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So, apart from the arsehole in the sickly gold coloured ugly little Renault Megane AO02 VTN doing 30mph in a 40mph limit, whom I overtook on my way to work, and whose fragile little ego couldn’t handle being overtaken, especially with his girlfriend in the passenger seat, and who then decided to show me how much of a man he was and put his oh-so-macho foot down on the accelerator, thrash his little shopping car, overtake me on a roundabout, cut me up extremely badly, stick his fingers up, offer to fight me from his rear view mirror and THEN brake suddenly and dangerously, stuff his car into a curb and throw his door wide open to jump out and threaten me, to which I had to brake hard and swerve to narrowly avoid hitting the total jerkoff (thanks to ABS, all-round discs and four-wheel drive) who then stood there at the side of the road, holding up all the traffic and looking like a complete dickhead whilst I looked in my mirror, laughed and went on my merry way, everything started just fine that morning

The garage then called to say my Legacy was due in again today and that they had no courtesy car for me, which was OK because the sales department had already organised a 3.0R Spec B and forgot to tell the servicing guys…

So, for one day only, I drove a £29,000 car in black with 18″ alloys, heated electronically adjustable leather seats, 6 disc multichanger with MP3, sports shift and sports shift sharp intelligent electronic gearbox, some sort of traction control, sat nav, climate control, 245BHP 6 cylinder horizontally opposed boxer engine and all that jazz…

But I’ve got my turbo back so I’m happy again.

That should be the last car blog for a little while

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The Rolls Royce has the famous flying lady, The Spirit of Ecstasy…

The Bentley has its renowned Flying B…

Jaguar’s bonnet (hood) mascot is… er… the Jaguar…

And Alfa Romeo, those Italian cars made from recycled washing machines, well…

…this was the sight we saw outside Noel’s school this morning

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Nah, only joking. I only borrowed it for a day whilst my old BF chassis Subaru Legacy turbo was having a new set of rear brake discs and pads, an oil change, 15,000 mile service, some exhaust work…

Compared to the old ’94 turbo with 119,000 miles on it, the chassis isn’t so stiff, it doesn’t handle quite so well, it isn’t as powerful, it’s an automatic and a four-speed auto at that, the sport-shift doesn’t make up for any lack of 0-60, the twin exhaust note is a bit too refined (though I hate exhausts that are too loud) and the engine, still a 2.0 horizontally-opposed flat-four Subaru boxer engine, is a little bit wimpy at 165BHP.

The stereo and the climate control are nice though…

I like it, it’s a nice car, but it’s just not me. Don’t get me wrong, I’d have one, but it’s not as much fun as my ’94. Now, if those nice bods at Subaru would let me borrow a 245BHP Legacy 3.0R Spec B with the f1 shifters, all the leather trim, heated seats etc then I might be tempted to get a new one…

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Thank fuck for PDAs, bluetooth and GPRS… That’s how to blog in a Farnborough power cut

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Made it. Back to Terra Firma. Home. England. Hampshire. Farnborugh.

That was 8 days ago and this chunk of binary digits has sat there all this time whilst I got back in to the swing of things… work etc. And I feel naked without a photo for three whole posts so here’s a gratuitous “wherever I lay my hat” shot to signify coming home…

Thanks to Rebekah & Erik for the hat; my Christmas present was waiting in Virginia and made it home through a four-year-old’s clutches, across 3 states, 3 countries and survived the rigours of numerous airport x-ray machines

I have to admit that it was nice to see old Blighty again, soaring over the English countryside, then approaching London, the big smoke, home of very few English people these days and the capital city of this once-great nation. And I realise once again that I am British and proud of it and happy to be coming home.

Then through passport control it dawns on me how much the country, the world is changing and how quickly too… the seated passport control officers must be British but visually their heritage is from all the corners of the world… only one of them would look at home in the customary bowler hat.

