The Yard Long Yellow Ticket

I’m sorry to say I’ve been pulled over by the police for speeding. One minute I was cruising along – in a bit of a daze, it has to be said – and the next thing I was sitting in a five series Beamer cop-car while the nice officer printed out my yard long yellow ticket of shame. After 34 years of motoring, my license is now besmirched with three skull and cross-bones (endorsements). There was also a sixty pound fine. The fine is neither here nor there, but those endorsements are going to haunt me for the next four years.

Altogether then, a bit of a bad day?

Well, yes, indeed a bad month so far really, but not on account of that traffic violation. After all, there are worse losses at sea, as my mother used to say. Strange, that use of the past tense – I’m still getting used it.

The stretch of road I was travelling is one I drive every day and it’s always had a forty limit. In recent weeks though, a two hundred yard stretch of it has been lowered to thirty. It sounds lame, but I really hadn’t noticed the new signs. So even when the cop-car settled on my tail, I felt safe, making sure the speedometer was reading a little under forty. The cars in front of me got away with it. I got the flashing blue lights and the humiliation of a very public pull over.

It’s no excuse of course, that my head was in a different place. I should have seen those thirty MPH signs, which are as plain as day, and if I was really so distracted by my mother’s death, then I shouldn’t have been driving in the first place, should I? But at least I know it’s a thirty limit now. And I promise to be more careful in the future.

My sons thought it was ironic. They say I’m the slowest driver in the world and something of an embarrassment. Maybe my credibility has gone up a little now? Number two son was the most comforting, telling me I’d done well to reach my fifties without acquiring some kind of motoring violation. I suppose he’s right. My good lady also told me it was better to be philosophical about it than beating myself over the head. No use resisting it Michael. Remember that one? There are bigger things to deal with here – so get over it!

Resist it? No, I didn’t resist it. At least I tried not to. I tried to let it wash on through because I was conscious of being in a fragile state and I could do without the extra damage. So what did I feel, sitting there in that cop-car, while the man went through his “booking the motorist” script? Well, I felt very little, because only a small part of me was actually there.

Some of me was still sitting with the Reverend Deacon, attached to the local Catholic church, just an hour earlier, who, after a long and emotionally moving chat about my mother, had raised his hand, and the good book, and offered me his blessing. I’m not a Catholic, not much of anything with a label these days, and my mother, raised a Catholic, was severely lapsed to the tune of fifty years or so – though the Reverend Deacon politely and charmingly disputed there was such a thing as a lapsed Catholic.

Anyway, I didn’t really feel qualified to be receiving that blessing, but I was grateful for it all the same, thinking I could probably use the help. But to be pulled over by the cops an hour later? Well,… surely the Lord moves in mysterious ways?

Another part of me was standing in the chapel of rest at the funeral home, the day before. I’d not really been able to associate the deceased person before me with my mother, but she had at least looked peaceful, and though I’d known the effect was entirely cosmetic, it had helped to soften the memory of the last time I’d seen her, the day she’d passed away.

And of course, another part of me, perhaps the most significant part, was still there that day, at her bedside, bearing witness to her passing, while praying to a god I’d no idea I could be so familiar with. For good measure I’d also prayed, Chinese style, to the ancestors, calling them back from across as many generations as I could remember, to lend a hand, because in a situation like that you need all the spiritual support you can get, whether you believe in that sort of thing or not.

I have the feeling they didn’t let us down. I have the feeling that  in our darkest hour I crossed a threshold into the most extraordinary metaphysical realm and felt myself carried aloft, embraced by the loving arms of an ancestry I’d never dared trust, until that moment, to be real .

So,… there was the cop, a big chap in a nicely pressed shirt, but curiously grubby trousers, and he was telling me I’d have to take my licence in to the  cop-shop within the next seven days. And there I was, making a mental calculation, wondering if I could fit that in with everything else that was going on – like the small matter of my mother’s funeral, and appointments with solicitors, and a million other pressing post mortem details. And I wondered briefly about saying to him: look, cut me some slack will you?

He might have made some sympathetic noises, I suppose, but I’m not sure how much power of discretion these guys have once the details of your misdemeanour have been punched into the big-brother machine, and anyway it seemed – I don’t know – undignified, I suppose. So I said nothing and took the ticket. And my mother would not have wanted me to be a cry-baby about it anyway.

I’ve never liked the way policemen say “sir”. It’s better than being called something impolite, I suppose, but there’s always something false about it. This policeman’s sir came at me cold, impersonal and slightly weary. It reminded me of the cold, impersonal and slightly weary hospital doctor who, two weeks before, had discharged my mother at dead of night, in obvious pain, and unable to stand unaided – sent her home to die because there was nothing more he could do for her, and he needed that bed for someone he had more of a chance of helping than an eighty three year old geriatric with advanced terminal cancer, who might have lingered in his ward for weeks.

How many more of you are out there, tonight in that situation, you poor souls? My thoughts are with you.

So, I’d driven her home in shocked horror at the withdrawal of my nation’s compassion, a compassion apparently metered by the scalpel of economic expediency, and an ongoing political disaster piloted by opportunist powerbrokers, oblivious to the small lives who make up the conscious and moral majority of the people they claim to serve.

It was a short sharp lesson in contemporary reality, that although our professional public servants still do their very best, they’ve also got this unspeakable army of amoral bean-counters on their backs. So it’s unwise to rely on them to be there at your hour of greatest need – at least not in any truly meaningful sense. For that you’re going to need the presence of those who love you, also if you can arrange it, the loving presence of your god and, with still more luck, a blessed over-pressed and underpaid community nurse with a vial of Diamorphine, ready to send you off into your dreams.

Your ego caves in, absolutely, at times like these. It realises resistance is futile, that for all it’s huffing and puffing, it’s pathetic self importance is no more than a teardrop in the ocean. And when the ego finally shuts up, you discover what’s left is, perhaps incredibly,  a stillness, and a loving peace like no other.

