Lost, immobilsed and fatherly beer

A couple of days ago the battery in my watch stopped working, and it seemed for a moment that I’d be stuck living the rest of my life at ten minutes past two. So I popped the watch into my local jewellers for them to do their thing and return me back to a life of seconds, minutes and hours.

Now this isn’t a fancy watch, it is simply a watch that tells the time and for most of the month, also displays the correct date too. Often I do forget to wind the date forward, so the date can never be relied on as an accurate measure the the date itself.

Apparently they have had to send my watch away for a new battery, that means my left arm feels light. I have considered tying it down to stop it floating above my head. I am completely unused to not wearing a watch and it is throwing my whole day, especially one such as today where I’ve been out and about and have had to refer to my mobile phone to check the time - after glancing at my plain and hairy wrist in the first instance.

It is strange how we get into routines and expect certain things to be there and how it throws you when they are not there.

In other news, the immobiliser in the Jeep has once again immobilised itself permanently. Luckily I managed to get it off the drive last night and in front of the house before it went completely kapput. It is now sitting there with the battery disconnected for 24hours to see if that resets it, otherwise it will be trip to the garage for another repair.

I have driven that Jeep into and out of ditches, through deep water, into hedges and towed race cars over Europe yet the electronics are crap. I needed to use it next week so will have to hire a car instead. I won’t be able to fit two exhibition stands in the Nissan, in fact I couldn’t even fit one.

The old man was in London today for a meeting, so we arranged to meet up for a couple of beers and something to eat. He doesn’t get down here very often, preferring the confines of the north. It was good to catch up and spend a few hours talking about something and nothing whilst demolishing several plates of food in Chinatown.

For many years we did not get on at all, a situation that only improved once I moved out and made my own way in life. There was a time when I resented not getting on with him, yet now I realise he only wanted the best for me. I hope I haven’t disappointed him so far.

It’s only money, oh deer…

I had a shock this morning when filling the Jeep up with petrol.

The petrol light was on, and currently the Jeep is the only car I’m using, so the tank needed filling to get me through the week, although with the trips I have planned it would actually need to be filled twice.

The 350z is sat in my garage not feeling very well. The other week on a late night dash back from Salisbury, I encountered an already dead deer on the road. At ~60mph I wasn’t going to avoid it as I saw it far too late. Thankfully the impact was somewhat offset by the cars position and so the only damage I suffered was to the back box of the exhaust. However, the car is loud anyway, so having no back box means that it is far too loud to even contemplate driving. I started it up the other day to run it to the local garage to we could get it up on the ramps and have a look underneath and it was embarrassingly loud. Still the local chavs seemed to approve. Apparently it is ‘wicked innit’.

I have bought a new back box off Ebay and am waiting to arrange delivery so that the car can get back on the road. A couple of people told me I should put a fancy sports exhaust on it, but subject to me agreeing the commercials with a new sponsor, the 350z will be sold to the race team and turned into a very fast (hopefully) and lightweight GT race car for use at the tail end of this season and the whole of 2009.

As I have to to go Bournemouth, Birmingham and London (twice) next week, I shall be using the train rather than driving the Jeep I think.

In other shock news, I have bought a pair of Skechers this morning. Rumours that I might be getting slightly trendy are strenuously denied.

A little bit of charity goes a long way

Over the past few weekends I’ve been redecorating my office at home and the spare bedroom as well as tidying the loft up. Having carefully sorted through piles and piles of books I ended up with five large boxes with ~300 books that I’d read and didn’t see myself reading again. Being stuck for somewhere to keep them I decided instead to donate them to charity.

I rang up a local well known hospice and arranged to drop the five boxes off at one of the local charity shops. They were a) very grateful for the donation and b) even more grateful that I was happy to bring them in rather than have someone come and pick them up.

So last Friday morning I loaded the Jeep up and trundled into Oxford to drop the books off. The staff at the shop were really pleased and immediately started ruffling through to see what what was there and what prices they could sell things for. With the exception of one or two, all the books were in very good condition, so hopefully they’ll help raise some money for a good cause.

I had a spring in my step for the rest of the day.

esure? Are you sure?

The insurance for the Jeep is due on Sunday of all days. Anyway given the fact that I can’t be bothered to ring lots of insurance companies I tried the much advertised gocompare website. I’m always skeptical when you are forced to put in your phone number, so I put in a number that goes to a line here on my desk that gets used for some work stuff.

Anyway esure came out the cheapest quote by about £40, so I closed the browser window whilst I thought about what to do.

Moments later this phone rings and it is a call centre monkey asking whether I wanted to go ahead with them as they were the cheapest quote I’d had. I stopped the girl dead in her tracks when I said no, she seemed genuinely confused as to why I didn’t want to buy the cheapest policy for the car.

With great pleasure I told her that there were two reasons I wasn’t going to go ahead. Firstly I’d not asked to be called and had ticked a box which said “Do not contact me by phone, post or email.” And secondly, their TV adverts with Michael Winner were so annoying to me, that I could never buy their products.

After the call had finished I suddenly thought I could have ended the call with a “Calm down dear,” sometimes my brain doesn’t work as quick as I’d like it to because that would have been a great parting shot!