The Citroen Saxo VTR - a stereotypical hairdressers’ car.

I bought my current car when it was 2 years old. Having had a few older cars over the years (including a delightful mk.2 VW Golf GTi - great drivers car when it ran, which wasn’t nearly often enough) I decided to get a “modern” car that wouldn’t give me any problems. So I bought a Citroen Saxo (pictured right). It’s quite a quick car with pretty good handling and low insurance, so it seemed ideal to me. And it’s been great.

It took me a long time to stop checking the water temperature, oil and coolant levels every time I drove it (a hangover from the Golf days). But in 2.5 years it’s hardly had anything go wrong with it and has been the picture of reliability. I say hardly anything, but one thing that did go wrong was quite scary at the time. I was driving up a hill, a long straight with crawler lane (2 lanes on my side, 1 lane on the other) and was doing about 75mph, overtaking a couple of other cars. I lifted off the accelerator as I got past the others to slow down, but it just kept accelerating. It was at this point that I discovered how helpless you feel the instant you no longer feel in control of your car. To cut a short story shorter, the accelerator cable had frayed and got stuck in its housing, thereby keeping the accelerator flat out. It was interesting anyway. And that’s about all that went wrong with the car.

But I had decided that I was going to keep it for no longer than a couple of years. Any longer and things would start to go wrong and cost me money. Plus, as the miles and age go higher, so the value drops exponentially. Well, last week I decided the time had come and I was at the stage where I wanted a new motor. If you think this article has been dull up until here, then I’m afraid it’s going to get a bit worse (you might like to follow this link and read something more interesting and juicy instead).

Unfortunately, my criteria for cars hasn’t changed much in the last two years. I want something reasonably fast, with good handling and low insurance. Even more unfortunately, there aren’t any more cars out there that fit my criteria. So in the absence of any imagination or enthusiasm to go car hunting I opted to get a newer version of the same car. I found one, and it’s exactly the same colour as my current one. The Saxo was facelifted a couple of years ago and so has new lights, grille and interior. That’s about it. So I’ve traded in my previous car for a younger, almost identical one. How boring is that?

But you know what? I’m not bothered at all. It’s just a car, not a status symbol. Damn, I’m getting old… How long until I can have a mid-life crisis?

Pleasing to the touch and the eye

I’ve just had a bit of a spending spree. While the frame of my mountain bike is pretty good and I’m happy with it (a last generation Orange Clockwork), I’ve gradually been upgrading all the components on it. By a year ago I had replaced the bars, shifters, brakes, levers and chainset - which was about 300 quid in a flash. As I’ve been doing a fair amount of biking lately I decided to finish the job. My suspension forks were pretty terrible, so I ordered a lovely pair of air-oil ones from Marzocchi with 100mm of travel (which are utterly superb, by the way).

My wheels were the oldest parts on my bike so I’ve replaced them too with some lighter and stronger ones (and I can remove the tyres without needing metal tyre levers! result). I also got some cooler biking tops (far less fluorescent and far less tight) so I don’t look quite as much of an idiot on my bike as before. All in, with a few other bits and pieces, that was another 500 quid of spending.

No more fluorescent tops if you please

You might argue that I could have got a new bike for the amount I’ve spent replacing everything except the frame. And you’d be right. But it wouldn’t be anywhere near as good a bike as the one I’ve now got. And it’s not as though I’m not going to get my value for money. The title of this piece is “New Kit, New Enthusiasm” and I’m not kidding. When I bought a top notch 4-season sleeping bag a few years ago I spent the first few nights sleeping in it on my bed. My rationale is that if you’ve got something, you might as well use it, and you need to get your value for money (I’m Scottish after all).

So you can expect me to be writing quite a number of pieces over the coming months about my mountain biking exploits. I’ve had a few years in the doldrums where I’ve not had the enthusiasm I used to have for biking, but I’m back. I’m keen and loving it again. My fitness has come back to its old level and as my confidence comes from my fitness, I’m feeling ready for anything. All I need is some decent weather this summer and it’ll be perfect…

In case you’re interested, I still haven’t got around to killing off everything in my garden. But I’ll get round to it eventually! Honest.

It’s rainy season again in Yorkshire. You get four seasons in one day here: a rainy day in each season that is. But as I’ve said before, I like rain. I went biking last night at Gisburn forest in the pouring rain and it was lovely. Most of the terrain was wide, gravel-covered paths that you could drive a car along but there were enough twisty single-track sections through the trees to keep it interesting. Turned out to be a pretty good workout and I’d have to say I’m about as fit as I’ve ever been on a bike (so no more excuses about how fit I used to be and that I’d have been twice as fast as that a few years ago).