So even though I was sitting in a cop car, accused of an indictable offence, as the officer ominously put it, and being handed a speeding ticket, feeling it punctuating insensitively, as it did, one of the most emotionally sensitive periods of my life, I found it hard to take him seriously. Instead I felt an incongruous, yet also a very real loving presence. It held together the various bits of me that were still strung out and floundering in the wake of dark events those past weeks, the likes of which I can never speak of in full, and it was telling me to be calm, to be mindful, but above all to stop struggling. Because a rabbit caught in a snare basically strangles itself to death because its instinct is to struggle, and it lacks the insight to pursue any other course. If we can stop struggling, however, we stand a chance of untangling ourselves from the myriad snares of the world. We survive, and we discover a better way to be.

I’m not sure if smiling at a policeman is a good idea, but I found myself smiling at him anyway. I heard myself telling him it was no problem, that I should have been paying more attention. I think I even made some lame joke about it being a fair-cop. He didn’t smile back. He thanked me for my time in a tone of voice that implied no gratitude at all, and he dismissed me curtly with yet one more policeman’s “sir”. Then he swung that fat five-series-Beamer round and headed back to his hunter’s lair with his radar gun, ready to blow a hole in someone else’s day.

I like to think I dismissed his sickly presence from my life as quickly as he dismissed me. He was just a man doing his job, and it would have been churlish to wish him any bad Karma on account of it, but I trust he had slim pickings from the day he pulled me over.

We said our final goodbyes to my mother on April 12th. The Reverend Deacon did a splendid job, memorable and intensely moving, and I took comfort in commending her into the care of a faith she had once sworn an allegiance to. If I made a mistake in any of  that, I hope you can forgive me Mum, but what we did was done with love, respect, and an appreciation for the life you lived, for us.

On the way home from the crematorium I sat in a black Rolls Royce, cruising along rural lanes I’d known since childhood, and the funeral director became chatty, talking about many things – the lovely spring sunshine, the bluebells, and the first dandelions making their appearance in the wayside green. Death and renewal – a curious juxtaposition, but a comforting one. He also talked about the speed limit, and how I’d do well to pay attention to a certain stretch of road that’s recently become notorious as one of the worst speed traps in Lancashire.

“Ah, yes,” I said. “I think I know the one you mean.”

Thanks for listening.

Graeme out.

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Fuel Protests 2011

I was guilty of panicking last weekend. By chance, at around tea time on the Sunday, I spotted an article on the BBC’s online news about an imminent blockade of the Stanlow oil refinery on Merseyside. Stanlow is the region’s Achilles heel and a favoured target for organised resistance to the seemingly inexorable rise in fuel prices. Activists were gathering at Birch Services on the M62, also at Llandudno, then driving slowly in convoy to the refinery. The aim was to cause traffic congestion on the busy route between Lancashire and North Wales, and ultimately to prevent petrol tankers from leaving the facility, by a peaceful blockade of the exit.

If this happened it would lead to shortages at the petrol pumps all over the North West – not simply because the tankers couldn’t get through, but because at the first hint of a problem with supply, there’s always a run on the pumps and the fuel that normally resides under the forecourts of garages is transferred within a matter of hours into the tanks of private vehicles. The petrol stations then close, and it takes about a week for things to get back to normal. In the mean time, if you’re out of fuel, you’re out of luck.

So, I set out at once, selfishly hoping I was ahead of the game and that news of the protests had yet to hit the national T.V. news, thus spooking everyone else into doing what I was doing myself. As it was, the petrol station was no busier than usual, so I filled up and drove home relieved. It was still open the following morning, with no signs of panic or shortages, but I still felt justified in my actions, because I’ve been caught out on previous occasions.

We’ve had seasons of fuel protests before, and it was inevitable, with fuel prices at an all time record high that it would happen again. The fuel protests are something of a double edged sword though. No motorist wants to pay the prices we’re currently paying, but when the more active road warriors among us actually make a stand and challenge the price with an organised blockade, or even the hint of a blockade, it causes everyone else a major headache, and we don’t know whether to curse or cheer.

If you can get away without using fuel, if you live within cycling distance of work, or you can use public transport, then you can take to the environmental high-ground and argue that fuel prices need to be even higher in order to discourage us eco-deniers from using our cars and killing the planet, and I have a lot of sympathy with that view. But equally if you’re in a line of work where you use a lot of fuel, say you’re a farmer or a road haulier, or even a company rep who spends a good deal of his time on the road, then you can’t avoid paying the price because there’s no alternative at the moment – no mythical electric wondercar, nor a drastically restructured public transport system.

If you’re a businessman, every extra penny you spend on a litre of fuel is going to eat into your profits, so you’ll pass that on to the consumer because you have to stay in business, so the consumer gets hit twice – paying more for his fuel to get to the supermarket, and more for the stuff he buys when he’s in there. And we’ve had more than a penny on fuel. Over the last five years fuel prices have gone up from around 85p per litre to around £1.40. Even yours truly, a humble commuter is now paying around 5% of his income on simply driving to and from the dayjob.

But who do you point the finger and grumble at?

Well, the poor old government is the most obvious target, because the price of petrol in the UK is comprised largely of taxation which goes into the government’s coffers. It’s also difficult to protest against the price of a barrel of crude oil because it’s not determined by any UK body, so there’s no obvious fat-cat to hurl clods at. So, taxation becomes the natural focus of resistance; I note the fuel protestors are currently demanding a reduction of 24p per litre.

But as if we all needed reminding, the country’s under a bit of a cloud at the moment, and the only way the caviar and the champagne can be kept flowing at the top of the economic foodchain is by eyewatering hikes in general taxation, along with the simultaneous and drastic cutting of government services – which roughly translated means making public servants redundant or pushing them into early retirement. If you take the tax off petrol, the money will have to come from somewhere else, either by taxing somewhere else, or by cutting spending and making even more people redundant.

