I thought I would share this amusing little game because it’s quite fun and extremely topical. Chuck the spikey little bugger into space to win the game, and judge how good you are when compared to my score. I’ll not tell you how well I did, but be certain your best effort is never going to be quite as good 🙂

Tenuously linked to punting hedgehogs into the stratosphere is my nail biting worry of upgrading the ancient technology underpinning this site. The version of WordPress I am using is only one revision about a stone tablet and a big chisel. Taking a quick look a the copious documentation. it seems the chances of performing a successful upgrade are about as likely as me keeping both my testicles, if I buy that cross bike.

Any readers do the WordPress thing? Offers of help will earn you nothing more than a virtual beer and a namecheck that at least one other person will read. My Mum’s good like that 😉

In the geeky world of IT security, one of the more interesting concepts* is that of a ‘false positive’. This is a false alarm triggered as one of a myriad of virtual tripwires, which protect the crown jewels of confidential information, is fooled into believing an electronic attack is in progress.

Back in the real world, my ratio of false positives to actual intrusions is exactly one to one. Well it was until last night, when an extremely sophisticated warning system was nosily convinced the house was on fire.

Because we live in a house that was once commercial property, it is rigged with the full quota of safety lights, fire doors and bright red fire bells. We’ve never been close to ripping the system out because it a) represents the DNA of the building and we should respect that and b) would be a massive pain in the bum to do.

Which is all lovely until it explodes in audial warfare at 2am when every living creature should be asleep. If you happen to be having one of those dreams where you’re desperately dashing around deserted school rooms in the buff, the whole experience is heightened by a shiny red bell going ballistic outside the door.

My VTOL approach to bed exit was brought down to earth with a crushing thump that really wasn’t the kind of gentle massage my poorly shoulder needs. A multi limbed struggle with a dressing gown was more than enough time for the cacophony to stop. By which point, every human, feline and canine in the Leigh household were both wide awake and noticeably concerned.

Except for Murf. He was just delighted to find his pack milling about, leaving him ample time to snaffle some illegal food while we flapped. Next door announced their arrival with a couple of head torches and the happy information that fire control is located only in their house. Not sure that was on any documentation I signed.

We found the guilty sensor glowing red but obviously broken because I am not writing in the smoke of the charred remains of our house. I tend not to worry about these things because my ‘Car Park of Worry‘ is already at capacity with Work parked across five prime spots and not looking to leave anytime soon. Squeezed in at the margins are Car (what’ll go bang next), Dog (acquired a limp), House (Really should start something) and external factors (is today the day the world ends)

Luckily Carol acts as a metaphorical overflow car park**, so I let her worry about it instead. I chucked the problem in my infinite bucket of non riding excuses which is why I’m Birmingham bound but bikeless, in what’ is looking to be a lovely day. Tomorrow I’ll ride unless something really serious happens.

That would include the electrical storm likely to be triggered by us turning on the terrifying and dangerous heating system. Maybe it wasn’t a false positive at all, it was just triggered a day early.

* Not because it is any way interesting, rather that everything else relating to the roaming tribes of IT traffic wardens is so mind crushingly dull.

** I have all the chat when it comes to complimenting my wife 😉

Subtract 1 for a game so dull it edges even watching preening politicians in the extremely dull and largely pointless stakes. Terminal 5 thought is neither of those things, so attains the highest honour I can bestow by not being like a UK airport at all. It is a light, airy and well planned space designed to whisk you through the trials of check in and security, so ensuring every saved minute can be spent in the slew of expensive shops all shiny and ready to separate you from any major currency.

The problem with Terminal five is it still plugs into everything that is rubbish about the UK. The tube, the trains and the buses are as well integrated as Christians and Muslims with each fundamentally denying the existence of the others. Arriving back from Athens, where I saw nothing of the much heralded tourist attractions but a significant slug of the bar, my transport options were both confusing and generally unavailable.

It’s 9PM on a Friday night so the prospect of whooshing to Paddington on the Heathrow Express had me musing “London? Friday Night? Major Train Terminus? Have BA begun serving crack-cocaine in their salads, otherwise why can I be considering this?“. I’d long abandoned the idea of actually getting properly home, and had chosen instead to dirty the towels of my friend Jason a mere ten miles away in Ealing. After travelling nearly 2000 miles in the previous 3 hours, this final bagatelle like hop, skip and jump to a side of London co-located with the airport proved immensely frustrating.

