Sardine Parking - the sequel

Yup, poor Bev has been the victim of more sardine parking at work.  Picture an empty car park at 8am on a frosty morning.  Bev parks neatly within her parking bay - she is hundreds of yards from the nearest car.  No sooner does she switch off the engine than another car parks right beside the passenger side of the car - so close, in fact, that Bev doubted the skinny woman could get out of her car!  The stupid woman got two shocks - the first when she found she couldn't open her door and the second when she suddenly spotted Bev staring at her.  The woman squeezed, wriggled and limbo-danced her way out of the car, successfully managing to get out without hitting Bev's car.  Bev let her struggle to get out the door, then started up the engine and moved her car to another empty part of the car park - the stupid woman had the nerve to look surprised!

What is it with these people?  Are they lonely or are they shit drivers?  Having already had a fight with one man who hit her car, Bev is taking no chances - she is going to photograph every idiot who parks beside her and scare / shame them into parking somewhere else or just parking properly!

You have been warned - she is feeling particularly grumpy at the moment, so don't cross her path or park near her car!  She's been muttering about making people gargle concrete, or ripping their arms off and beating them to death with them, and if you are really unlucky, she will give you 'flu as well!  Oh dear, you have been warned!

Sardine Parking - Doh!

Picture the scene - big car park at work, lots of empty spaces, Bev parks beautifully in a space with no other cars around her.  By the time she is ready to get out of the car, she has been surrounded by badly parked cars, and someone has parked so close to her that they cannot get out of their car.  They stare at her, willing her to go into the office so that they can struggle out their door and probably dent the passengert door of Bev's beautiful car.

Bev stares back, the piss-poor parker eventually gives up and drives to a space where they can park!

What is it with these people?  This only happens in the spaces close to the office - the further away from the office you park, the better the parking and the less chance you have of seeing sardine parking!

So, to any potential sardine parkers out there - LEARN TO PARK PROPERLY OR WE WILL SEND TONY ROUND TO KICK YOUR LIGHTS IN!

Our Holiday

We bears have been playing with the new car so much that we had almost forgotten to tell you what we got up during our week's holiday.  So, here are the highlights:

• We all wanted to go to the seaside, so we drove to Clacton, Frinton and Walton on the Naze.  This is serious codger / codgeress country, with lots of grey hair, walking sticks, mobility scooters and those strange dark glasses that older people wear - spooky!  Anyway, we had a lovely walk along the front at Clacton in the sunshine, then joined the old-folk for scrummy fish and chips in a little tea room.
• We went to Norwich to see the Cathedral, and Bev got some lovely photographs (see below)
• We went to Great Yarmouth with plans to walk along the beach, but as the temperature was below zero, we quickly changed our minds - brrrrr!  It was a glorious but bitterly cold day, and we decided it was time to head back when we spotted the gritting lorries heading out to treat the roads.
• We took the car to Oxford but it was bitterly cold.  So, we will be back again when the weather is better so that us boy bears can check out the student talent!  Oh, and Phoebe can check out the talent too!

All in all, we had a great week's holiday - the weather was lovely but bitterly cold, the car was a joy to drive, and we had fun seeing places we had never been to before.  Here are some photographs:

Norfolk Naval Pillar at Great Yarmouth - built to commemorate Lord Nelson.

Norfolk Cathedral - light from stained glass windows on the pillars.

Peugeot 3008 - the good, the bad and the downright ugly!

Well, the new car has finally arrived and it is beautiful!  It is lovely to drive, the Electronic Gearbox Control (clutchless rather than a fully automatic car) is a joy, there is enough space inside the car for all us bears as well as Bev and Paul, and the boot is enormous!

Ok, so the lowdown on the car (from your furry Jeremy Clarkson):
The good:

• beautiful interior, with plenty of space
• huge boot and tailgate
• great EGC
• enough gadgets even for Mrs MacGadget
• the car handles well and is very quiet, even at high speeds
• the Celio glass roof makes sitting in the back of the car a delight - you can see the sky, the trees, the tops of buildings!
• Our dealer, Norton Way Peugeot from Letchworth, who made the whole buying experience easy, professional and friendly, and who sorted out the problem with the USB box (see the Bad and the Ugly below)

The bad:

• Peugeot got the order for the car in November 2009.  This order included a USB box for the iPod and a free Sat Nav.  If they were incompatible, Peugeot didn't say anything at this stage.

