting his heart’s desire at the end of the world … well, I tell you now, I will be very stern and disapproving.