Personal – Page 169 – Fooyah

March 15 2012March 15 2012

France 2

In the year 2010, summer, we went to France again. See the 2008 holiday here.

Friday 30 July – Travel from Kent to Tours. It was very hot.
Saturday 31 July – Travel from Tours to gite near Sainte-Foy-La-Grande. It was very hot and also as the first (ish) day of August it was chaos with all the Parisiens driving down to the south of France.
Now after this I don’t really have a breakdown of the things we did. We went to lots of places. The weather cooled to about 22-23 Celcius for the rest of the holiday. I didn’t have internet access. Son #1 was hot but very well behaved. He didn’t like the pizza we bought at restaurants and so didn’t eat a great deal.

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Places we visited

Bergerac
Duras
Saint Emillion
Marmande

And lots of other stuff. I don’t think I wrote it down somewhere! I ate plenty of cheese and baguette and drank plenty of local wine. I also spent quite a bit of time driving on the PSP playing GT Mobile. I was hoping to increase my garage ready for the release of GT5.

On the last night at the gite, Friday 13th August, son #1 slipped and hit his head on the table in the lounge. He cut a big gash in his eye and so we went to the hospital. WW looked after him as I wasn’t allowed in to the room. He had three stitches and looked very sorry for himself!

We left on Saturday the 14th August and headed back to the same hotel in Tours. I like Tours. It’s a lovely town. On the Sunday we headed back to the UK, it rained.

March 15 2012February 18 2020

80s Rock

I have been buying up CDs of all my records or tapes over the last year or so. Everytime I think I have finished I get a snippet of another song in my head and off I go and search Amazon and EBay. A list of bands that I could consider slightly embarassing to admit liking are below. I haven’t bought Hysteria by Def Leppard yet as I can’t find it cheap enough!

If it gets you emotionally then that’s what you like! The best piece of music will send a shiver down your spine.

Here’s the list of bands in my 80s playlist:

Adrian Smith And Project
Britny Fox
Dio
Dokken
Don Dokken
Extreme
Great White
Lynch Mob
Mr. Big
Poison
Ratt
Salty Dog
Tesla
Whitesnake

For a complete list of music on my iPhone look at this page.

March 15 2012February 18 2020

Bands

Bands in which I have played. Date order.

DBBTPC
Death By British Telecom Phone Card
Me – bass, Andy Smith – vocals, Nick Smith – drums, Kevin Horswill – guitar
Recorded an EP on music cassette. We were rubbish. 1989 or so.

Snakebite
Me – bass, Mark Hodges – guitar, Ian Barber – guitar and vocals, James (can’t remember his last name!) – drums
Recorded an EP on music cassette. We were pretty good. Played the sixth form leavers party, 1990

Tinymind . . .
Me – bass and vocals, Russell Denial – guitar, drums and vocals, Mark Dawes – keyboards and vocals
Recorded an EP on CD. We were pretty good. 1996 ish.

Cashback
Me – bass and vocals, Andy Pomery – guitar and vocals, Ian Pickard – guitar and vocals, Phil Horstrup – vocals, Ian Wesson – drums and vocals
Recorded a live video and some mp3 clips. We were pretty good. A full history of Cashback is here. We played a number of gigs in school. 2003 – 2006

March 7 2012February 18 2020

Motorbikes I Have Owned

Honda CB100, 100cc, single cylinder, 11 bhp, gold coloured, named JEN
I used this bike from about Jan 1995 to May 1995. I learnt to ride on it, passed my test on it and then bought a bigger bike and left it to rot. I still feel bad about that. I did about 1000 miles over 6 months.

Honda NTV, 650cc, V-twin, 53bhp , atlantic blue colour (which was really a grotty green), named LIBBY
This is the bike I dumped JEN for. I bought it from somewhere in Acton and loved it. It wasn’t really fast but it was reliable. I went to the South of France on it and toured around a bit of Europe. I really liked her but had to move on. For information about some crashes look at the bottom of this page. I did about 70000 miles over six years.

Honda CBR1100XX Super BlackBird, 1137cc, in-line 4, 164 bhp, red, named STEPH
I had lusted over the Blackbird since Honda released it in 1997 and I got one in 2004. I went everywhere, Cornwall, Wales, Belgium, France even to Nottingham (twice!). It cost a fortune to run but was worth every penny. I have since traded it in, August 2008, for some laminate flooring. Now all I have left is a brake disc and a broken fairing in the loft. Lots of good memories though. I think I did about 60000 miles on her. More information here.

My bikes have all been named after Nieghbours characters! You’ve got to have some reason for naming them!

February 1 2012

Range Rover Drivers

It has taken a long time but I think it is now the time to relegate BMW drivers from the much coveted top spot of the Charts of Arrogance. They have been surpassed by a more irritating and rude bunch of gits. I speak, of course, of Range Rover drivers.
This collection of people who drive the huge, gas guzzling, aero-dynamically inefficient, four wheel drive vehicles are quickly turning out to be a bunch of BMWankers.

It used to be that BMW drivers failed to realise that their car had indicators or that to drive too close to another car was dangerous. Everyone knew that if there was a car doing dangerous stuff (and it wasn’t a Citroen Saxo driven by a baseball cap wearing, pierced youth) then it was going to be a BMW. Their reputation was awful. If you were being cut up on a motorway, or cut up at a junction or a car just braked infront of you and turned without warning then it was a BMW. It was just their right to do that.

Now, I find (spot the confirmation bias) that it is Range Rover drivers who do all the nasty stuff on the roads and endanger my life. They don’t indicate. They pull infront of you. They drive too close to you. They are the NEW and CROWNED arrogant arses of the tarmac. Whether it is the height that these drivers have to sit or just the money they must have to own one of these behemoths they really don’t seem to care about any other drivers. Roadcraft to them is just doing what you want, selfishly ignoring the safety of the rest of us.

What would the roads be like if everyone drove Range Rovers? Perhaps, because BMWs are rather ubiquitous and affordable it means that they have regressed back to the norm? Or it could be an economic thing. The type of person who thought that BMWs were cool and nice 15 years ago has now morphed into the type of middle aged man who thinks that owning a Range Rover means that they “own” the road and the right to endanger my safety. If they really used these cars for off-road and risked their own safety then good for them. But, they don’t.

I would like to appeal to these drivers’ sense of community and social responsibility in an attempt to make them see the error of their ways but it is clear they have none. So I won’t.