Previously on the hedgehog, snoot has been cocked at the naming of things that are certainly not animal, possibly a bit of vegetable* and quite a bit mineral. However, in the spirit on ongoing hypocrisy, our new family car has been named after the tremendous if deeply flawed movie of the same name. Not because we’re intending to rape and pillage the Kingdom of Mercia, rather the registration plate begins VK which is enough for this resident film geek to baptise the the non-organic chap.

It’s an improvement on naming our Christmas Tree Colin, or directing confused visitors to deposit their rubbish in Derek The Dalek. And we’ve moved on from Rog mainly so I can bring forth my own Dane-Law variant during difficult traffic situations. Predictably the handover was not without a touch of angst triggered firstly by our first sight of ‘our‘ car being driven rapidly away in what looked suspiciously like an opportunistic car-jack.

Our furrowed brows were smoothed when it was explained that the sales fella was merely chucking in enough fuel to make sure we didn’t conk out on his forecourt. On his return, I signed 437 bits of paper without reading any of them. With an almost equal split of draconian penalties for financial misdemeanours and arse covering for the dealer to ensure no chance of successful prosecution for a selling strategy only slightly less dodgy than ‘would Sir like PPI with that’, there seemed little point in making a fuss.

Finally we were directed outside to a car now fully owned by a interesting transaction from an earlier rape and pillage of one of our company accounts, which coughed up a sum of money so large it ran into five digits. With no decimal points. While the kids piled in and began destroying pristine upholstery, I was subjected to a training programme based apparently on an assumption that the concept of a door and a steering wheel would be all exciting and new to me.

However, this did highlight a tiny issue where the operation of the fog lights ended with the entire switch-gear in the salesman’s hands. I felt this was an entirely appropriate juncture to reflect on the outstanding build quality much trumpeted only a few days earlier before we’d handed over the cash. A hurried conference outed Jamie from the workshop who – through a double jointed thumb roll/masonic hand shake – snapped it back in with the airy observation that’ they all do that sir’

Salesman Steve was keen to wave us off in order to lock up the premises and remove any record of our purchase from their systems. I was keen to drive the bloody thing. Carol and the kids were keen for some Viking like sequestration of the local fish and chip shop. Nothing like paying for that new car smell only to mask it with the greasy odour of much vinigared cod.

Off we finally went leaving Steve to spend a couple of days to count the money. Immediately we had a problem, now the old X-Trail – abandoned and unloved as far from the showroom** as possible – was lavishly equipped with sufficient instrumentation to document a reasonable approximation of current speed, and some knocked off switchgear from a 1970s Datsun Cherry randomly lit by clunky switchgear. The Yeti is something else entirely – think NASA wrapped up in airbags.

My friend Mike’s assertion that the world today is nothing more than an informational tornado smacked me right between the eyes when everything started talking to me. The SatNav, the Radio, the CD stack in the boot, the one on the dash, the kids and Carol who was nose down in the manual. “Turn Left at the next junction” intoned a rather well spoken young lady while the middle of the dash and what I’d mistaken for a colour TV bombarded me with graphics, colours and arrows.

Somehow at the same time, a further icon demanded I change gear, another one reminded me that the car was still running on Fumes+, yet another whirled through a dazzling display of fuel consumption, average speed, possible Acts of God and Engine temperature. With all this going on what the FUCK was I meant to do about Engine Temperature. 86 degrees. Is that good? Bad? Is something on fire? Shall I get the family out now because soon the entire shebang will be ablaze?

Carol worked how to turn most of it off while I concentrated on parking within binocular range of the curb, before setting off to the chippy leaving me to play with the stupendously clever electronics that’d discovered my phone, cuddled it in bluetooth before raping*** the memory for contacts and presenting them on the screen. A random button press chirped “Voice Activation On” to which I replied “what the fuck am I supposed to do with that?” / “Calling Bob Pluck” No, No, don’t do that, Cancel, Desist, JUST STOP FOR A SODDING MINUTE WILL YOU.