Having said that, cutting the tax on fuel by 24p per litre would save me £450 a year, so I certainly have an interest in supporting the fuel protests because it’s a dog eat dog system and why should I care about anyone else? But the disruption fuel protests cause does more than inconvenience me, it threatens my ability to get to work, and for all the protests we’ve had in the past, the price of fuel has risen steadily, so I find myself stuck in the middle, without any clear answers and simply trying to respond to an alarming situation I have no control over.

I can’t cycle to work, because it’s too far, and no combination of public transport can get me there on time either. It would also be cheaper to stay in the Travelodge, within walking distance of the dayjob, than to rely on a combination of bus and train every day. And all that seems ridiculous, in a society brought up to rely on the car. So I drive.

So, yes, I went out and filled up old grumpy at the first hint of trouble. I was on the red line and if I hadn’t filled up, and there was a run on the pumps when the protests hit the six-oclock news, I knew I was screwed. I had fuel for a day, and experience told me it would be a week before things got back to normal, which meant I’d be booking time off work from my holiday quota, and I wanted to avoid that.

As it was the protest didn’t gather sufficient momentum. It didn’t hit the six o’clock national news, and the twittersphere informed me it was met at Stanlow with a sturdy police line and that the planned blockade fizzled out in the balmy spring air without a single tanker being inconvenienced.

But for all of that I’m thinking we’re in for a long season of protests this year. The rising price of fuel isn’t being matched by increases in people’s pay packets, so you reach a snapping point where there’s sufficient ire in people’s bellies for them to get out and do something. And we have something else now that we didn’t have in the earlier days of fuel protests. We have things like Facebook and Twitter that can organise people in sufficient numbers they can topple governments, so an effective refinery blockade should be easy.

Sitting strictly on the fence as always and trying to analyse both sides of the argument on fuel, my advice to UK motorists in 2011 is to keep one eye on the twittersphere for the latest rumours and the other on your fuel gauge, and never let it drop below what you think you’ll need for a week’s commute. That way you won’t need to panic when it all kicks off again, which it will, because I think last weekend was just the start.

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Abiding by the law? Michael Graeme runs foul of the boys and girls in blue.

I’m quite a timid person in real life - very non-confrontational. If you’re looking for an argument, you’ll find me very slippery – always switching the subject back onto neutral ground where we can both agree and get along fine. The original fence-sitter – that’s me. Break the law? Never – not under any circumstances, because it’s the law that protects us and keeps us from turning into an uncivilised society. However, sometimes it seems you just can’t help yourself.

I remember as a child, a mate and I were playing with a boomerang in a meadow at the back of our street. It had cost me 2′/6p, and we were having a great time with it. The field was fallow – no crops, no livestock or anything. Suddenly, my mate’s face took on a look of pure terror and he ran away as if he had the devil on his heels. Wondering what was up, I turned to see, not the devil, but the farmer, bright red with steam coming out of his nostrils in a comically bovine fashion. What was up with him? He looked angry over something. Surely, it was nothing we’d done. But then, why was my mate running like that?

Such delightful innocence proved to be no excuse and I was landed a kick up the rear end, which stung because the farmer was wearing shiny steel toe caps as I recall. This got me going and I duly caught up with my mate as we hopped back to safety over his garden fence. The farmer kept my boomerang and consequently still owes me 2′/6p. Yes, if you’re reading this, forty years later, you bastard, I remember who you are, and I know where you live!

Though the incident was largely forgotten (honestly) until quite recently, I think it instilled in me an abhorrence for laws that are either stupid, or applied in such a way as to deliver a kick up the backside to an innocent person, for no other reason than they seem easier to catch than people who are really naughty. Now, okay, technically we were trespassing that day, but my defence is that there was no harm intended – we were kids playing out. Some farmers don’t mind kids playing in their meadows if there’s nothing growing in them but this guy had zero tolerance, and I think I have him to thank for my own intolerance of arbitrary authority delivered by jobsworths, especially when it comes to land access issues.

A more recent example was when walking through a meadow attached to my home village. There, a sign asks us to keep to the alloted path – in other words keep off the grass – but the grass is wild – it’s a wild-meadow for pity’s sake. I was there recently with number two son, having gone to take a look at some wood carvings that had been done by way of decoration. The carvings – life sized statues of religious figures stand in the field, away from the path. I wanted a closer look, so I wandered over with my camera. Number two son was horrified that I’d be told off, and I was horrified that he was so sensitive. Duly chastised I crept away, but felt angry that such unseen nannying was curtailing my innocent freedom to come and go as I pleased. I was pushing fifty for heaven’s sake! It’s about time I was allowed to grow up. I can guarantee the person who will eventually hack those statues’ heads off or carves irreligious graffiti upon them will have no such sensitivity. And they will never be caught either.

All of this might sound like the bleatings of someone with nothing better to whine about, but I should advise you, I have also been subject to a warning by the police for his  misbehaviour – oh yes, Michael Graeme is a real bad-ass! (Is that the right phrase?)

Some years back I happened to have my finger in my ear as I was driving past a side-road. Allow me to explain: it was momentary thing – a bit of an itch that needed a desperate scratch, so I scratched it. Unfortunately, down the side road there was lurking a police car which duly emerged from its lair and sat on my tail for two miles before pulling me over. Was there a problem, I wondered? Had I a tail light gone? No. According to the otherwise charming young lady officer, I had been using a mobile phone, faced three points on my licence and a hefty fine and was I not aware that it was an offence “sir”? 