And the Ugly:

• 3 days before we were due to collect the car, the dealer phoned to say that the USB box and Sat Nav were indeed incompatible, and nothing could be done about it.  Luckily for us, the dealer kept us both informed and happy, and they are putting a solution in place this week.  In the meantime, have we heard anything directly from Peugeot?  No!  Have we had an apology from Peugeot?  No!  Do we feel valued by Peugeot?  No!  Do we feel valued by our Peugeot dealer?  Definitely!
• Our advice, if you are purchasing a Peugeot, is to get a good, friendly and professional dealer.  We like the Peugeot cars, but are less impressed with the company, and have definitely found that the experience depends on the dealer. 
• And Peugeot, hang your head in shame for ignoring us over this issue.  Without the support and advice of our wonderful dealer, we would probably be driving a different make of car!

Only 3 Weeks to Go!

Yup, only 3 weeks to go before we pick up our new car!  Yipee! 

We'll miss the beautiful road-hugging sports car with leather seats, but in its place will be a big silver Peugeot Crossover with bult-in Sat Nav, a proper USB iPod connection and electronic gear box for Bev's dodgy knee.  Bev and Paul are a bit apprehensive about the lack of a clutch, but fewer pedals makes it easier for us bears to race the car up and down the motorway!

Anyway, roll on the 1st of March - if we bears drool much more, we'll need to get the RNLI bear to rescue us in his lifeboat!

Suzuki Swift - I think not!

Poor Bev was stuck behind an old codger on the way home on Friday afternoon! And what car were they driving? A Suzuki Swift! More like a Suzuki Snail in Bev's opinion. We bears think if you are going to drive a car called a "Swift" you should at least get out of 2nd gear or drive faster than 20 mph!

Oh, and despite the rain and cold, the fire at Totternhoe quarry was still burning merrily on the hillside! With any luck the snow and rain over the weekend will finally put the fire out.

Saturday: the good, the bad and the ugly!

The good:

• The weather was glorious - it was warm (about 23 C) and sunny all day long.
• The racing at Kings Lynn was brilliant, and while Frankie didn't win anything he raced really well. Daniel raced excellently as well and will be a blue top at the next race meeting and a red top by June if he continues to race as he has been racing!

The bad:

• Bev handed over a £10 note to buy a portion of chips and a portion of cheesy chips (yummy!), but only got the change of £5. When Bev queried her change, the woman said to come back when they cashed up and they would check if they had an extra £5, but when they went back at the end of the racing, they were still serving food. However, the woman very kindly took their word and gave them the £5, so our faith in human nature is restored again!
• Poor Ian Stirk in car 65 was hit very hard in the last F1 Stock Car race of the evening. Although conscious, he complained of serious neck pains, which meant they couldn't get him out of his car. After 30 minutes of being attended to by the track paramedics, a real ambulance turned up, followed by 2 fire engines and 2 police cars! As we were leaving, the fire crew were cutting the roof off his car (as happened to Frankie's car after his big accident) so that the doctors could get him out of the car and into the ambulance. The last saloon stock car race was abandoned and will be run along with the rest of their races tomorrow afternoon. Paws crossed Mr Stirk is ok.

And the Ugly:

• On our way home through Cambridgeshire, we were stopped by the police! Initially we thought it was because of our blue lights (remember the service documents that said our front blue lights were illegal), but instead we had a rear light that wasn't working and we were told that you can only have the front "driving lamps" on in the fog! So, Paul was breathalysed and told to switch off the driving lamps. He was also told that we could have been fined £60 for these transgressions but instead we have to get the rear light fixed within 14 days. Interestingly, he said nothing about the blue lights, loud music or us bears and Mr Chimp in the car! Needless to say we were all traumatised by the incident :-(
• Bev and Paul got extremely dirty at the racing, so Paul had to explain to the police why he had such a grubby face. Bev's face was covered in shale, but luckily the police didn't want to talk to her (phew)!

Illegal Lights!

When Bev & Paul got their new car last year, Paul decided that what it needed was a pair of small bright blue lights, just like they have on the lorries. They are very smart indeed. However, when the car came back from its service yesterday, the mechanic had scrawled across the paperwork "Illegal blue lights!".

Oh well, we don't care, unless of course the plods stop us and tell Paul to remove them! We still haven't recovered from the embarrassment of having our photographs taken when Paul raced through a speed camera several years ago, so we won't be happy if we get stopped by the men in blue to be told we have to remove those illegal lights!

