Comic Postcards: The Joys Of Motoring

Found a few postcards today in one of my favourite haunts (found a lot actually but only bought a few!) Today's theme is The Joys of Motoring - it can get you in a lot of trouble...

Be careful how you go out there!

My Petrol Poem

We might have gone out this weekend
If petrol had not been so dear
We used to go all over the country
Now we stay at home or quite near

We used to go searching for circles of stone
For hillforts or something to see
But now we stay home doing hobbies
Or go for a walk, her and me

Here's our car on the left up at Thirlmere
The one on the left nearly black
Even then motoring wasn't so easy
Cos the darn thing broke down on t'way back

On that day we visited Grasmere as well
And saw Ambleside, Bowness and such
We might have gone out too this weekend
If petrol hadn't cost quite so much...

Large versions of the photos: Castlerigg stone circle, Thirlmere, Grasmere

Take a Seat, Leon...

Ooh! A first today! I've been down to Birmingham Airport to meet up with a colleague from just this side of Welsh Wales so we could put together a new workshop on Strategy for colleges and universities.

The hire firm delivered a Seat. No... not just a seat - four of them in a car made by Seat, or "Say-at" as they say in the trade ("Take a say-at over they-air and I'll be with you in a mo-ment...") It's called Leon... Not sure what model it is...

A Seat Leon in startling colour too - Blimey, I've been standing out like a (the next phrase was abandoned in an attempt to appear at least partially politically correct)

First impressions were of trying to get in and realising that once I had sat down the top of my head from mouth upwards was still outside and above roof height... That could say more for the height of the person who delivered it than the car - though I lowered the seat all the way down that it would and moved it backwards and still had to bend backwards to avoid bumping my head getting in. But then I am very tall... 5 foot 4 and a smidgeon... That smidgeon makes all the difference!

Once in and with the seat (that's seet) adjusted to a comfortable driving position, it's actually quite a fun car to drive. The dashboard is unfashionably bare of push buttons but that's a refreshing change really - how many buttons can you play with when you're weaving in and out of traffic in the one-way twists and turns of Britain?

The instrument panel and windscreen seem a long way off - the windscreen is at a fairly shallow angle so the bottom of it is miles away and I had problems getting the SatNav sucker attached without it obscuring my view through being halfway up the window.

The instrument panel itself is a bit strange. The speedo goes up to 140mph but only goes round three quarters of the circular dial. That means that the speeds you can legally do in this country - from stand-still up to 70mph - are squashed, squeezed or squozen into a mere third of a circle and you have to wonder why really...

The fuel guage on the left was also obscured by the rather small steering wheel - very sporty, but the fun of posing would be marred if you were to run out of fuel!

I had the 6-gear turbo diesel option and the engine was responsive and nippy. Like many diesel engines it revs quite low and that was useful because I spent ages queueing on the M6 barely getting into second gear and sitting in the same spot for 20 minutes at one point. Reverse was found by pushing the gear lever down and moving left then forwards.

The other usual mystery features: the boot opens just like a Golf, to lampoon the latest VW adverts. Hardly surprising - Seat may be from sunny Spain, but they are part of the VW Group. You push the top of the maker's logo and it swivels inwards so you can grasp the bottom and pull the boot cover upwards.

The fuel cap is a back-to-the-basics circular flap with an obvious thumb opening, so no searching the dashboard, door recesses and floor in the dark on this car. There's a (surely old-fashioned?) screw on plastic cap over the tube inside the cover.

Not that I had cause to use it, but I noticed that the back doors had no handle...

Instead, it's hidden in the rear edge of the door and there's a recessed opening in the rear quarterlight window for your hand. Don't break that quarterlight then, because I bet that's not a cheap bit of glass!