I was nonplussed and politely denied all knowledge. I hate it when I see people driving with a mobile ‘phone pressed to their ear, because it’s dangerous, they don’t seem to care, and there’s never a policeman around to catch them – so this felt like the ultimate irony. My mobile phone was requested, but did I even have my mobile ‘phone that morning I wondered? Cue a rather undignified emptying of pockets: pens, pencils, MP3 player, snotty hanky, small torch, swiss army knife, curious piece of bassalt picked up from the beach at Porth Neigawl,… calculator,…. backup calculator, oh yes, there it was: the tiny phone was located, in a zipped pocket, fastened in a case and switched off.

It was a mistake, obviously, a simple misunderstanding; and I could readily accept that a man with his finger in his ear could easily be mistaken for a man using a mobile ‘phone. But was Michael Graeme sent on his way with an apology and a friendly “mind how you go, sir”? Not exactly. He was given a warning and sent on his way with the feeling that he’d been lucky to get away with it this time – and he’d better watch out in future. But a warning against what, I wondered? The question was on the tip of my tongue but circumspection got the better of me. I tugged my forelock and went on my way.

Be warned, therefore, I am not so innocent a soul as my writings might lead you to believe! I also try to keep my mobile phone in a bag in the boot now when I’m driving, but I’m not sure that will be sufficient defence if it were to happen again. In my novel Durleston Wood, I have a character who’s so paranoid at the sight of a police car, he’s no longer able to drive without feeling like he’s going to have a heart attack. Hmnn, I wonder where I got him from?

And then there’s the recent troubling story of a man, (fortunately not me) sitting in his garden one summer’s day while a group of jolly local youths take delight in throwing apples at the side wall of his house. It’s annoying and it happens a lot, and there is never a uniform around to prevent it from happening, so the man goes out, remonstrates, ends up in a tense stand-off with several strapping youths encircling him, jabbing fingers and uttering profanities. The man grabs the ring leader, saying he is making a citizen’s arrest. He feels alone, vulnerable. The yobs close in. He punches out at one in self defence. The police arrive. The man is arrested for assault and spends weeks entangled in the machinery of the law, awaiting trial. From sunny afternoon to nightmare in the blink of an eye.

The message is: don’t get involved. The last thing society wants is its citizens acting on their own initiative and doing what they think is best, or right, or common sense in any given situation. So, stick to your email, your twitter or your blog, or any other means of indirect communication, but do not under any circumstances engage face to face with your fellow human beings unless you’ve got a solicitor on speed-dial. Oh, and watch out for scratching your ear because there’s never a policeman around, until you’re least expecting one.

Sorry boys and girls. You do a tough job, but you really ground my gears that day.

Graeme out

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Old Grumpy goes to the garage!

Well, after his weird gearbox behaviour at the weekend, old Grumpy made it to Thursday morning without another hitch. However, pulling onto the driveway last night I noticed a dark stain on the tarmac, so I had a look under the car and, sure enough, I was leaking something – probably transmission fluid, which would explain a lot. I was more anxious than ever then that the car wouldn’t make it to the garage this morning. It’s only 4 years old, done around 40,000 miles, and this really isn’t good enough for a modern vehicle. It’s more the sort of thing you’d expect when a car’s gone round the clock and is getting a bit tired, and you should be thinking of changing it.

With a modern vehicle you shouldn’t have to think about anything between services at all, other than checking the washer bottle and the tyres, now and then, but I find I’m fretting about something or other on old Grumpy all the time. I’ve had three holidays in various far flung corners of the UK, and every one has been tainted by the nagging fear that the damned thing won’t get us back home without calling out the AA. I should have traded it in last year, but the money’s needed now for other things like University Tuition Fees for numbers one and two sons, and it’s such a pain in the posterior changing your car anyway, I couldn’t be bothered and just hoped I was over the worst of it. I hope the Universities appreciate my sacrifice, but I doubt they’ll notice because they’ll be too busy squandering my life savings on champagn and cigars.

But anyway,…

 All I have to do, you might think is get the car to the garage, and let the experts sort it out, then hand over my debit card number and hey-presto! Problem sorted. Hmm,… have you experienced the main-dealership “experience” recently? I don’t like dealerships – they’re more expensive than the independents of course and you never get to talk to the mechanics. My uncle was a mechanic of the much maligned and undervalued backstreet variety, I was an amateur mechanic myself for many years before time became short and cars so complicated, plus I trained as an engineer on systems that make cars look simplistric, so I understand mechanics, but dealers keep them inexplicably under wraps, like they’ve got the plague or something. Instead they’re fronted by dolly birds or young lads who don’t know one end of a car from the other, but want you to think they do, while all you seem to be faced with is an uphill battle to make yourself understood, get yourself booked in and back on the road.

I’ve mostly driven older cars contented myself with a local independent garage for decades, but Old Grumpy, coming with the rump end of a Vauxhall warranty, and suffering a major breakdown a few years ago which required main-dealer back up, I’ve been sucked into the dealer’s seductively squeaky-clean showroom a few times now, but I think this will be the last occasion. Old Grumpy’s f*&£ed. He’s the property of the independent sector from now on.

Your vehicle’s an important part of your life, and in spite of the politically correct hogwash recently about us all getting back onto public transport in order to save the planet, the car is something we non-urban types simply cannot do without. Not even for a day. So, booking a service, or horror of horrors, an emergency repair can be a traumatic experience, because what do you do while your car’s being fixed? If dealerships were serious about your custom, they’d be falling over themselves to help you out, but the dealership I’ve been dealing with isn’t like that at all. It’s them doing you the favour, not the other way round.

 Unless you’re going to take several days holiday while they fix your car, you’re going to need to borrow a car from them, in order to get to work. But I found that borrowing a car isn’t as painless as one might expect. First there’s a sharp intake of breath. You want what? Then you have to ring your own insurance company in order to get yourself insured to drive their car for a day. That costs you money – £18.00 in my case. The impression I got was they’d rather you made other arrangements. But I had no choice, so I jumped through the first of their hoops and got myself insured.