To be fair the voice recognition is way better than SIRI on the iPhone which is good news in the same was as waking up in hospital after a car accident only to be told “The bad news is you’ve lost both legs and an arm, the good news is your Volvo started first time“. Having turned off the ignition to create an facsimile of calm, I was in no position to do anything but adopt a Munch’s Scream fizog as a battered old people carrier approach at ramming speed with my front bumper clearly in their sights

Missed by a whisker. That’s a pair of pants that are going to need some special cleaning I can tell you. Eventually we arrived home with most things intact other than any remaining composure. Ensconced in my favourite chair, I confidently whisked out the manual to better understand the magic going on between the doors. As a man steeped in technology with twenty+ years behind the rampack, the SatNav instructions held no fear for me. Right until I opened the manual.

No idea. No idea at all. Active Button X to Trigger Flange Z thereby enabling Menu B which is only available in certain countries on a Balmy Wednesday Evening during the month of June. I gently closed the booklet of despair and reverted to my standard strategy of reading nothing, but having a mallet on standby.

It is a nice car. It’s still a nice car even after a fat gentleman with the spacial awareness of a dead stoat slammed his door into it earlier today. I’m not a nice person tho, I’ve hidden his body in the frozen food aisle at our local Morrisons.

Proportional response I’d suggest based on everything I’ve gone through so far this weekend.

* Any parent knows that crossing children with cars creates a unholy union best described as ‘ugh something is growing in the back seat. Might once have been a fruit shoot, now is a leafy fungus‘

** It was all working. But I have a suspicion that it might not be for too much longer

*** I will get bored of Viking jokes soon, I promise.

So said – with scripted sincerity – the small child barely filling a cheap suit predictably accessorised with a clip on tie. Being such a callow youth, the concept of using the time between his soundbites to actually listen, rather than cue up the next cheesy missive had yet to register.

Which goes at least some way to explaining how a spluttered ‘you are fucking joking aren’t you’ spectacularly failed to prevent the launch of the good ship ‘further stupidity‘ into the choppy seas of an irate customer.

“Now Sir, we profile our customer using the PRICES method” [ignore crossed arms and darkening scowl] “That’s P for Prices, R forReliability, I for Image, C for Claptrap, E for Ectoplasm and S for Surely this is some sick joke, yes“. I may not have parsed the entire mnemonic correctly, yet I do remember being asked innocently whether “Image” and “Reliability” were important to me.

Allowed to speak at last, I caustically informed the young pup that as a middle aged man with the dress sense of a blind stoner and a hair line starting somewhere south of my spine, image was something that happened to other people. As for reliability, frankly if I’m handing over a suitcase of cash for some design exercise splattered with ‘my first plastics‘ I’d be pretty fucking irritated if it didn’t start first time every time until I’m long gone.

A frown passed over his youthful countenance as the literally hours of sales training failed to deliver any answer other than calling for the Sales Manager to escort me off the premises. Eventually he sucked hard on his pencil before scrawling ‘Mature Driver‘ on the crib sheet. Which I assume put me in line for some incremental selling involving cardigans, brogues and term time cruise offers.

I entirely disproved his categorisation with a flounce-out refusing to even consider a test drive of something clearly styled by a man with pointy sideburns, a pony tail and a razor blade. Things improved not at all with other brands; the Kia hawker ignored Carol completely on the apparently justifiable grounds that anyone without a penis could have even the slightest influence over the next car purchase.

The Nissan Salesman was some kind of gone-to-seed Rugby player crossed with a failed game show host. I can only but admire his chutzpah attempting to offload a car barely two years newer than the old knacker I was trading in, while demanding the thick end of twelve grand for the privilege. And having dragged the family around most of South Gloucestershire in an attempt to buy something that might transport me to work without bankrupting us all, we ended up back where we started.

At the Skoda garage where a nice man called Steve sympathised with our pleading of poverty while gently explaining that customer financial hardship in no way invoked some kind of hidden discount clause. I’d already told him in no uncertain terms that only snobs and mugs bought new cars and, as a man who had already trodden that idiotic path at least twice before, I was ready for his sales’y wiles.

Mainly by introducing Carol who is brilliantly immune to every sales technique ever devised, responding simply that ‘that’s too much money, come on let’s go back and see the bloke who was BEGGING us to hand over about a fiver for a new car down the road“. Me? Bloody Useless. I just see something shiny and fail to worry about how we might pay for it because I WANT SHINY NOW.

