A damned nice thing*

I garage my car at night. Most neighbours with garages don't. Some for good reason (too many cars), some inexplicably (garage given over to grass mower, discarded furniture, things in cardboard boxes).

I do so to hide the car from thieves and/or vandals, because I hate scritching away frost, because low temperatures reduce battery efficiency, because the house (which cost rather more than the car) looks prettier minus the car. Also the car insurance company prefers things this way.

But garaging can jangle the nerves. The car measures 2.017 m between side mirror extremities while the garage door is 2.130 m wide. That 0.113 m difference (roughly 5¼ in.) may sound like plenty of clearance but, don't forget, it must be halved for the two sides of the car. The side mirrors are foldable but for reasons I will explain I only fold the driver's side mirror.

Inside, the garage itself is wider than the door - it needs to be. The car has to be parked much nearer to the garage wall on the passenger side so that I may open my door sufficiently to get out. I use the edge of the unfolded side mirror to judge the gap - about ¾ in – but it’s a nerve-wracking journey. If it's been raining I get wet squeezing out between the car side and the other garage wall.

Recently frost was expected and I'd forgotten to garage the car. I did so in my jim-jams and dressing gown. Felt a bit of a fool, especially since the frost never arrived.

Widening the garage isn’t an option.

QUERY The utility company urges me to install a free smart meter. I’ve heard dreadful things about them. Are they true?

* Duke of Wellington. Often paraphrased as "a close run thing"

That wondrous work

Pet owners gradually resemble their pets, it is said. But what about car owners and cars?

BMW A medieval link here - an instinctive belief in droit de seigneur. True, maidens escape depucelation but drivers assume an absolute right to go first at T-junctions, to overtake on roundabouts, to take the only parking space, etc. I know. I owned a BMW. Traces of its influence still linger.

AUDI Now challenging BMW for the seigneurial role. Never seen travelling at less than 90 mph on motorways. I owned one of these too. A coupé yet. Say no more.

VOLVO The safe large ones. Car of preference for managers of funeral homes. The automotive expression of - in the midst of life we are in death. Always black.

SUZUKI SWIFT Very small women. Without a substantial cushion drivers are doomed to see life through the steering wheel.

LAMBORGHINI Wealthy people on a diet. Getting into and out of these subterranean cars constitutes the owner's sole exercise.

MORGAN Bald men over fifty who endured a circumscribed childhood and are unaware the car top is erectable.

SSONGYANG Therapeutical transportation for those with speech defects.

SKODA Octavia with turbo-charged diesel engine and six-speed auto/manual gearbox. Men who believe they are at Level 5 (Jacques, etc) but who are in danger of leaving Level 6 behind.

ANY FIFTIES UK CAR Poets and others uninterested in movement.

WIP Second Hand (46,129 words)
His clothes were casual but they involved a degree of calculation. Light beige chinos with an expensive shirt, tailored to show off the flatness of his stomach and the pinch of his waist. Hair styled to look ragged. On the walls enlarged photographs of bridges… Bookshelves but no books. Why bother when a mouse got there quicker than flicking pages?

Keeping the sand at bay

Yesterday I broke one of the Robinson Family's iron-clad rules - never venture abroad without something to read. 'twas a small matter concerning a car light-bulb and I didn't expect to languish. Nevertheless I spent 15 min. alone in the intellectual desert of a car dealer's showroom.

Not even an outlet for Skodas (my car) but for Mitsubishis. One Mitsu is called a Shogun and that's plainly ridiculous.

New cars smell mainly of tyres. Acrid and quite strong. With an admixture of coffee since I was close to an operative percolator. But I'd just had my daily intake at home.

Adjacent was a Mitsu SUV and the French windows through which it had passed. Get that small journey wrong and it would cost you; the cack-handed employeee would surely be fired.
 
The SUV was inhumanly clean; once sold it would never be that clean again. A sort of automotive virginity. Yet such cleanliness was of course essential: for it to be indoors was parodoxical, to be dirty as well would offend decency.

Let into the showroom floor was the Mitsu logo - three lozenges forming an inverted Y. Clever but somehow unsettling, the hint of an optical illusion. I looked instead at my hands and decided for the thousandth time they were not those of an artisan.

Ah! My keys!

WIP Second Hand (38,860 words)

Until then (Balogun had) been genial and authoritative. Attentive to his guest. Composed. Now his shoulders slumped and his shaven cannonball of a head bent forward, hiding his face. Francine heard a tiny whimper. Then he straightened up.

“Easier for me. My father took the greater risk.” He laughed unconvincingly. “All these reminiscences. You must think I’m very self-centred. But there is a reason. You are that reason.”

Miles from the centre - any centre

Moments during a routine Saturday morning visit to Hereford (city) by bus.

• VR fingers an M&S pullover. RR: You've already bought two this morning. Three in one day's unheard of. VR: The diet. I've lost weight.

• A stall offers falafels without explanation. VR says it's unnecessary but I am ignorant. I wonder how many Herefordians know. VR says dismissively - and finally - they understand doner kebab. PS: Chickpeas with an unfortunate side-effect.