Bev's Mechanic

Having spent every weekend recently at a garage, tyre depot or alloy wheel specialists, Paul is beginning to feel like Bev's mechanic. Yesterday he noticed that one of her rear tyres was looking a little flat, so he took the car back to Stapleton's to have the tyre pumped up with nitrogen.

Anyway, Stapleton's put the car up on a ramp, and immediately found the culprit - a large nail stuck in one of the brand new tyres! Luckily for Bev, the tyre had only deflated a little because it was filled with nitrogen (larger molecules than compressed air), and the new tyre is insured, so the trip to the garage didn't cost anything except Paul's time (phew)!

What do we bears have to do to make sure Bev gets to and from work safely and without trashing the car? Do we have to run in front of the car every morning and evening, inspecting the roads for potential holes, nails, bricks or wildlife and brush any rubbish off the road? Err, we are only little bears so could only run at about 3 or 4 mph maximum and not for the whole journey, which means it would take Bev about 7 hours to get to work - mind you, her tyres would be perfect!

Beautiful journey to work

What a beautiful journey to work Bev had yesterday morning - it was very cold (-7C) with a white, crisp frost on the ground and trees, mist lingering in the dips between the rolling hills, and the sun rising into a pinkish, golden sky. It was so pretty and the kind of morning you wish you could stop and take photographs - unfortunately Bev had to get to work, so she could only look and admire but not stop to take photographs.

In cold weather Bev's car will tell her that there is a risk of ice, but it didn't tell her that yesterday morning - well, not until she was half-way to work and the temperature had gone up to -3C! So Bev has discovered that it only tells you there is a risk of ice when the temperature is exactly -3C. Mind you, it is a French car - perhaps they have no experience of temperatures below -3C in sunny France or their brains were befuddled with red wine, yummy cheese and frogs legs when they designed the electrics for our car! Leave the legs on the frogs and concentrate on the electrics, Mr Frenchie!

Drive to work this morning

Thankfully, this morning's drive to work was free of all suicidal or kamikaze wildlife, though Bev spotted lots of wildlife whilst driving through Ashridge Park - there were deer and bunnies grazing in amongst the trees and out on the more open ground. And why could Bev spot them? Because it was light at 7am this morning, despite being a little overcast! Yipee, it is getting much lighter each day, which means that spring is on the way!


And, of course, the commute was all the more enjoyable because Bev could listen to the iPod she thought she had lost. Double yipee!

Oh, and the drive on the nitrogen-filled tyres was a joy! Triple yipee!

Nitrogen

Paul took the car to the garage to get the tyres sorted out after all the problems with potholes, and he came back with new tyres inflated with nitrogen instead of compressed air! His excuse was that it should give us a smoother ride in the car, as well as improving diesel consumption, but we think he was persuaded by the fact that F1 racing cars have their tyres inflated with nitrogen (as do aeroplanes, military vehicles, NASCAR racing cars and the original moon buggy).

We don't care what is in the tyres, we just want a fast, comfortable car for dodging wildlife and impressing bearesses!

Kamikaze bunny

Well, it would appear that our message about leaving Bev and her car alone has not reached all the wildlife along her route to work - she was attacked by a kamikaze bunny on the way home tonight, so had to performed yet another impressive emergency stop to avoid hitting it!

Mr Bunny, clean out your big ears! LEAVE BEV AND HER CAR ALONE OR ELSE! Is that clear enough or do you need Tony the Chimp to come over to your burrow and give you a good kicking?

Oh deer, Part 2

Having survived the two suicidal deer and the pea-souper of a fog, Bev had to stop for a whole herd of deer crossing the road in Ashridge Park this morning. However, they must have heeded our pleas because they gave her plenty of warning - she had time to slow down for them and put her hazard lights on so that no-one ran into the back of her car. Paws crossed there are no more hazards this week, as we don't think her blood pressure can take much more!

Today's Obstacle

Bev asked us bears to put out the word that wildlife should avoid her car, so that she can get to and from work without any more obstacles. Ok, so we have done that, but she faced a new obstacle this morning - dense fog! She gets up at dark o'clock, and when she got out to the car it was icy and foggy. The ice wasn't too much of a problem, even on the country roads, but the fog was a different matter - it got thicker and thicker as she got closer to work, and by the time she was driving through Ashridge Park it was a real pea-souper. If any wildlife had jumped out at her car, she would just have hit them because she wouldn't have seen them - visibility was down to a couple of feet at most. She just followed the white line in the middle of the road, which luckily takes you directly through the forest - if it had veered off down some track, she would just have followed it because she became completely disorientated.

