Seating dilemma

When travelling by train I like to sit facing the direction of travel. In fact I’d go as far as stating that I almost insist on sitting in the direction of travel. Now this isn’t a mild case of OCD, rather just a preference as to being able to see where I’m going as I gaze out of the window. As well as a deep subconscious thought that should there be a train crash I stand a slightly better chance of not being decapitated.

Travelling from Oxford to Bournemouth once a week presents an interesting dilemma, now that I am making that journey by train rather than car. (It takes only about ten minutes longer by train and I get a lot of work done on both journeys - I seem to have gotten sensible in my middle age). The train departs from Oxford and heads towards Reading, after which it goes in the opposite direction back to Bournemouth. So, if you sit facing the direction of travel from Oxford, then from Reading to Bournemouth you end up sitting the wrong way.

Now I could move seats at Reading, but that would be silly, especially as the train is usually pretty full from Oxford and even fuller from Reading. So, as I board the train I try and find a forward facing seat and accept the fact that for the first 30 minutes I’ll be sitting facing the wrong way - no matter how much it annoys me.

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.