But it was nice to get out in the pouring rain, soaked and mud-spattered. You just can’t beat exercise in the open air away from other people, concrete buildings and cars. To me that’s bliss. On the subject of open air, I’ve started running again after almost breaking my toe. The main place I run is through some fields in the bottom of the valley in which I live. There are usually cows and sheep blocking the way, but it’s nice and goes alongside a river. The only slight problem is trying not to swallow too many insects at this time of year. It’s almost like being in the middle of nowhere (despite the dual carriageway not more than 200m away) and gives me a chance to clear my head.

This made me laugh. I’ve always thought that having a plastic figurine of yourself looking back at you would be too bizarre for comprehension. Luckily Wil feels the same way. See, you can be famous and not become a sanctimonious git.

And don’t worry, I’ll take some more photos when it stops raining!

Always Never read the label before eating.

I’ve recently become addicted to a new substance. No, not cocaine, crack, crystal meth or even alcohol. Far worse. I’m hooked on Cadbury’s Brunch Bars. By the description on the box they are a “Tasty Cereal Bar” consisting of “oats, bran flakes, raisins, crispies and honey in a bed of Cadbury’s milk chocolate”. If you break down the ingredients (right) then they’re nothing more than flapjacks covered with chocolate. But it doesn’t stop me eating them by the box-load.

Back in my triathlon training days I’d sometimes buy an entire trifle, and then just eat the whole thing at once. I realise that they’re supposed to be eaten by four people but I’d be pretty hungry and I like trifles. Well, I eventually managed to cut that habit out, although I do still occasionally buy and devour trifles and it’s just like old times.

Back to the main point. Brunch bars come in boxes of 6 and currently retail at 99p. They’re chewy, sweet without being sickly and very more-ish (the more you eat the more you want to eat). I buy a couple of box and have the first one eaten an hour later. I tried buying three boxes to make them last longer but I just ate more of the damn things. I’ve just finished yet another box and I’m going to try and make that my last. Enough is enough. I will not be controlled by 35g chewy cereal bars. No chance. Not any more.

On a lighter note, I see that the UK air traffic control centre in Swanwick has gone horribly wrong again causing travel chaos for thousands. Opened 6 years later than planned, this part-privatised project has been a demonstration of how not to run a large mission-critical project. The software was written from scratch and the management changed hands several times over the years, both contributing heavily to the problems. As a software developer myself (and, I hope, a pretty good one) this comes as no surprise to me. It’s a well known fact in the industry that you can’t get a late software project finished faster by throwing more money at the problem. Conversely, throwing more money in will make it even later.

It can take just one person to fuck up a project like this one up. A bad critical decision here and there can snowball and result in a total fiasco of astronomic proportions (pun intended). However, the fact that over a year was spent fixing 1400 bugs is pretty good by my estimations. Nevertheless, I’m glad I wasn’t on that project - I can’t stand incompetence at any level, and while I’ve no doubt there were a lot of highly intelligent superstars there, their performance was dwarfed by those not in the same bracket making the decisions.

My two cents: maybe the technology sector wouldn’t be in such a slump if there hadn’t been so many idiots in the business that had no technical right to be there.

Close your eyes, blow the dandelion and make a wish…

One of the reasons I love the winter is that grass doesn’t grow. This means that you can mow the lawn just before it gets cold and not need to do it again for months. When I do mow the lawn I’m not enjoying it. And I don’t think to myself how lovely it’ll look when it’s nice and short. The only reason I do it at all is because (a) my girlfriend nags me to the point of madness and (b) the neighbours nag me to the point of madness.

I suppose I could cope with having to cut the grass every couple of weeks. But the grass where I live is in terrible condition and has always been 90% weeds and moss, with 10% grass - and not very good grass at that. Actually, here’s a question: why do puny kids at school get called weeds? Weeds are the most hardy and versatile of all plants and are virtually impossible to kill. Surely the school tough guys should be called weeds… Anyway, back to my rant. Even if I do cut the grass, it leaves massive bare patches that cats like to use as a toilet. So I can’t win.