The “Heathrow Connect” terminates at Ealing but doesn’t start at Terminal 5. After much mooching about on various platforms, I boarded a random train only to alight some 30 seconds later in a deep bunker under the main airport terminals. Where the next Connect service was mooted for a dust-kicking boredom of 45 minutes away. But since the previous two had been cancelled, the jolly Butlins-attired Customer-Service Johnny marked the timetable as aspirational at best.

I moved to the tube. A heavy hand baggage lug of about two vertical miles. It seems cruel to glass the ‘U’ station in floor to ceiling windows only to separate it from the train by about fourteen escalators and one sign. On finally arriving, sweaty, beer-draughted and ready for a fight, Butlin-Man’s doppelgänger passed on two useful pieces of advice “the underground service to ealing isn’t running” and “my grinning colleage back there where you last saw your sense of humour should have told you that”

No wonder they make it so difficult to transit between train and tube. It’d take a stronger man than me to maintain the white hot anger required to jog back and lamp the cheeky twat. Instead I exited the tunnels of no transport, and headed over to the “directions” desk in the main terminal. My expectations weren’t high as the couple in front were informed their best option was to find a quiet bit of floor to sleep on. Undeterred I demanded to be briefed on bus services to the capital. What followed was an existential conversation focussing on whether a myhtical object known as a “bus” actually existed. Mr Non-Directional Directions refused to accept the existence of buses and, even under extreme pressure from a man who is looking down the barrel of last orders, if they might logically exist, he’d never actually seen one.

If I was quick, I’d probably bag some decent floor space. I was beyond quick, I was angry and dispatched him with a jaunty “you really are a useless tosser aren’t you?” before giving up and hailing a cab. Which was driven by a man riddled with bitterness by a life filled with other peoples’ mistakes. I was almost glad to hand over forty five quid because that’d only get you about ten minutes with a decent lawyer. And the way things were going, I was going to need a homicide specialist.

Jason met my incoming tirade with a sympathetic smile and a cold beer. Both of which were welcome but didn’t really compensate for spending the thick end of ninety minutes going almost nowhere. It did set me up for the next day where the train home started late and was further beset by delays due to a complex Venn diagram plotting an intersect art of “First Great Western“, “Railtrack” and “The Wrong Type Of Employees“. At Worcester they gave up completely citing “if we carry on, all the outbound passengers will be late, and so will the ones coming back. If we terminate here, only half of you will be pissed off”

You cannot argue with blinding logic like that. I had a pop, but you could toss a railway employee into a flaming bit and their fireproof teflon-ness would save them every time. Be fun to try tho.

Travelling is bonkers though. Left Tuesday to fly Wednesday. Left Friday to get home finally at 2pm on Saturday. And from where do you think I am writing this then? Give up? Okay, it’s the 0553 from Ledbury heading into London on a dark autumnal Monday morning. Worst still, now I have to go to work, the bloody thing is only on time.

Ah the joys of travelling. Count them all day, check behind the sofa and you’ll still come up with a bit fat zero. Much to tell, couple of problems, the first is the horror of my inbox which is unravelling in perfect synchronisation with the world’s financial markets. I fully expect to have reduced it to a managable size at exactly the same time as the FTSE 100 index drops below about 3.

Displacement activity, that’s the key here. Not just for the implosion of anything that may be useful for paying mortgages and eating, but also from my stupidly sore shoulder that I’ve injured in a very middle aged way. I can now barely turn my head after a session of extreme sleeping. Yes, folks went to bed a bit drunk, woke up in a silly amount of pain. Maybe I fell out of bed.

Anyway, once I’ve hosed out the fetid cesspit of the outer reaches of my inbox, and secured a sequential line of cold beer, I shall re-enter the world of pointless rambling. Until then, it is time to lay down some sick moves while hitting “reply-to-all”

I have been reading extensively on the history of politics, and the emergence of new nation states in preparation for my coronation as World Dictator. Today is a great day as my campaign funds have been significantly swelled by a lucky win on the Nigerian Lottery. So in addition to 50p, an IOU from the children and a collection of slightly used cycling assets, a further 13.9 million euros was added to the fund this morning. I merely need to affect some tedious administration around bank accounts and the money is all mine!

And since I understand the inner workings of democratic governments, I shall merely bribe, cajole, bully and blackmail my way into power. It’s worked since 1945, so I’ve no reason to doubt I’m a shoe in for President Of The World before the year is out.