After sorting out the insurance yesterday, I turned up this morning very early, thinking I’d drop old Grumpy off, pick up their “courtesy” car and get in to work without losing any time. The first thing I was asked to do though, during the tedious booking in process, was to produce my driving license and my insurance details. Now, I wasn’t told to bring them, and I’ve never had to insure a “courtesy” car myself before, ever, so I hadn’t though to bring the damned things. However, no documents, no car, “sir”. So, I took a deep breath and drove home for them, listening for the gearbox burning out all the while, losing an hour of my morning, and imagining myself by now on the frowny side of the boss’s face because I wouldn’t be at my desk when I was supposed to be. Sorry boss, I know you’re not like that.

 With paperwork finally in order and the key to the “courtesy” car finally handed over, I waited outside the dealership for someone to bring it round. It was a Vauxhall Corsa, fairly new, but to my dismay resembling a clown’s car in red and white, with the dealership advertising splattered all over it. Perhaps I was feeling a bit out of sorts this morning, but I was very cross about this; I mean let me get this straight; I was paying £18:00 and had already driven the best part of forty miles that morning, for the sole privilege of advertising their dealership? At this point it was on my mind to tell them to shove the car, then take a taxi home and book the day off as a holiday because I was beginning to feel I really needed to cut my losses here, if not financially, then at least emotionally. I was also an hour overdue for a cup of tea , and I’m British for pity’s sake!

The bloke who dropped the clown car off was pleasantly chatty but I found myself unable to engage as warmly as I might ordinarily have done. In the end I decided against taking a taxi home because it was irrational – I mean I’d paid for the “courtesy” car so I was damned well going to drive it. With a deep breath, I jumped in and set off, anxious by now to get to work, and thinking I was going to have to stay until six pm now to make up the lost time – and it was Kung Fu night, and I’d promised number two son I’d take him, and I didn’t want to miss it. However, there wasn’t a drop of petrol in the car, and there was a warning light flashing and telling me fill up immediately “or else”, so I was even more late for work, finding a petrol station, then squeezing in the bare minimum of petrol I was allowed. Do the dealers deliberately drain the petrol out of these things in order to save money? Will they drain what’s left of the petrol I’ve paid for, so the next poor sap has to struggle as well? By now I was up to £25.00 for the privilege of advertising the Vauxhall dealership, and my mood was plummeting.

Now, as usual, I try to find a place inside my head where I can look down on all of this and ask myself what I’m supposed to make of it, what I’m suppose to be learning from the greater perspective of life, the universe and everything. I mean, there’s no point in simply having a rant about every little thing that goes wrong, because that gets you nowhere, and simply drains your energy uselessly into the great void of illusion, as the Bhuddist’s might say. I struggled to think “skillfully” though this morning, and even found myself becoming “unskilfully” annoyed at the slow-coaches who seemed more numerous on the road than usual and held me up even more, making me even later for work. I arrived at the office, mid morning,  feeling short changed by the whole experience,… and that was even before I got the bill for the repair of old Grumpy!

Was I supposed to observe how the dealership was a triumph of style over substance? Possibly, but I knew that anyway, and there were really no surprises there. Was I supposed to take a deep breath and notice that it was a lovely morning? Well, it was a lovely morning; it was bright, sunny and after a touch of frost the day was already warming up, and tempting me out of my top-coat,… but no,… I wasn’t for budging from that dark place in my head, not even for a bit of sunshine. For a long time then I remained huddled down in the darkness, like a sulky child, arms and legs folded while I took refuge under the table-top of my grumpy cynicism. Was the car a metaphor now for the grumpy old man I was in danger of becoming? Where had my Zen-ness gone? In short what was happening to me?

Help!!!

I was reminded then of a friend who used to drive around in a battered old Vauxhall Viva, back in the eighties. The gearbox mountings had begun rotting away, which meant the  gear stick was getting shorter and shorter as the gearbox sank to the ground. To remedy the problem my friend tied the gearbox up with a bit of old rope and ran the car quite happily with it like that for a while. The car should have been scrapped years before because there was always one problem or another he was having to sort out. And it wasn’t as if he couldn’t afford a better car – he had a good job and lived simply, and when he was asked why he didn’t change it for something more reliable he said he believed we were only given so many problems in life to solve, and he’d rather they were all in his car, because they were localised and easily dealt with. If he changed his car for a brand new and hopefully fault free one, he might end up with a bad leg instead or all manner of other misfortune that wasn’t so easy to pin down. And he was only half joking.

 This remembered anecdote finally punctured my dark mood and had me half smiling by lunch time, and thinking I should really give that friend a call, because it’s ages since we last had a walk and a talk.

It’s easy to get bound up in the minutia of life, and miss the bigger picture. The headache of the last few days, although personally frustrating pales into insignificance when you read of the problems currently being faced by people just like me trying to make their honest way in Libya, and I’m almost ashamed I considered my “bad” day even worth the blogging about.

 Oh,… I know,… the dealer will rip me off, and if I’m lucky Old Grumpy may last another six months before his next major hiccough. My country may also be looking a little shabby around the edges, while we ordinary Brits tighten our belts and stoically darn our socks in order to save money so the leaders of our financial institutions needn’t forgo their usual ration of cigars and champagne, but at least I’m alive and well, and still able to get around without fear of getting shot at by my own government.

I made it to Kung Fu class, this evening, with only minutes to spare. I had a good night sparring with number two son and entering the first of the Shaolin Gates,… cool eh?… then drove home, took a shower, and finally caught my breath. The cursor of the laptop was winking at me from my desk, so I poured myself a glass of wine, then sat down and blogged the day out of my system.

 Hold fast through your frustrations, dear reader, or as my Grandmother used to say, there are worse losses at sea,… and whatever’s dragging you down remember that it too will pass.

Old Grumpy’s still at the dealer – ratcheting up the bill and I’m still driving the clown car which number 2 son says has a funny “organic” smell that’s past its sell by date, and we’re afraid to open the boot in case there’s a body in there,…  but it’s Friday tomorrow and the forecast for the weekend is fine.