Baggage collection was a joke, but is that down to our great sense of humour or the attitudes & abilities of those sending & collecting our luggage? I saw one of my cases turn up on the baggage trolley at the Madrid tarmac from my seat in the London-bound plane and I simply hoped my other case was hidden amongst the other bags. But seeing the absolute chaos in the London Heathrow baggage hall made me think otherwise. There were piles of cases without owners and owners without cases…

Some jack-the-lad pseudo-chav and his family were pissing me off, talking and acting as if there were a camera trained on them and their self-promoting act were being broadcast live to the nation. There wasn’t enough room to stand in the baggage hall with his ego expanding to fill it so I switched off his channel and left behind he and the lemmings that were waiting for the luggage that was NOT coming no matter how hard you waited and I was swiftly efficiently dealt with at the front of the lost luggage queue… Yes, my missing bag was in Madrid still and might be here later today or tomorrow.

Outside Terminal 2 the weather sucked. The sky had turned grey, the wind picked up and the bus-stop for the shuttle back to my car was cold and the tarmac cracked & patchy. Add to this the journey through the dump they call Southall I realised why I’m a country/suburban boy living next to the woods and the lake. I hate cities. I really hate cities. They’re OK to experience for a while but they’re really just dens of iniquity. Buzzing? Yes, like flies ’round shit.

The oh-so-faithful Subaru wouldn’t start back at the car park and the junk & debris left in it from a year’s worth of travels had caused more condensation than I’d ever seen. That’s what you get for 2 weeks worth of neglect. Poor car. So I got her started with the aid of a booster and drove westwards down the A4, a quick diversion to my ‘local’ Subaru garage before going home. Let’s book the old girl in for a new solenoid/starter motor, an oil change and a service, and I can borrow a decent new ride, maybe a new Legacy or a Forrester?

The A4 sucks. Slough sucks. Maidenhead sucks. Busy A roads suck. I dislike very much the dirt of traffic and I can’t wait to be close to the oaks and the pines around Hawley Lake.

So I eventually make it home to a house that smells strange. And my cat, fed every day by kindly friends but alone for 17 days, relishes in the devoted attention and enjoys the homecoming.

But there’s something wrong. Something’s missing. Have I forgotten something? Or someone? Or someones, possibly? Yes, Becky & Noel are stuck in Pittsburgh for another week, then off to New York *cough* City to the British Consulate…

But then that was last week and this is now. And you know what? My girls come home tomorrow and I am so f’ing excited

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OK, my friend Summer, purveyor of cool belt buckles tagged me in the comments a couple of posts ago so I’ll do her the honour of jotting down some aspects that you guys & girls (probably) don’t know about me

1. I’m actually a lesbian trapped in a man’s body.

2. I was born in Scotland but have never seen “The Granite City” where I was born nor the fishing village where I spent the first 6 months of my life…
3. I once inherited a dog named Vomit.
4. When I was just 14 I climbed a Lake District mountain in the snow using an ice axe & crampons but no rope when a HUGE snow blizzard descended on us in the middle of the climb…
5. I went banger racing about 10 years ago and completely wrote off my 1979 Opel Kadett. It raced 7 times (under the race number 69) and finally gave up when my wheels got totalled in a multiple-car smash. I ended up with a broken nose, a chipped kneecap, a very badly bruised elbow and put my teeth through my bottom lip. It was fun though

I’ll think about tagging some other poor unsuspecting souls in a little while…

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26 – Drive a Saab convertible to Williamsburg, Virginia. Eat hickory smoked burgers in a 17th century tavern, check out the open air museum and drive home to eat German food at the Bier Garden, High St, Portsmouth, VA.

27 – 5am. Up. Flight to La Guardia, NYC. Hire Car. Oh no: Ford Taurus. Spend day in NYC. See Ground Zero, swan around, get sore feet, hit Easton, Connecticut. Drink Beer. Eat Mexican food (Steak Diablo) Have beer. Fall asleep.

28 – Black Rock Turnpike, Easton, Connecticut, Olde Blue Bird Inn: pancakes, syrup, bacon, tea. Westport, Connecticut. Shopping. Driving. New England roads. Coffee. Beer. Food (Tengda, Westport, Asian restaurant) See a band in Viva Zapata, Riverside Av, Westport.

29 – Mystic, Connecticut, wait 35 minutes to be seated in “Friendly’s”, visit Aquarium, drive past Mystic Pizza, head home. Pizza. Beer. Evening of drinking Sierra Nevada Pale Ale at Bobby Q’s, Main Street, Westport.