• In the Edinburgh Woollen Mill, Hereford's second dullest shop after Dunelm (bed linen) they're playing Baby It's Cold Outside, possibly with Ray Charles. The duet allows singers with unique voices to improvise zestfully. Overlapping the "dialogue" adds to the effect. More than just good fun.

• VR needs a new watch strap, but only because the little straplets have gone. This happens regularly and she's irritated. The woman behind the counter is sympathetic and offers to open a shop that only sells straplets; "I'll make a bomb." The three of us laugh and VR's irritation dissipates.

• Outside the Shire Hall there's a statue of Sir George Cornewall Lewis. Two lines read: A wise and honest statesman. A profound scholar. I try to imagine a present-day politician to whom those lines might apply. An unresponding silence.

WIP Second Hand (35,299 words)

Francine rides in a Maserati Quattroporte. She says: “I don’t usually subscribe to the idea of cars being beautiful but this comes closest.”

Do you agree?

Survival of the inexplicable

Evolution can inform things as well as organisms. Usefully too. It spotlights anomalies where an item has ceased - for unknown reasons - to develop and has entered an evolutionary cul de sac.

The worst car I ever owned was an Austin Cambridge - by far. As I struggled with ownership I might, if I'd been better educated, have comforted myself with the thought that better cars lay ahead. With the Cambridge there was even more retrospective comfort in that better companies lay ahead and the manufacturer, BMC, then BL, then who knows, was to wither deservedly. A case of evolution acting as it should.

But I cannot say the same about the deck-chair. I neither know nor care when this cynical exercise in bad ergonomics (the science of man's relationship with his immediate environment) was devised, only that it too should have withered. It is difficult to get into and out of, induces agony just behind the knees, and can guillotine the finger-tips of the wary. Yet still it persists. You may say it has a certain gaiety. I would say... no, I won't say it.

Tin-opener technology has a come a long way. Tone Deaf and, before that, Works Well, have celebrated this progress. But a deficient design is still available, notably in French street markets. It is fabricated from pressed mild steel, suggesting it may have appeared soon after WW2 when cheapness and shortage of materials were dominant. The handle is painful to hold, the cutter tears at the tin resulting in flesh-menacing jaggery, and the fold-away cork-screw is based on a helix that is so narrow it often pulls straight out of the cork. Who favours this thing? Those who must have a tin-opener like grannie's? Nostalgia like that can be bad for you.

You never knew you had it

This sonnet is obscure and clumsy. But it was never intended to be elegant, poetic or inspiring. It was, however, intended to be unique and may be a first. It celebrates power-assisted steering, now a standard feature on most cars.

Why did I write it? Because I once bought a sporty car that lacked PAS and regretted it from day one. Couldn’t park the bugger.

ALL HAIL, MERCIFUL PAS!

 

Under an extroverted silver shell,
Close to the engine’s eager energy,
Two motors, resting, wait to hear the call
From my inadequate anatomy.

Not yet! At lethal speeds as passenger,

I loll, supplying nothing else but weight.
Later and slower, as its director,
I try to tackle its uncertain state.

The car when ambling needs my sensate brain,

To guide its tyres along slow clinging ways,
But motorless it works against the grain
And racks my arms with frictional delays.

An old man’s aid these motors happily

Delete time’s wear and add avidity.

WHATIZZIT? We were shopping for a pedestal mat in Dunelm, a soft goods store that causes me to yawn uncontrollably whenever I pass through its automatically controlled doors. At the checkout was a 99p impulse-buy – a toothpaste tube economiser. Slip it on and slide it up. It appears to work. I thought it deserved publicity

BB - briefly exhumed

When I ceased to be Barrett Bonden and became Lorenzo da Ponte, two if not three commenters told me I would always be BB to them. I assumed they meant the high falutin' music stuff was an aberration and that nuts, bolts, Aston Martins and VHF oscillators would continue.

So here's BB being atavistic (hope you like that five-dollar word).

You don't pour petrol (US: gas) into a car engine, you supply it as petrol vapour and air. Now fuel injection does the mixing via controllable, not very interesting electrical pumps.

This effect can also be achieved more ingeniously (and cheaply) with a carburettor (US: carburator).

Imagine a narrow tube - a jet - with a tapering bore. A needle with a matching taper sits in the jet. A cable raises the needle from the jet, allowing petrol to flow through the space now created.

But we don't need a pump to urge petrol flow. The jet/needle works inside the carburettor body containing the sucking action which occurs when the engine cylinders descend. Thus petrol is sucked through the needle/jet gap.

A hole in the carb body leads to the outside world. As the needle/jet rises an attached tubular "trapdoor" also rises allowing more and more air to be sucked in through the hole via a widening slot in the trapdoor. Mixed petrol and air are then burned in the engine.

Difficult to explain but admirably simple. The driver's need for power is conveyed via the cable and the tricky bit - mixing - is done proportionately and automatically with two sliding parts. Cast in pot metal and costing tuppence.