Enjoy yourselves and stay safe.

Graeme out.

 

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Old Grumpy Strikes Again

So, I have this car, a  1.8 litre 07 registered Vauxhall Astra which I’ve moaned about before on my blog (search “old grumpy”). It’s the most expensive car I’ve ever bought – got it three years ago when it was a little over a year old, and to say the car’s been giving me a bad ride is an understatement. I live about 15 miles from the  job but the public transport is such that it would take me two hours to get there (late) and two hours back, so I need a reliable motor, but this one’s given me more sleepless nights than every other car I’ve driven put together. I’ve had a blown gear-box, blown radiator and all the plumbing; I’ve had the main wiring loom, and the tensioner pulley (twice). And this evening, backing out of my drive to go to the shops, the gearbox wouldn’t engage drive at all. So, you try putting your foot down and, with the engine red-lining, you just about manage to crawl a few yards, but then you think this is stupid, so you switch off, wonder what you’re going to do in the morning about getting to work. Then you switch on again, engage drive, and off it moves like you’d imagined the whole thing. You drive about a bit, stopping, starting, trying to repeat the fault,… nothing.  I have it booked in for a service at the end of next week, but I’m wondering if I’ll make it that far without getting out the recovery team,… again!

In the mean time, we’re seeing the first signs of brighter days with snowdrops in bloom and the early crocuses, so it’s hard to get too wound up about the car.  And speaking of new beginnings last week I decided to extend my knowledge of Chinese martial arts by taking up Northern Shaolin Kung Fu. The original idea was to take numbers one and two sons to learn it, while I watched because what do I want with Kung Fu at my age? But I couldn’t resist joining in, and enjoyed the evening very much. So as well as the Chen style Tai Chi old frame to keep in my head, I’m adding even more complication by learning a whole new set of moves. I must be mad! I seem to be in good company though – the group is composed of a bunch of young-uns as well the more senior students like me. Why do I want to do it? Well, I felt a gate opening and the opportunity arose,.. so I stepped through.

On the writing front, I’m struggling with my latest novel, called La Maison du Lac, or something like that. I’m  trying to wrestle it into a form that makes sense but I’ve been doing this since last September and I’m at the stage of wanting to give it a rest, but the characters won’t let me. I’m not sure what’s going on here, whether I’m trying to force the story in ways the muse doesn’t want  it go or if I’ve just not stumbled across that magic key yet that tells me the story’s finished and means something. It’s a frustrating business, the dark side of writing,… a barren plain without a single landmark in sight to guide you, and you don’t even know if you’re heading somewhere worthwhile, even after ninety thousand words.

So, I’m distracting myself by blogging and even writing book reviews over on Goodreads. I’m not sure I’ve got the point of Goodreads yet. You go on there, list the books you’ve read or want to read and you rate them. But reading’s such a subjective business and unless you’re a professional critic I’m not sure what the opinion of Joe Public is worth. For example, you get someone awarding Orwell’s 1984 one star and saying it’s a crap novel. I would beg to disagree, but my opinion’s not worth that much either. You also get the wannabe critics calling the authors of books rude names and questioning their fitness to be authors, which seems a bit childish to me. I may be biassed but authors are people too and anyone who can sustain a hundred thousand words of prose should be exempt all personal insults, whatever you might think of their efforts. Anyway to all you Goodreads wannabe critics, please don’t simply say a book is “crap” – because you’re not in a position to judge. If you  don’t like a book, then say you didn’t like it, and tell us why. Same if you liked it – tell us why, tell us what you got out of it.  To simply say a book is crap tells us nothing about the book, but perhaps a whole lot more about you. And don’t call the author rude names because they might read your review and it would hurt their feelings.

Other than that I think Goodreads is an interesting forum. And you don’t need to be a traditionally published author to get listed. They’ve even got some of my books on there!

Okay, enough procrastinating,… back to La Maison. 

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Car Insurance – why it pays to ask questions

For years now I’ve delegated the shopping around for the cheapest car insurance to a well known (UK) breakdown and recovery organisation. I’ve had no problem with this until now: they send you a renewal notice a few weeks before your car insurance expires, along with a note to say that “so and so” is the cheapest deal they could find, and you believe them, because they wouldn’t lie to you would they,  so you pay it.

Last year the insurance premium on “Old Grumpy”, a 1.8 litre Vauxhall Astra, cost me just over £400, which I thought was a bit pricey, since I’m nearer to 50 years old than 19, and haven’t had a claim in nearly 20 years (touch wood) but hey: the world’s economy has just collapsed and everything seems to be falling down or getting blown up or flooded,  and things in the world of insurance are consequently  a bit dodgy at the moment, so I paid up. Today, however, I received notice of my renewal and this year the absolute cheapest quote  was £650.00.

When I read this I had a Broadgate Meadow moment, swore in disbelief and did something I’ve never done before: I got on the phone to the well known (UK) recovery organisation and asked if they’d perhaps made a mistake?

No, there was no mistake. Things were topsy turvey in the world of insurance sir, but we can reduce it by £100.

What?

Have I got this right?

There’s no mistake; after all your hard work on my behalf, £650 is the cheapest quote you can find me, but because I ring to query it you can knock £100 off it straight away without so much as a sharp intake of breath?

Me-thinks there’s something funny going on here – a dimension to the universe of insurance providers that lies hidden to the rest of us, is mysterious, intangible, mercurial.

So, my insurance was now down to £550,  but this still seemed rather high to me, so I said I’d think about it. Meanwhile, the call centre bod passed my details on to a mysterious  ”special office” to see if they could reduce it still further.

Perplexed, head in hands, and wondering if I should finally trade Old Grumpy in for a 50 cc moped, I checked online with an independent insurance provider who quoted me £360 – and that was the gold plated version: legal fees, protected no claims, enhanced courtesy car, blah-di-blah-di-blah.