First order of business is “The List”. Rather than muck about with all this airy-fair manifesto nonsense, I’m going to create macro policy based on a to do list. It’s served me well in the world of work, so it’ll be seamlessly transplanted into World Affairs without wasting any (of my) money on policy think tanks, strategy groups or finance committees.

Let’s face it, I can hardly do worse than this bunch of muppets, and I’m going to be the cheap alternative. A few cronies, a head of cheese, a man to provision the scorpion pits and a fridge full of beer. So to the list, let’s start with things that will be outlawed, shot or destroyed in a cruel and sadistic manner:

1) Wood Pidgins
2) The 3 year warranty
3) The 0553 from Ledbury to London
4) Singlespeed bicycles
5) Heathrow
6) The M25
7) A man called “Tony Jones” from Nissan UK Customer Service.
8) Calories in beer
9) Reality TV shows
10) Fat people

I accept this list looks a little personal and biased towards some of my recent experiences, but the thing is it’s all doable. So rather than focus on the negatives, let’s look at what we could replace these blights on society with:

1) Bird than don’t make a sound at 5am like they’re being bum raped
2) Unlimited Warranty (to be first introduced by Nissan) for all components, especially French ones
3) 0930 with beds, complimentary breakfasts and no delays. Ever. Punishable by being run over by the late train.
4) Gears. Wow that’s one done already. Superb start for the new team.
5) Helicopters for all worthy individuals in the new state
6) Death Race 2000 for real. Build some grandstands, a burger bar and let free all the frustrated reps in a last man standing battle
7) A soothing and sympathetic voice explaining “Yes Mr Leigh, you are so right, let us supply you with a brand new car”
8) Beer as a compulsory condiment to every meal. Wine can be substituted
9) Round the clock re-runs of “What a top bloke Alex is” in the full glory of the original 47 episodes
10) Thinner people who don’t complain about glands.

I don’t want go mad and bite off more than the scorpions can handle, but feel free to get involved in the policy debate. But be clear the Tony Jones principle is non negotiable. I’m personally selecting the spiders for that individual.

Nissan UK are squirming and stalling in the telephonic image of our most statesmanlike politicians. First it was “was it dealer serviced?” and then “where?” and now “which dealer did you buy it from?” Still, no decision on whether they are going to pony up for their illicit altercations with the frenchies, but by drawing a line between their points of misdirection, I’ve divined:

a) They are probably going to pay for some of it

b) They may do this before I am too old to continue driving

c) They are going to be shit out of luck if they think the dealer is paying, since I bought it from a one man Internet band residing in a posh shed.

Tomorrow I’m off to Athens but shall continue to annoy the proxy garage who are responding to Nissan’s never ending questions. Because if 4 hours of economy travel from Terminally Bored 5 isn’t bad enough, the prospect of a still leaky car when I’m finally allowed back into the country certainly is.

As part of my ongoing discovery/head in hands voyage into the murky depths of Nissan ownership, it seems the poor bugger has already suffered a Turbo transplant at 10,000 miles. Assuming I’ve purchased the Lemon’s lemon then – by the time my feet touch the shores of ol’ blighty again – the wheel arches will have rusted, the electrics fused and the CD player mutated to a permanent bump’n’grind setting.

Having just told the nurse at the health centre, I barely drink at all and never in the week, guess which localised cold spot I’m heading to now? And while you’re at it, have a dash at the percentage of the repair the oily oiks at Nissan are going to offer. My starter for 10 is 50{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2}, but then I always was a deluded optimist 😉

EDIT: Deluded and indeed wrong. Nissan decided not to honour any “goodwill” as I was not a loyal customer. The crux of their argument was I had not been loyal to the brand and the car was no longer in the dealer network, and they couldn’t see any reason to help. My counter argument went something like “it’s a known problem, half of it has already been fixed under warranty, the car has 20k miles on it, it is 2 WEEKS out of warranty and has been dealer serviced. The only difference is I bought it off a bloke in a shed who had BOUGHT IT FROM THE DEALER“.

I took a breath and pointed out it was hard to show brand loyalty when I had only just bought into the brand and my first experience was Nissan giving me the bums’ rush. I further moved to close the discussion with a simple “Okay, I’ll never show any loyalty now, I’ll go back to Honda [wince from other end of the phone], I will use the awesome media power of the hedgehog to disparage their products, and further they can expect to receive a VERY STRONGLY WORDED LETTER”

That left them quaking I can tell you. They even promised to re-open the case in order to stall for another day, before telling me to get stuffed. So, as expected, it’s down to the customer to receive no satisfaction and a large bill. Someone once told me it’s ten times harder to get a new customer than retain an existing one.

