Sunday, August 31, 2014

further car review

hi there

right, so i took the car for a drive today. to answer the most obvious and pressing question you have in that respect, the car is perfectly fine, it is not damaged and has no wear and tear beyond some 10 or so miles added to the odometer; an odometer that Sharpy or someone can probably rewind anyway.

my initial car review was, of course, focused on my experience of being a passenger. i thought, then, that in the interests of balance and what have you, i should probably do a review based on my experiences of driving it, and answer some pertinent, if not valid, questions.

a major question would be one of if i look sufficiently menacing or sinister in the rear view mirror. i am unaware of any practical use for mirrors in car, and thus assume they exist so that one can look menacing in them. i didn't think to take my sunglasses with, alas, but here you go, here's how i look in the mirror.




does that look menacing or sinister? not for me to say, really. you can have a look and decide, i suppose. i think it looks ok, i guess.

on to the practicalities of driving, then. operating the controls and all of that. for the most part it operates, runs even, pretty much as one would expect a conventional car to. is it pleasant to drive? well, yes, i guess - it takes one from where they are to where they wish to be.

there are, however, one or two little issues. not problems, as such, but issues. idiosyncrasies of the car, if you like, or things that i shall have to get used to with frequent driving. the first issue, if we can just use that term for ease of reference please, is with this.

no, not the vibes unit right now, the gear thing.



the gear stick, or lever, or whatever it is, in this car operates - to my mind, and not from any experience that i am prepared to discuss - very much like one would imagine a sexually dysfunctional midget leper would at some sort of bunga bunga party. in my drive i found at sometimes you had to "go long" to change the gear, at other times you had to "go short". also, there's no real natural sense one gets of which gear you are in.

but that could be just because this is the first time i drove it, i suppose. maybe i will get used to it.

another important consideration about the car is, of course, how do i appear driving it to oncoming traffic, in particular at times when i have opted to take a decidedly French stance on which side of the road i should be on. here is my best effort to address that consideration.



i think i look, at once, calm and relaxed and convey a sense to the other motorists that i will be f***** if i am moving, and if they do not wish to collide then they should get out of the way. in, of course, a non-aggressive and exceptionally friendly way.

are there any other issues with the car? well, yes, as it happens. here are two of them. the first, and obviously the most disconcerting, is that the cigarette lighter thing seems to be missing. actually, that's not so bad, that just makes it like the Blues Brothers car out of The Blues Brothers.

the other thing is not quite so easily explained away with a simple reference to a film starring the somewhat more celebrated of the Belushi clan.



if you are looking at the above and asking "what the hell is that handle", then congratulations, you have just done what i did when i was confronted with it. i am reliably informed that this in fact, ladies and gentlemen, the handbrake on this particular car.

yeah, i agree, a handbrake is usually, and should be, a big massive throbbing shaft with a knob on the end of it. this has some sort of "spaceship" or perhaps even yacht feel to it. i am not particularly a fan of it, and have instructed my (considerably) better half to get rid of it and, if she thinks that for some reason we really need a handbrake, to get a proper one put in.

actually, it's not that bad to use, once you get used to it, but it's a bit unusual and unorthodox at first. unorthodox as in i could not, for the life of me work out how to put it down at first. my (considerably) better half, however, came to the rescue. it was a pleasure to watch her take the shaft in a firm grip, rigidly wiggle it and sensuously but firmly squeeze the knob until it did its business.



hopefully none of the above gives the impression that i dislike the car, for that is not the case at all. it's rather smart, it is, and once again i have to say well done, indeed hats off, to my (considerably) better half and, indeed, very much so for Uncle Colin in finding it.

i like it so much, as point of fact, that as you can see i have bought a "book of the road", or if you like a map. i can use this to carefully plot and plan journeys to take in it.

no, i didn't actually spend £6.99 on it, that would be foolish. it was in fact merely £1 in the shop i went to. which is remarkably cheap for what seems to be a fairly accurate map. so cheap, indeed, that i may well buy several copies of it and dispense it as a gift around Christmas or other such gift giving times.

an issue with it, of sorts, is that of course it could soon be a very out of date map. should the people of Scotland decide they no longer wish to be part of Great Britain, it would of course be incorrect for their nation to appear in the map. unless it was listed as "and Scotland", as indeed is the case with Ireland, as you can sort of make out. i suppose if Scotland does vote for independence then i can simply take a crayon, or perhaps even a marker pen, to the map and make it more compliant with the new geography.

back to the review of the car, and a matter of some annoyance came with the most essential, important area of the car - the vibes dispensing unit. as per the original review, it works all right, but alas it does not work quite how the book with it suggests. observe.



that is, ladies and gentlemen, the vibes unit having nothing to do with an mp3 disc. this is frustrating as the book thing with the car gave every indication that it does indeed do mp3. but it does not. oh dear. i guess i shall just have to construct "normal" CDs to play in it then. having a disc full of mp3 files is rather convenient, but no matter, i will give the stereo what it wants, then.

not that there is anything wrong with normal CDs, or the players for them. it's just a bit of a nuisance that it says it does mp3 and then it turns out it does not. hey ho.

how do i look from the side when in the driver's seat of the car? here you go.



actually i don't think that i will drive around much of Great Britain in the car. it strikes me as far easier for Sharpy to drive us wherever in his car. he can do his class trick with the odometer, anyway, so it will be like we never went anywhere.

i imagine we will go and have a bit of a gander at that Ireland place, anyway, assuming that we can find a ferry capable of providing safe passage across the sea.



anyway, i trust that this has in some way or another given you further insights into how the car operates and that. in short, to recap, those of you of a generation with no attention retention skills, that would be pretty well, except for the issues raises.

more on the car as and when i would out how to do them class, stylish handbrake turn things with this exciting new handbrake system. other nonsense shall, no doubt, be posted here as usual soon.



be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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