I was about to sign up to this when  the “special office” of the well known (UK) breakdown and recovery organisation came back with a further reduction of £150.

So,.. wait a minute: you were going to charge me £650 , but because I queried it, you were suddenly able to reduce it to £400?

I’ve allowed the well known (UK) breakdown and recovery organisation to manage my car insurance for more years than I can remember, but I was forced to take my leave of them because, although I recognise  my trust was naive, I lost that trust today, took charge of  my own shopping-around and saved myself nearly £300 in the process.

My advice? Obviously, whoever your car insurance is with don’t just pay it when you get your renewal. Your apathy is an essential part of the financial services business model, and these are tough times, so be vigilant, or you’ll be the one getting shafted.

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The Magus of Java and the price of petrol

Old grumpy at Rivington UK

I’m not sure how I stumbled onto this particular link (The Magus of Java) - I’m devouring anything on qigong I can find at the moment and I must have picked up on it during an internet search. Anyway, I ordered it from the Book Depository last week and it came yesterday. I sat down with a cup of coffee and devoured it in a couple of h0urs – there’s not that much in it I’m afraid. If you’re looking for proof of the existence of Chi you’re still going to be a victim of your western rationalism, so don’t expect this book to rock your boat more than any other you’ve probably read. You need to feel Chi in order to believe in it, so a book’s not going to do it.  I thought the book was  a little reminiscent of the iconic Carlos Castaneda series, though with the advantage of a guru who is evidently real and not fictitious – as many suspected in the case of Carlos’ enigmatic Don Juan. If you’re interested in learning more about the life of the so called Magus of Java (aka John Chang) this book is about as definitive as it gets, and fascinating stuff it is too. If  you’re interested in learning more about the nature of  Chi there are some potential insights here, but it’s not a technical book so don’t expect it to enlighten you very much.

Anyway, reading aside, I also pulled down my old worm riddled cabin, filled a skip, emptied my garage of trash and tore a nasty gash in the passenger seat of Old Grumpy with the spiked feet of a pair of speaker stands I was throwing out (curses). I know my seats are not really leather  now- just vinyl like they they were on my ’64 vintage Cortina (though admittedly textured to look leather-ish). This knowledge does little to impress me though and I’m still trying to figure out a way of repairing the damage.

Maybe it was the disappointment over the Magus of Java book, and what I felt was its ultimately empty promise, or maybe the incident with the car seat (double drat it), or something else I’m picking up on, but I feel a terrible sinking of my spirits, a terrible negativity about the world and the way we live it. The price of petrol also has something to do with it. This morning I paid £1.21 per litre to fill up Old Grumpy, which is the most I’ve ever paid. There are rumours the price of petrol will hit £1.50 per litre in the summer. I also heard a rumour that the Road Tax will be going up soon, and for my 1.8 litre Vauxhall Astra, I’ll be paying £425 a year.

All of this pushes things beyond the pale for me and I have the sense of  having my nose being rammed hard up against a crisis point that I am powerless to avoid. We’re coming up to an election and it might be time to vice my concerns at the ballot box but to be honest our politicians, of whatever brand, are unlikely to do anything about it. I rarely take the car on long journeys these days and when I have to I find myself factoring in the hight cost of fuel in doing so. For hauliers, farmers, reps – anyone who burns serious quantities of fuel as a prerequisite to making a living, things must be looking very bleak right now. It’s easy for the eco-facists to say it’s a good thing – higher prices = less fossil fuel burnt = less global warming, but while I respect their view I’m also a realist, and there has to be a means of transition to something else, something better, cheaper, cleaner – and I don’t see it -  Either that or a completely different way of life that requires no fuel to sustain it – a kind of de-centralised, rural Shangri-la kind of life, where we don’t commute any more and I’d be happy to embrace – but I don’t see that happening any time soon either.

If there was another way of doing things, believe me I’d do it, but the world is the way it is, and there’s no alternative.  So all I feel are  grubby hands grabbing at my pockets looking for my cash. I’m a middle of the road, middle earning kind of guy and I ‘m getting screwed left right and centre. My pockets are feeling pretty empty at the moment – go screw someone else. If I was about to retire, I’d dump the car and go back to my bike, become sixteen and happily naive again, reel in my horizons to a couple of miles around the village where I live. But I can’t do that. I have to work, I have to commute, I have to live in the way my society demands I live.

This is reality, and it makes the stuff I’m reading seem pretty useless – it makes it seem like escapism.

Anyway it was a lovely day today – sunny, warm, and I would have practiced my Tai Chi in the garden, but I had to paint the fence. Is there a moral in that?

Hmn,…

Good night all.

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The Big British Freeze

The cold spell continues here in the UK and it’s been giving the press something to write about and not without justification: we’ve just had the heaviest snowfall in thirty years. Even the main roads were barely passable and I’ve been getting up very early, so that I can get to the day-job on time and get paid. It’s been a wild ride, negotiating compacted snow and black ice with ordinary tyres. The only way to do this is to go really slow and never put yourself so close to the car in front you’ll ever have to use your brakes, because you’ll just slide right into the back of it. And you roll down to the junction letting the engine slow the car in time because a dab on the brakes will have you sliding out into the middle of it. And you set off in snow-mode on an automatic box, or in second gear on a manual – or you’ll get nowhere at all. Cars these days are so easy to drive you barely have to think about it, but a winter like this changes everything. You really have to focus.

Some areas here have touched minus 20 C, which is more typical of a Scandinavian winter than the UK. A few mornings last week, I was setting out to work in the pitch dark with temperatures down to minus 15, which is the coldest I think I’ve ever experienced. There was a dryness to it, and a clear skied, green dawned stillness. The washer bottle on old grumpy froze solid, the fuse on the washer pumps blew and the heater’s been struggling. I’ve had such a bad ride with this vehicle so far everything I touch on it now I expect is going break down and land me with a major repair bill. At least I know the ABS works – but your ABS can grind away all it likes, it’s not going to help much on a road so icy it looks like it’s been varnished.