Anyway, she got to work safely and is now tucking into a large bowl of porridge (yummy), but she still has to face the journey home. Paws crossed the fog has disappeared by then.

Oh deer!

Poor Bev is feeling paranoid today. Having survived hillbilly hell in the outskirts of Berkhampstead, she was driving through Ashridge Park this morning when 2 deer leapt out in front of her! She did a very impressive emergency stop and missed them, but she feels that everyone is out to get her and her car. She's only trying to get to work on what is a very pretty journey, but every commute is beginning to feel like an obstacle course as she tries to avoid potholes and now wildlife :-(

Potholes and more potholes!

Here is today's rant from a very grumpy Hamish - Buckinghamshire Council, your roads are sh*t! There, I have said it! You seem to have more potholes than the rest of the world put together, and I want to know why you put white lines and / or cones round the really big potholes - you do realise that this won't fix the problem, don't you? You do realise that the potholes actually need to be filled?

In the last 2 months, Bev has hit two seriously big potholes - actually, we should call them caverns, since they are so big that Bill, Phoebe and I could probably live in these holes! Firstly, Bev hit something big at the bottom of Whipsnaid zoo - it was such a big hit that she thought she had struck a zebra or lion, but instead of getting some roadkill for us bears she had just hit a pothole or cavern. Result? A buckled alloy wheel and slow puncture, which Paul got fixed on Saturday.

Then last night, as Bev was trying to fight her way out of Berkhampsted after an accident had blocked her usual road, she ended up on a narrow lane heading towards Tring. Just as she switched on her full beam, WHAM she hit possibly the biggest pothole she had ever seen! So, picture the scene - creepy dark woods, hazy moon, and a little cottage in the distance no doubt harbouring some crazed knife-wielding psychopath. Oh no, it was hillbilly country, though she couldn't hear any banjo music. Anyway, Bev managed to limp the poor car back to civilisation, and her knight in white shining armour (actually, it was Paul in his white shining van) came to her rescue! Phew! Who knows what could have happened if she had stayed in hillbilly country.

Paul says they should open up an account with the local Alloy Wheel Repair centre, since the alloy wheel will need to be repaired yet again, or perhaps they just need to get a rugged landrover instead of a sleek sports car. And in the meantime, Buckinghamshire Council, shame on you - fix your potholes at once and save poor innocent maidens from being trapped in hillbilly hell!

Petrol and Diesel online

Hey, isn't the internet just wonderful! We've just found a website that sells petrol and diesel online. The petrol and diesel (and other fuels) come from a range of European countries with lower fuel duty, and the website - PetrolDirect at http://www.petroldirect.com/ - states "Just enter the desired quantity of the fuel you need, and we'll package it up and send it to you in the post, first class, delivered straight through your letterbox. No hassle. No worries".

Wow, no more having to go to the petrol pumps or having to pay through the snout for over-taxed diesel. We can get it delivered to our door at prices we bears can afford. Excellent - we'll have 50 litres of diesel, please!

Car Crime!

I am SO mad I could bite someone's ankles! Bev got up this morning only to discover that some b*****d had lobbed a brick through the car window. There was nothing for them to steal as she always removes the navigation device and her precious iPod, but the beautiful soft leather seats are scuffed, the handbrake is scratched and there is glass everywhere. If I catch who did this, they will be sorry! I might be small, but I have very sharp teeth and claws, and I am the right height to gnaw off your crown jewels! You have been warned!

Bev is now at home waiting for the crime scene investigators to come and see the damage. Then she needs to get someone out to replace the window. Poor, poor car. But, as Frankie would say, it's all repairable.

Happy Bev

At last, the garage have replaced the car radio with one that works with the iPod and Bev can now enjoy decent quality sound as well as quality content on her way to and from work - no more crappy radio where you hear 3 good records in an hour and the rest of the time you have to put up with some self-important DJ rambling on about his boring life. Actually, I am sure I could do a better job just playing more good music and rambling less - so, if I don't make my fortune selling brown-sauce flavoured coffee, perhaps I could become a DJ!