Repaired
Posted: Fri 28 December, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Travel 2 Comments »Today I’ve had the headlamp unit on the car replaced, following Boxing Day’s collision.
The damage didn’t look that serious – only the sidelight had stopped working completely – but a couple of bits of the lighting surround and backing had broken too, so it ended up needing a complete new headlamp unit. Joy.
All told, £150 for the repair/replacement. It’s an extra expense I could’ve done without, but it’s still heaps better than it would’ve been if I’d collided full-on with the deer.
Bambi
Posted: Thu 27 December, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Driving, Travel 5 Comments »Last night, I had my first real accident in the car – nothing serious, and nothing overly damaged, but still my first real one.
Driving on one of the local(ish) country roads, I came round a corner and there was a deer crossing the road towards me, right at the white line. Absolutely nothing I could do – even though I was “only” going at 30mph, I didn’t even have time for an emergency stop, let alone to swerve or anything. As it was, I clipped it’s head, definitely killed it, but didn’t damage anything else.
In a lot of ways, it was just luck. Five seconds later, I’d have hit it straight on, and done a lot more damage to the car. Five seconds earlier, I would probably not even have seen the deer, or been able to easily avoid the stupid creature.
But instead, I came along at just that time, and killed it. I’m not happy about it, but I know there’s nothing else I could have done.
Not knowing the procedure, I called the police this morning (No, not on the 999 number) to check whether it needed to be reported, but apparently if it’s a deer it doesn’t need reporting. Dogs, cattle and the like yes, but not a deer. (The actual list is “horse, cattle, ass, mule, sheep, pig, goat or dog.” according to the Road Traffic Act). So I don’t need to report it.
All told, “just one of those things”. But still, I wish it hadn’t happened.
Foglights
Posted: Thu 20 December, 2007 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Driving, Thoughts, Travel 11 Comments »Ah, you knew it wouldn’t be long ’til this one happened (again).
This morning I was driving in to work, and the weather was fairly grungy – lots of freezing fog, and not much fun at all. However, it has to be pointed out that this was at 7am this morning, while it was still completely dark. You can see where this is going, can’t you?
Fog-lights are only supposed to be used in thick fog when visibility is abysmal. They’re not meant as “It’s foggy, use your lights” – there’s supposed to be some application of common sense. In this case, because it’s night, I can see cars half a fucking mile away. There’s no need for foglights if you can see that fucking far, you bollock-minded individuals!
Yes, of course, the foglights came on, and stayed on. Even in the clear bits. Hell, most of the twunts will still have them on this evening when I drive home, I’m sure.
The highway code is a bit wishy-washy on this one – again, I assume, because of the necessity hope of using common sense in these situations – but still it makes it pretty clear that foglights should only be used in poor visibility. Of course, common sense is a commodity in short supply at the moment, so maybe it needs to be re-written in light of that.
Personally, I think that car manufacturers are (slightly) to blame on this one as well – you get a warning light on the dashboard when you put the lights on, but there’s no extra warning/reminder to tell you you’ve put the foglights on. (Well, in Ford cars anyway. I can’t be certain if the same applies to all/most other car manufacturers) But then, if a driver hasn’t got the memory-span to remember they’ve turned the foglights on, should they really be allowed to be driving in the first place?
Drink Driving
Posted: Wed 12 December, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, Driving, Festering Season, Thoughts, Travel 1 Comment »While I’m not usually a great proponent of the entire “User-generated content” thing, sometimes it can be interesting and useful. One example is this BBC piece about drink-driving, and this year’s advertising campaign to make people think again about drinking and driving. After the piece, there’s a whole set of stories of personal experiences of drink-driving, and being banned, and it makes for interesting reading.
Personally, I don’t drink at all if I’m driving. It doesn’t bother me, and I don’t see the point of the entire “Oh, I’ll be OK if I just have the one” point of view. I could probably get away with one (or even two) because of my size, but to be honest, why risk it?
Night Driving
Posted: Wed 12 December, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, Driving, Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness 6 Comments »As the nights have drawn in, I’ve found myself repeatedly thinking about driving standards. In particular, with regard to the way people now use their headlights.
When I was younger, and also when I was taking (lots of) driving lessons, I always thought that before you used full (or even dipped) headlights, you first used sidelights only – kind of a “for being seen, not for seeing by” thing. They got used ’til you needed to turn on the headlights/dipped headlights in order to see.
Now though it seems like the majority of people just switch straight to full headlights, without ever really using the sidelights at all. The Highway Code suggests that it should still be done with the sidelights first, then headlights – but it just doesn’t seem to be the done thing any more.
Now when did that start happening Or is it just something I hadn’t noticed until recently?
BBC Good Food Show – Birmingham NEC
Posted: Sat 1 December, 2007 Filed under: Customer Services, Travel Leave a comment »Yesterday we went to the Good Food Show at the NEC, despite me feeling like someone had buried me, resurrected me, added some voodoo, and left me as a shambling revenant version of my normal self.
We’ve been a couple of times before, so we know that the show is a good one, and that didn’t change this time round.
Personally, I still find that the shows are too busy, and/or that the aisles are too narrow – you can’t afford to have massive traffic jams around whole bundles of stalls/stands where they’re either giving loads of stuff away or doing endless demonstrations. It’s not like the NEC hasn’t got the room to handle some extra space between stands either – to me it just shows a complete lack of understanding when it comes to customer flows and so on.
Anyway, that’s a bugbear I have with most trade shows and their ilk, so it’s nothing related to just the Good Food Show.
We did do pretty well this time though – got some supplies from our favourite places (Snowdonia Cheese Company and Lime Tree Pantry, I’m looking at you in particular) along with decent discount packs from a few other places, and generally had a really good time.
The Good Food Show is something that (in my opinion) is always worth going to. It’s not cheap – somewhere around £17 per ticket for the basic entry – but it’s worth going. Well, so long as you’re into food, anyway.