30 – Wendy’s Jalapeno Cheese Burger, Shopping. Midday snooze. Write this. Must get beer… Sam Adams Cherry Wheat or a Blue Moon (weissbeer)

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Just popped in at 12:21 EST to say a quick Merry Christmas to you all :*

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(aka London to New York in just 36 hours or Farnborough to Virginia in only 46 hours)

It started like this…

Tuesday:

Up at 5am and into the car (that wouldn’t start at first – I think it needs a new starter motor) We drive to Southall to park the car and get two separate shuttles to Heathrow T4 and T2

8am: Get text message from BBFK… “I’m at the wrong airport” BBFK should have been at London City Airport (Docklands I think) for a 9:30 flight to New York via Amsterdam and Lever’s flight to New York via Madrid was at 12:15. How TF did that happen?

BBFK gets tickets transferred and finally exchange of tickets for a direct flight to New York.
Lever waits around for 7 hours whilst fog delays flights.

BBFK touches down in New York and spends night in Brooklyn.
Lever touches down at Madrid Airport at 7pm and is told the next flight out to JFK is Wednesday 1pm, 18 hours away…

After trudging 2 hours through Barajas airport, being sent form pillar to post, Lever finally secures a ticket that will gain him a bus ride, a meal and a bed for the night… sans suitcase, fresh clothes and washing kit.

Oh, and if you ever get banged up in the Tryp Diana Madrid ignore the quatro estellas rating… it’s about the equivalent of a UK/US 2 star!

After a bland meal and a couple of small glasses of frothy-topped CruzCampo it’s off through the threadbare corridors to the flaky bedroom for 8 hours kip.

Wednesday:

10am: Go. Catch bus to Barajas Airport, sit in the departure lounge and be thankful for the sound of the English language… Americans, Germans, a couple of Brits and a Puerto Rican.

Hit JFK at 3pm and find lost luggage, getting the grouchiest of Russian yellow cab drivers to whizz me to La Guardia and giving him $20 too much in the rush.

BBFK’s phone worked yesterday in NYC when I called her from Madrid but today mine doesn’t work in NYC so we’re completely incommunicado. I check-in my luggage at La Guardia, 4pm, for the 6pm flight to Newport News airport and wait to see if BBFK turns up. The guy at the gate says best to pass through security by 5:25pm at the latest. So I wait…

At 5:25pm I decide it’s time to go to my gate when BBFK arrives! We check her in just in time and race to the gate via the security check where we have to even remove our shoes and belts… before stuffing ourselves onto a plane to Newport News. I also find out that she lost her phone.

By the time we extract ourselves from the plane and head out to the baggage carousel we’re the last ones there with all but one case. Yes, we’re a case down! So we leave the airport bound for Chesapeake, Norfolk, Virginia, and get there a mere 46 hours after we left home So that’s 3 planes, 2 trains and 4 automobiles.

I do love travelling but after this episode I’m so glad to finally stop moving..

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aka Magna Rock.

What? Well seeing as I’m gonna miss out on the Hawkwind Christmas Party due to a flight tomorrow to New York via Madrid, I decided to go see Hawkwind at Magna in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. It’s a long way from here is Rotherham, about 190 miles or 3 hours drive… and all to see Hawkwind a) filming a new video and b) playing a gig in an old Steelworks.

It was a long drive there & back and it was fucking cold when I got there but the small (mercy) bar and the fact that Hawkwind play a rocking live set made up for it. Dave Brock’s voice is still good, Richard Chadwick’s drumming was superb and Alan Davey was on top form tonight and Lever the wannabe bass hero watched the technique with particular interest So here’s what I can remember of the play list, I’ll tweak it later when I get more info & time.

• The Right Stuff
• Psychedellic Warlords (Disappear in Smoke)
• Orgone Accumulator
• Paradox
• Robot
• Greenback Massacre
• Lord of Light
• Images
• Assassins of Allah (Hassan I Sabbah)
• Spirit of the Age
• Motorhead

And it was a long drive home afterwards but it was well worth it.

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