This morning it was 2.5 degrees so, technically, there’s been a bit of a thaw. The skies were grey and there’s a slight wind making that 2.5 degrees feel a lot colder than -15 did last week. At least we’ll be able to look back in a few months time and say the run of 2009 into 2010 was one of those rare occasions when we had a real winter in the UK!

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Gathering Chestnuts

So, I’d promised the car a clean up and a run out at the weekend. I don’t seem to have done any serious damage. The gearbox is noisy from cold but it’s changing gear okay and running smoothly once it’s warm. Hopefully this will be sorted when the new gearbox it fitted.  Anyway, the plan was to drive over to Southport around mid-morning for the annual Air Show, but I hit traffic at the little bottleneck village of Croston, still about ten miles out. I crawled for five miles before finally admitting defeat at Mere Brow, and turning the car around. I’ve never seen traffic like it! Maybe the publicity for this event was unusually wide reaching this year – I don’t know – but it seemed as if the whole of Lancashire was heading into Southport this morning.

No 2 son, (13 yrs) riding shotgun for the day, was understandably gutted and his expression broke my heart. How do you make up for missing the spectacle of the Red Arrows and other assorted jets flying flat out over Southport sands? Well, it’s not easy, but you could always head up to Rivington and go looking for conkers instead, followed by a deluxe hot chocolate at the barn. This met with unexpectedly enthusiastic approval, so off we went.

Rivington’s not the best place to head to either if you want a quiet run out – especially on a Sunday. This is a very special little place, and it’s on everyone’s list of R+R destinations, hereabouts, so, although I’ve yet to encounter a traffic jam heading into it, finding somewhere to leave your car when you get there can be a problem. However, a little local knowledge opens up a number of possibilities, and I rarely struggle. So, while the queue to Southport Airshow snaked for 10 miles across the plain of Lancashire, No 2 son and I donned our boots in the shadow of the Pennines and went in search of chestnuts.

Unlike the airshow, which we went to for the first time only last year, conker gathering has been an annual ritual for as long as I can remember, and is one the seasonal events I set my internal calendar by. I’m not telling you where we gather conkers because, as every lad knows, these are places that should be kept secret. You’re always a bit anxious approaching your favourite little location, come conker season because you never know if it’ll be a bumper crop this time or a famine, or if the locals will have stripped the trees bare before you’ve arrived.

The trees are just beginning to turn now, and the chestnuts, although not exactly abundant, were plenty enough to keep No 2 son happy. grubbing about in the undergrowth. Indeed at one point they were raining from the trees, already cracked open, and landing uncannily close, as if the squirrels were intent on repelling boarders. Having said this, it took a little while to find our first one, after which the pickings seemed to come easier. It’s hard to explain the satisfaction of finding that first chestnut – the rich brown colour, the freshly varnished sheen set against the pale green, and the smooth, sensual feel of it as you roll it in the palm of your hand. Lad’s stuff, I know, but it really does your heart good.

And the hot chocolate at Rivington Barn? 10 out of 10 as usual!

I trust those of you who made it to the air show weren’t disappointed. I’ll have to set off earlier next year – or I may just go conker hunting instead.

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How to wreck a car without even trying

I used to know a lot about cars. It’s what happens when you’re young, not earning much, but need to be able to run one to get to work. You don’t take it to the garage every year for a service because you can barely afford the insurance, right? So,  you do it yourself – the full works: oil, plugs, points and a tune-up. Brakes worn? You strip them down on the driveway, rain or shine because you’ve no other choice, and replace the pads yourself. You make mistakes, but you get yourself a Haynes manual, and you learn as you go along. The only things I didn’t do for myself were fit new tyres and exhausts.

True, cars were simpler in those days and you could keep them running without reference to a computer program, because computers were for space-ships, but now things are different. Cars are complicated, and time always seems too short to bother much with them. You pump the tyres up, keep a lazy eye on the water  level – which never seems to change anyway – and that’s about it. Consequently I now know very little about them. Twenty years ago a rattling sound as I set off of a morning wouldn’t  have been much cause for concern. Anything really, expensively, serious  would show up in the temperature gauge, right? If the engine’s running hot, it’s a bad sign – even I remember that! Spot it soon enough and you can usually sort it out before disaster strikes, and the AA man has to tow you away.

Nowadays though, such things as temperature gauges are dispensed with, at least on my ’07 model Astra. But you tell yourself it’s okay, there’s probably a little light that’ll come on if the engine’s running too hot – maybe even a fussy voice telling you to pull over at once – cars are so full of sensors and alarms these days it wouldn’t surprise me. But no, not even when the steam starts to rise does a light come on, and by then it’s too late and the damage is done. Your two year old motor is a wreck:  head gasket, radiator, all the plumbing – oh, and a new gearbox as well.

A temperature gauge would have told me ages ago there was something wrong, and I’d better get it checked out. Instead, all I had to go on was that niggly rattly sound as I moved off of a morning,  otherwise the car seemed to be running fine.

So, it’s getting up for a week now and my Astra’s still in the workshop. There seems to be no quibble over the warranty, even though there are so many parts on order I’ll be surprised if there’s anything original left under the bonnet at all. But it looks like everything will be repaired,  and the car will eventually roll back out onto the road to live again. All it will have cost me is a few taxi rides. Whether I will ever be able to trust this vehicle again is another matter. This would have been an astronomically expensive repair, and had the car been just a few years older it’s debatable if it would have been worth paying for it – maybe better just to ask the dealer to make me an offer for what was left of the thing, and get myself a simpler kind of motor.

How to wreck your car without trying? Well apparently it  happens now and then.

I’m just glad I did it before the warranty ran out.

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