My neighbours have, or had, the same problem. They’ve all killed off the grass, laid down plastic sheets, and put small gravel-type stones down. Very nice it looks too. Late last year I decided that I was going to do the same thing. By the time I could be bothered to think about actually doing it we were in the middle of autumn and it was raining all the time. So I decided to leave it until the weather got warm again after the winter. And here we are. The garden’s overgrown again and there’s even a thistle this time (I feel like I’m back in Scotland again). Anyway, it’s getting out of hand so I’m going to have to do something about it. I’m going to use the weed killer my girlfriend bought me 6 months ago to kill everything. And then I’m going to put plastic and then stones down. And then I don’t have to touch it again. Job done. I’ll do it at the weekend.

Haven’t seen one of these babies for years

On a more positive note, my injured toe is almost healed. I can walk properly and can even run. I can’t kick a football properly with my left foot yet (as if I ever could) although I can still catch the ball behind my neck - true, you don’t really need to use your feet for that. So hopefully I’ll get back to playing by the end of next week.

On the subject of football, I’ve decided to support France during the world cup. Being Scottish I’d find my passport revoked if I were to support England (and my family would disown me) so I had to wave the flag for somebody else. I was tempted to Spain as I’m a big fan of Real Madrid, but I just couldn’t resist the “Auld Alliance” tie between Scotland and France. I’ve bought the shirt and I’m ready to cheer them on. So with that decided my June and July should be a lot more bearable. And as most of England’s first team seem to be injured I don’t really see them going on to win it anyway (although meeting France in the second stage would be nice).

Brownie, aka Sebastian. Rest in peace. I’ll miss you.

I’ve mentioned my guinea pigs before. One of them seemed a bit down last week - not eating, sitting hunched in the corner, and just looking a bit miserable. I took her to the vet on Thursday and misaligned teeth was diagnosed. She went in for an op on Friday to see what they could do and the prognosis was not good. The vet said her teeth were in quite a state and it was very likely to happen again and to keep an eye on her. On Saturday evening she went from bad to worse. She hadn’t eaten for days and wasn’t drinking. When I came home after a day out biking she was lying on her side, limp, like a rag doll.

I spent most of Saturday night and early Sunday morning getting her to drink water with a baby food-type powder the vet gave me mixed in. She perked up a little bit after an hour, but it was clear that she was in a bad way. She couldn’t stand properly, was breathing heavily, and was in some distress. By the morning I suspected the worst and called the vet. When I took her in the vet shared my pessimism and noted that while she was performing the op she wasn’t convinced my baby was going to survive. So we decided to have her put down and a couple of minutes later she was gone. It was clear that distorted teeth weren’t her only problem as she appeared to have an abscess in her lower jaw, but all that’s academic. She was out of her misery and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t shed a few tears. But that wasn’t the only reason.

Gavin M. Evans. Click this image to see the full photo.

At 9am, just before I called the vet, my mobile phone started bleeping at me. And when I looked at it I was shocked. It told me that on this day (12 May) four years ago (1998) my good friend Gavin Evans (right) was killed in a random accident aged 23. His death wasn’t my first experience of losing somebody - I was 11 when that happened. Nor was he my last. But his death has hit me the hardest. It still upsets me today sometimes - and I’m not an emotional guy. He was a fairly quiet lad at primary school, although very intelligent. But going to university made a man of him. He turned into a 6-foot-plus go-getter who’d try anything and never had a bad word to say about anybody.

The one conversation I had with him that always springs to mind was on the day that this photo was taken. He’d just started parachuting and he was loving it. He must have spent a good hour or so explaining in detail everything you’d ever want to know about it. His enthusiasm was infectious and I added parachuting to my lifetime to-do list there and then. Ironically, the more I think about it the more like him I’ve become over the years in my outlook on life. To say that he was one of the nicest guys I’ve ever known would be a massive understatement. You may not have known him but I did. And I can assure you that the world is a lesser place without him.

I don’t often put anything negative on this site. But this isn’t any ordinary day. Not for me. Rest in peace, old friends.

My brother is working in St. Andrews for a week at a trade show. I think the show must be in a hotel, because this story takes place in a hotel. A woman comes up to him and asks if the phones where they were could ring the rooms - he says yes. The woman dials a room number and says to the person on the other end “you’ll never believe who I’ve just seen in the gym…” a pause… “Prince William!”. (Note: the aforementioned Prince is attending St. Andrews University, and as I went to school there for 6 years I know what a miserable time he must be having - not even a single nightclub…). On hearing this, my brother went straight to the gym to confirm the facts. Lo and behold, there he was. So my brother’s colleague finds out and wants a look too. They go back, pretending to have a look at the equipment but really at him. (Turns out he’s a taller bloke than you might think).