In summary, Carol – adult with good judgement and fiscal sense, Alex – small child with attention span of special needs moth and financial perspective similar to dictator of African country. I did advance an argument that purchasing a new car in the colour we didn’t want infested with toys we didn’t need was such a stupid idea not even I was buying it. Steve countered this offering us a second hand car with none of the toys but in a more pleasing colour for slightly more than the new one he was attempting to shift.

I gave up. Having decided we couldn’t afford the car we liked the best, we ran around for two weeks looking at more sensible options which we really didn’t like at all. There’s a history here; put three things in front of Carol and I and we’ll ignore them all instead selecting a fourth at double the cost of the most expensive. It’s not snobbery, or even good taste (well on my part). It’s just some hard wired issue of choosing expensive things that will cost even more once ownership is ours; exhibit A: this house.

But the kids loved the Yeti. So did we. It’s kind of fun even in the cooking 2WD version* with a not terribly lusty Diesel engine. It’s resembles most closely a Labrador in its desire to please – if such an emotion can be transferred to metal and electronics. There’s some justification in the cost of running the now aged x-trail, the great MPG, the need for the dealer to shift it – but honestly it’s really a shit load of money for something that loses 20% of the value when you drive it off the forecourt.

Once you get over that, it’s fine. Apparently. But otherwise I was going to beat the next salesman to death with his calculator, and I couldn’t ask my family to traipse around soulless car showrooms for any longer.

It’ll be a nice thing to drive a 100 miles a day for the next few months while I wrest this latest project into some kind of shape. And while I’ll be sorry to see the X-Trail go, the next 10,000 miles were going to be significantly more expensive than the last 50,000.

All I can say is it’s a bloody good job that new is – indeed – the new used.

* I wanted a 4WD again until I saw the price. Then I wanted some snow tyres instead

Lots of it out there towards Wales, not much from the pilot’s seat. The return of MouseLung(tm) was not entirely unexpected, but this time shrivelled my oxygenating ability to properly scary lows. Asthma is a chronic disease – you don’t get better – but the management and drugs are so much better now.

Which makes my seasonally unadjusted attack very strange indeed. Always between January and March, a cold will spread to my lungs and for three days trips upstairs have to be carefully planned, with Ventalin lung openers carefully placed in strategic locations. Day four, it’s mostly gone and life returns to acceptable without wheezy lungs and a hacking cough.

This incident progressed as normal; a damp London Monday triggered some shortness of breath, before three days driving all over the country sealed my fate. Good job it’s not infectious otherwise a number of potential customers would be on the sick list.

Friday night though when the worst should be over, things started to get a bit hairy. Firstly the drugs stopped working – normally a hourly puff of Ventalin so opens up the passageways to allow enough air to ‘go lung’. But by 1am I was mainlining the bloody stuff with no obvious effect.

A further joy of an asthma attack is lying down makes it far worse. So I found myself leaning against a handy wall fighting for every breadth and remembering that panicking makes it worse. That happy thought just made me remember to panic really. By 3am, every muscle involved in breathing – and there are a surprising amount – ached, every breadth wheezed like a death rattle, and my entire focus was on dragging sufficient air into shallow lungs.

There’s a further irony with Asthma – at least some of the cause is pollution so the inhalers no longer have any pressurisation to make them greener to make. Meaning there is no propellent to inject the drug into your mouth. You have to suck it in as they say which is quite tough with a peak flow of a poorly mouse.

That was a long night. Followed by a morning of emergency doctor’s appointments, a rush on the local pharmacy and sufficient steroids to stun a small donkey. The improvement was nowhere near enough to place riding bikes in my immediate future, so instead I tramped up a very small hill to throw bits of foam into a bracing wind.

1000 litres of air being blasted into your lungs at 40PSI is probably not on the NHS treatment list but it worked for me. As did rattling down the pills with a Shiraz chaser. Today I’m left with about 75{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} lung capacity and a hacking cough that’d shame a 20-a-day man. It’s not what I’d call recovered, but no longer am I spending evening propped up against a wall wondering where the next breath is coming from.

Without modern drugs and treatment, Asthma is a killer. Without riding bikes and being generally healthy, it’d be debilitating in the extreme. I use it as an excuse when trailing uphills to my fully-lunged pals, but even I don’t really believe that. Except at times like last Friday night. That’d better be it for this year.