Fuel injection is more efficient, less polluting. Carburettors are limited these days to small motorbikes and mowers. But they’re still an elegant solution.   

Leaving cramped knees behind

Fifty years ago (give or take a week or two) VR was staying with her parents in Folkestone and I sent her my second and last Valentine card, saying I'd passed my driving test. Two days later, more formally, I revealed I'd been made redundant from MotorCycling magazine - a story that will keep for the moment.

A driving (US: driver's) licence is a passport to good and bad. Here's a chronological pick 'n' mix.

● Plunging into the five-lane maelstrom at Hyde Park Corner, London, confident others would give way.

● Leaving Padua, Italy, at dawn, with a huge hangover, the sun directly in my eyes, the Paduan workforce, on bicycles, streaming into the town on either side of my car.

● Fearful my rented Dodge Charger would run out of gas in the Californian redwood forest.

● Turning right at 5 mph in car park in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, smashing into anonymous US car, destroying the front end of my VW Squareback (called a Variant in the UK).

● Disembarking from the SS France luxury liner at Southampton, getting into the left-hand drive VW Squareback which had accompanied us from the US, and driving to Folkestone.

● Crossing on Dover - Calais ferry en route to rented villa in Concarneau, Brittany, shared with Joe and family.

● Touring major French vineyards in the first car I bought as an indulgence and not for utilitarian reasons.

● Crossing Col d'Iseran (2770 m) above Val d'Isère (pictured).

● Hit in rear of my company car coming home (Kingston-upon-Thames) from French lesson in Sutton; next morning hitting another car squeezing out of traffic jam 20 m from my KuT front door.

● En route for albatross colony on the Otago Peninsula, NZ.

● Discovering the most delightful road in mid-Wales: Llanidloes to Machynlleth.

Towards a Feminist car

 

In case the irony in Feminists Have A Point went undetected may I say I try to support women’s viewpoints, albeit silently, thus without the grammar.

Many women’s choice of car is imposed. Thus their car is often:

(a) Small (Low purchase price (LPP), less power, easier parking, low consumption, ostensibly better ergonomics)

(b) Bottom of the range (Cheaper, less “complexity”)

(c) Manual (LPP, lower consumption).

(d) Petrol engine (LPP)

(e) Less visibly macho (Less vulnerable to male drivers)

(f) Oddly coloured (The only inexpensive option left).

But the opposites of these features have beneficial sides. Take Small: More powerful biggish cars are less demanding to drive (fewer gearchanges), quieter, more restful on long journeys, have more carrying capacity (eg, for baby impedimenta) and in the case of larger US cars with far greater steering assistance, easier to park. More power need not be feared; the driver is in control; the power need not be used; it doesn’t “sneak up”. Alas, small car ergonomics means fewer adjustments.

Less “complexity” Cheap cars often lack reversing sensors; vital in parking garages. Ignore arguments (always male) saying these “de-skill” driving; the aim is to travel not take a degree. Expensive cars usually have more copious lighting, remote radio control, better info systems – all recognisably helpful.

Automatic gearboxes no longer absorb fuel. My two-litre turbo-charged diesel car (ie, medium to biggish) has a six-speed autobox and has consumed fuel at 51 mpg since purchase. Autobox changes gear more efficiently than I can. Much, much more restful.

Petrol vs diesel. The latter lacks LPP but is cheaper to run. So, buy second-hand. Especially in France.

ESSENTIAL Ignore advice of male driving enthusiasts; they speak a different – often subjective – language. Given the choice I would have a chauffeur.

Feminists have a point

Lucy recently lost out to White Man Van on a greasy road in Brittany. It made me think. Women often come off worst where cars are involved.

FLAT TYRE No problem, there’s a spare. But first the used wheel, bolted on with a pneumatic torque wrench. Even so, a breakdown truck driver told me, women drivers will often have a go. Men call the AA and listen to Radio 1.

BOOT LIDS Many now have a dangling handle and not a moment too soon. Previously women got warm and angry jumping up for the rear number plate.

OIL FILLER ORIFICE “Oh that’s where it is, right at the back of the engine. I’m lucky I never liked this ball gown.”

DRIVER ERGONOMICS Everything’s adjustable. The steering column’s telescopic, seat and the squab are hinged, seat can be slid backwards and forwards and it can be raised and lowered. But only within average male variations. That’s why women’s cleavages bear the mark of the manufacturer’s logo found in the centre of the steering wheel.

PEDAL ACCESSIBILITY Fine for ladies – lady giraffes, that is.

CAR PARK TICKET SLOTS “Hang on to my butt while I reach out another metre.”

REVERSING VISIBILITY Simply lower the head-rest. Oh, it’s as low as it will go. Sorry.

RADIO CONTROLS “I can do without Bartok’s violin concerto or without steering for two or three seconds. Which will it be?”

TYRE HOSE Manicured this morning; will need another this afternoon.

VISOR VANITY MIRROR “Why does driving a Ford age me so?”

SPEEDO JUDGEMENTS 30 mph – woeful old grannie. 70 mph – flashy young tart.