The point of this story is that I’m not very good at telling stories. Oh no, that’s not it. The point is that I’m sure this happens to the heir to the throne all the time and it must drive him mad. He’s a smart lad, he’ll know that all the people “examining the gym equipment” are really just checking him out and doing a bad job of trying to be subtle. He’ll never be a normal bloke. That’s why I love being a nobody.

I can walk down the street and nobody pays me any attention. People don’t look at me, and they don’t care. If I get a new haircut (unlikely I know), it doesn’t appear in the paper the next day. If I have a late night on the town with a few drinks and a bit of bad behaviour (even less likely than the haircut), I don’t have paparazzi banging on my door with some cock-and-bull story about what I did the night before.

I remember watching a programme on the BBC when I was a kid about the Parachute Regiment training. The instructor (a rather burly, red-haired bloke if I remember correctly, or maybe I’m generalising - although I’m sure he had a moustache) kept shouting out to his poor recruits ”don’t stand out!“. His point was that if he could single a man out then so could the enemy. In general life that’s what I try to do.

Maybe it’s my average looks, but I often find that I am virtually invisible to people. I almost never get recognised and I can speak to the same person several times before they realise that they’ve spoken to me before. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I don’t want attention, I just want to get on with what I’m doing (living my life). I’m not famous, and I’m not going to be. And it’s great. Don’t take it that I don’t want to meet new people - I just don’t want to know everybody, or, more to the point, I don’t want everybody to know me.

In case you’re wondering, my toe is somewhat better. I can almost walk properly and the swelling has gone down a lot. I still can’t run on it, or even hop on it. While most of the discolouration has gone, some small patches of the darker stuff seems to be spreading away from the toe - which is unusual. I’m hoping to be back running within the next few days and I’m 90% sure it wasn’t fractured. And I was unable to not do anything over the weekend, I went biking, did some weights, and did a few miles of rowing. No rest for the wicked…

I had the indignity of picking up an injury while playing football the other day. I’d like to say I was stretching to score the winning goal of the FA Cup final after coming on as a substitute, but instead my foot got kicked while challenging for the ball during a game of 5-a-side. I limped through the rest of the game, the rest of my working day and through a fairly impressive bowling game (well, the league bowlers next to our lane were pretty impressive) and a curry later on that night. When I got home at night and took of my sock I was quite surprised. My big toe was about twice it’s usual size and was as black as the ace of spades. The strange thing was that it didn’t hurt - except when I walked on it, or moved it in any way, or touched it, or even though about touching it.

So to try and speed up recovery I’ve been sitting around with my foot up on a chair (RICE treatment - Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation - two out of four ain’t bad), taken a few ibuprofen pills and just been taking it easy. I was tempted to post a photo of my battered toe right here, but it looks so terrible that I thought most people would find it horrifying (if you really want to see, drop me an email). Basically it looks like someone has hit it with a medium-sized hammer a couple of times and sprayed it with dark purple paint - looks far worse than it feels (which is nice for a change). Anyway, I’ve put a picture of the neighbour’s cat instead (left).

When I used to pick up injuries as a younger lad it used to drive me crazy. Having to sit around, doing nothing, rather than being an adrenaline junky pushing myself to the limits was hard to bear. I felt like a caged animal and was counting the hours until I’d recover. But at 27 I’m not quite so bothered any more. Clearly I’ve mellowed and now take time to laze around, watching football on TV, knowing that the tiny amount of fitness I’ll lose over the next week or so will be quickly made up. Also, I’ve got an air rowing machine that will allow me some exercise without hurting my toe should I feel the need to punish myself.

In the meantime I’ve continued reading my photography book and it’s starting to mess with my head. The key to taking good photographs seems to be composition and colour. So everywhere I go now I’m looking around and thinking to myself “how can I make a photo out of that?” and visualizing looking through the viewfinder of my camera and trying to make it work. So far I’m not seeing the shots, but if I stick with it I’m sure I’ll figure it out.

So in summary, this is a lazy bank holiday weekend for me. I’ve been gradually moving my favourite photos over the last 10 years onto electronic format (via a scanner) so I plan continuing that effort - something I’ve been meaning to finish for a while. I’ll try and take a few photos. And no, I won’t be doing any DIY. Or cutting the grass.