Did anyone tell Nissan?

.. YES IT IS. I have lowered my Personal Yard Arm and Autumnal sunshine is peaking over the top of it. Therefore I pronounce this time Beer O’Clock, and God Bless all who drink in her.

It’s been that kind of week. I missed out on the best night ride of the season because my less than trusty car was leaking. At work, I seem to occupy a position at the epicentre of ‘other peoples screw ups” which has done bad things to my patience, temper and inbox. I overslept one day, so over compensated waking up on the hour, every hour ever since, so increasing my grumpy co-efficient to a value similar to the loses on wall street.

And around me things have been whirling in an orbit of wrongness. The dog has Shrapnel-Poo(tm) after stealing a full bag of cashew nuts – now every time he shits, it’s making a sound like small arms fire. I’m sure the Kennel Club are secretly watching and he’ll soon be taken in care. The house remains unchanged, as does my enthusiasm for painting 11 doors and a million walls.

One child has decided she wants to be a professional footballer (until yesterday and now it’s Netball that offers her future employment), the other is having a massive sulk for some terrible slight such as receiving 1 gram less desert than her sister. I expect her to exact terrible retribution for this sometime later in life, and so have vowed never to own a rabbit. Aside from getting noticeably bigger and eating anything that.. no sorry just anything, Murphy appears to be the world’s first hydrophobic Labrador. Show him some lovely clean lake to swim in, and he’ll show you his award winning ‘arse glued to ground and DONT PUT ME IN THERE face”

On the upside “Windsock Child” has now decided she loves bikes again. Obviously hers is now too small, and she has been experimenting riding her mums’. It’s fair to say that one parent thinks that’s bloody great and is already investigating something blue, 26inch wheeled and suspension fangled for Christmas, while the other has received the news with slightly less glee.

And the weather looks great which means BBQ, bikes and – predictably – beer. I’ve given up with the biking spreadsheet this year, but on examining the gut/trouser interface, a lack of commuting and a refusal to ride in the pissing rain may be a vector for some early onset porkiness.

And as a mature man with a good handle on health matters, family responsibilities and vocational issues, the way forward is obvious.

UNLEASH THE BEER 🙂

.. 4th biggest investment bank collapses. Stock market values drop off vertical cliffs and incalculable sums are lost every hour. Thousands of people lose their jobs and that’s not even close to the end of it. High street banks panic and merge, huge insurance providers get emergency funding and de-facto nationalisation. A quarter century of greed comes crashing down, and we’re left wondering what the fuck will happen next.

But that is NOTHING compared to how I’m feeling right now. You can simply deal with shit like financial markets imploding, because there is really toss all you can do about it. But when stuff in your control goes badly wrong then that’s so much better – you can feel like a right bloody charlie, and that is exactly what you are. I’m so fucking annoyed right now, staccato and rhetoric are my only forms of communication. So here goes:

1) What kind of nutjob spends two days researching problems with potential new cars and then buys one anyway?
2) Have you ever heard an engine expire with a noise that can only be described as “expensive“?
3) Exactly how many months out of warranty counts as out of warranty? Here’s a clue, it’s about exactly how old my car is.
4) What’s the most expensive part to replace? Another clue, it’s currently chucking litres of fucking oil into the engine bay
5) What specifically is excluded from the extended warranty? See 4) for further insights into possible answers.
6) If you buy a car from a broker, not a dealer, what comeback do you think you might have?
7) How the hell am I going to get to Heathrow next week?
8) Is it time for another beer?
9) How much is it going to cost to get fixed? What’s to say it won’t just happen again?

8) is really rhetorical. 7) Involves trains and boredom. 9) is string like in its’ length. The rest you can probably work out for yourselves.

You know that old expression “Don’t beat yourself up about it?”. Well it’s bollocks. I knew better and I did it anyway. And now I’m somewhere between mildly vexed and vein throbbing mad. Although tending somewhat more to the mad.

It’s not just the four figure fee to fix it. Or the castigation for not actually acting on good advice. It’s the ball ache of getting it sorted, arguing with Nissan and tramping round dealers with a sick car. Worse than that is the worry that you’ve bought a lemon and this is merely an aperitif to the main course of never ending spending.

Still I did save two grand buying it off the Internet. That’ll about pay for this repair. And if/when it happens again, it may just spark another rash sell/buy transaction. Tell me again, why the fuck did I sell the Honda?