Most of my day has been on the motorway where it performed well both in fast (well up to 70mph!) and slow traffic. The SatNav reported a low 65 miles per hour though when the speedo assured me I was doing 70 - interesting that the other car I've driven that had the lowest comparable speed (64) was a VW Golf. They obviously consider that the people who drive their cars are going to speed and they take steps to keep them to the speed limit.

From what I've seen though - their drivers all tootle round town with an eye on the speedo - doing 25 miles an hour and slowing down to 20 whenever they see a Gatso camera. Why are Gatso cameras in areas where there are more accidents? Because they cause them...

Letchworth

It's been a busy old week - I've now got back from Letchworth, just about.

Horrible journey, it's a Friday night, it's half-term and the M6 was crawling. I shelled out my hard-earned to nip up the M6 Toll but as soon as it ended I was back down into first and second gears and that's how I stayed until Stoke on Trent.

There had been some sort of incident on the slip road of Junction 15 and it had caused a rare old tail back. It took me over 6 hours to get home.

Anyway this is where I've been - the Goldsmith Centre of North Herts College. Photo from Flickr, courtesy of John Sanderson. I didn't take any photos down there. Some nice scenery down that way though.

Tom Tom was navigating which meant going over lots of those stupid bumps in the road that are supposed to calm traffic and instead only do your suspension in and make a row, annoying anyone unlucky enough to have one outside their house...

So I'm not quite sure where I was, but at one point there was a gorgeous stone-built red-tiled country church with a rather strange looking tower, seen against a green field and wonderful blue sky. I almost stopped but the thought of traffic building on the M6 kept me going. In the event it wouldn't have made much difference!

I delivered a session on Risk Management at a IT Technical Forum organised by the local JISC Regional Support Centre. They call themselves RSCs, but to anyone outside the Further Education Sector that normally prompts some conversation about Shakespeare...

Busy weekend looming as well so no rest for the wicked! Will try to keep up with the entries!

Motorway Idiots

I spent yesterday evening driving back from Glasgow in a tropical rainstorm.

It never ceases to amaze me how suicidal some drivers are. I must drive 35,000-40,000 miles a year and doing that sort of mileage you see your fair share of smashes, upside-down cars and even cars/lorries on fire.

Unfortunately they are not always the ones who deserve it.

I'm not a slow driver but if you are driving fast then you have to look a long way ahead and react to what is happening. At one point 60-65 was as fast as it was safe to go in the weather conditions. The road was absolutely covered in water and anyone on worn tyres is straight away at more risk of aquaplaning.

Yet people were zooming past me, doing the odd thing like heading off to overtake a lorry who was in the centre lane then slamming on brakes when they suddenly couldn't see anything because of the spray from its wheels. Or driving up at 80-90 behind someone doing 60-70 overtaking in the fast lane and leaving it until the last minute to brake instead of slowing down gradually. Or forcing a driver in the central lane to suddenly brake down 20mph because they were unwilling to slow down 5mph themselves.

As far as I'm concerned if you're are doing more than 70, you should be watching for people needing to pull out into your lane and it should be you that slows down if necessary.

Consideration - that's what it's all about.

Still, all in all it was a quiet night. 193 miles and I only saw two accidents... There again, from those 4 cars that probably left at least 8-16 disgruntled or frightened or hurt people, counting occupants and immediate family at home wondering where someone was.

Put A Tiger In Your Tank

Aha! See! Some people are reading this!

James Burdon writes:

I can't find any photos of garage forecourt attendants, but you might like the attached scans of an old advert and an Esso petrol pump. It's a long time since they looked like this!

I worked in a petrol station aged 16 and it reminded me of it when I saw your reference to Red-Ex! (on my Nostalgia web site - John) I found your blog and enjoyed it. People take themselves too seriously these days.

Keep up the good work.
James Burdon

I'll try, James! Thanks a bundle for the pix, I remember Esso Blobs too - heads like oil droplets, and after the Tiger In Your Tank campaign came out they started selling "tiger tails" you could hang round your petrol filler cap so it looked like it was coming out of the tank!