car

hello there

oh, go on then. i should be heading to bed around about now, but i am feeling somewhat frisky after the last blog post, so allow me to unleash one of the planned ones. not, alas, the Warren Beatty related one i promised, but "soon" for that one. instead, all things car.

i took this picture on Monday, i think - although maybe it was on Sunday. it looked pretty impressive and "gee wow" and all that at the time, but now i suppose it is really rather tame in comparison to the snow related picture (and video!) since posted. apologies if it is rather boring, then.

yeah, woo, wow, a bit of ice on the window. as some sort of attempt to fight the ice i invested in these items, partially as it is wise to do so but mostly as my (considerably) better half insisted i do.

fat lot of good that will be against the snow.

ah, it was on Monday that i took the above pictures, looking at the comparative ones coming up.

a slightly bigger issue in my life in respect of the car (a fine set of wheels, cheers again Andrew), as in bigger than ice or snow or any other sort of weather that could be thrown at me, was a tyre that was somewhat flatter than it should be. as in one could not drive on it flat, rather than "not too flat for Jo'burg roads".

it was not so long after i discovered the flat that i remembered that i had not, alas, secured ownership of any sort of jack thingie or that bolt thing that takes the bolts and screws out of where the wheel connects to the car. whoopsie. my Uncle Peter did, however and happily, have one of them foot pump things which he lent me. it put air in, and some of the air stayed in, but after a few hours it was out.

time, then, to call in the professionals. or, in this instance, the professional. behold.

that's my dear cousin Robert, who came to my rescue with a jack and one of them things that takes the bolts and screw or whatever out. i did have every intention of taking on the tyre removal stuff myself, but he had one look at my skill and prowess with mechanical wonders and clocked that life would be better, simpler and faster if he just sorted it out. nice one mate, cheers.

Robert then took me off to a suitable tyre mender - one that had them ace nudie calendars on the wall and all sorts of awesome equipment that i, even at the age of over 40, am not allowed to touch. no puncture had caused the tyre to lose air or to perpetuate the proclivity to lose air, so far as the ace tyre mender bloke could see. he did that test in the water with it, though, and discovered that i had knocked the sealing, sealant stuff loose (which in my brief defence had apparently not been put on all that well) on the tyre by twatting a kerb or a pothole.

so it was easy to fix, then, and reasonably priced too. yes, if you are wondering, yes the tyre has remained very much inflated ever since.

Robert also had a gander and a look at the disconnected stereo in the car, which was most appreciated. we will get to that now, but first, for those of you who have for some inexplicable reason missed them, one of them selfies featuring a car mirror.

the stereo in the car was disconnected when we got it. i have no idea how to connect a car stereo. i tried to do one once with my brother, but that just led to a situation where it was either the stereo or the lights on in the car on a night, and the coppers were none too understanding of the "who needs  lights when you have vibes, man" approach to such things. Nassie and Jayson, routine and regular readers of this blog will recall, installed my last stereo over in the beast.

it took Robert less than a minute to make sense of the wires that just totally baffled me. nice one. the radio element worked very well indeed, except he had Radio One on it, and it was not the Radio One i remember of Simon Bates, Steve Wright In The Afternoon and "Me" Mark Page. time, then, to try the CD player aspect of it out.

i made a special CD for the car. every car i have had has been christened - whether it is tape or CD - with the same song. that would be the magnificent Waltzinblack by the ever mangnificent Stranglers. that was, then, track one on the disc made.

here, for your bizarre amusement, is the video of the CD being put in.

erm, yes. the CD being put in, a suggestion on the display that play is about to happen, and then the disc being returned to me by the player in a rather polite way. oh dear.

why is it that you have a video of this? i have no idea at all. the child of the condiment phoenix asked if it was at all possible for a video of it to be arranged and i said i would see what i could do to arrange it. so there it is. sadly not as spectacular as i, the child of the condiment phoenix, Robert, or anyone else would perhaps have liked, to be honest.

another mirror involving selfie? sure.

i thought that perhaps the CD player was having none of the disc i made because it was a disc i made, as in not a factory pressed thing. some players are sensitive to that sort of thing. CD-R things tend to be lighter than "original" discs, and lighter discs sometimes don't pick up proper on some players.

on the off chance that this was the case, and in the hope that ZTT had made a proper, heavy CD, i decided to try out - even thought it was not The Stranglers - a CD which happily landed on Monday.

yes, that's the deluxe edition of Frankie Said by Frankie Goes To Hollywood. assuming that you accept "deluxe" as being a CD released just under 2 years ago being sold to you again with a DVD added to the mix. no dig there, honest. well, i really love the DVD, especially as it has the full, proper, 'video destructo' version of Two Tribes on it.

i would have bought the DVD on its own, frankly, but the 2nd copy of the CD was handy here, as if for some reason the car stereo twatted it a bit then it was no loss. assuming my existing copy of Frankie Said survives the trial by shark and trial by pirates it presently faces.

what did the car stereo make of Frankie Goes To Hollywood, then?

it seems that the stereo likes Frankie Goes To Hollywood no more and no less than it does The Stranglers. oh dear.

the path ahead of me, then, is to get a new vibes deck, grin and bear whatever the radio throws at me or do not have vibes in the car. two of those are possible, progress will no doubt be reported on here.

meanwhile, somewhat beautified by the presence of Wolverine and that one played by an Australian with a hammer, is a cable that was in the car stereo area that baffled me and Robert said i didn't need, which is probably why it baffled me.

i am pretty sure that it has no relation at all to the CD not working, that cable. the video, for a start, proves that in theory it works, it just likes ejecting the discs rather than playing them. my problem, however, is what to do with this cable. other than have Wolverine and that other one, whose name escapes me, look pretty next to it.

throw it away would be sound advice, but as several members of the packaging and shipping establishment can confirm i really don't do well at throwing stuff out. i have some choices, then.

well, three. i could leave it in a drawer, i suppose, on the basis that "you never know". i could also shove it up for sale on that ebay thing, as someone somewhere would want it. only i don't know what exactly it is, so i would probably have a hard time describing it and listing it properly. a final, better and more likely choice is, of course, to simply send it via the post to Spiros in Tooting or whatever sh!thole down in Laaandhan (innit) he is in and let him work out what to do with it. probably take it with him to the hairdresser or the Turkish baths, i expect.

and going back to Frankie, here's the picture that those people at Facebook did not wish for you to see.

that's some sort of special edition, 30th anniversary 12" (snigger snigger) of Relax. when i tried to post that picture over on facebook it reported an error. when i, however, posted it with them 2 CD sets you can see strategically placed on the cover of the 12" (hee hee), covering the picture, all of a sudden it would let me upload. how nice and how wonderful that, some 30 years later, Frankie still upset the sensibilities of some!

i trust that the child of the condiment phoenix, and everyone else for that matter, has enjoyed the video clips. if you feel my pain on the stereo not doing its thing, bless you, but i shall prevail, i shall get some vibes on the go in the wheels eventually.

more probably a bit later rather than sooner! bear with me!


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