Cars, Trains, Bikes ... and a Tank

I was looking through some recent photographs and I noticed that I had taken quite a few pictures of various modes of transport.

I’m not really interested in cars, trains and motorbikes to be honest, but when I see an interesting vehicle, I do feel compelled to take a photo of it.

I thought I would share a few with you, dear reader in the hope that you find them as interesting as I did when I captured them, starting with the car above, which I saw at a classic car show in Manchester.

I spotted the car below in a multistory car park in Bordeaux. I think it's meant to serve as a warning to drivers to be careful when driving around corners.

The truck below was parked outside a James Dean themed restaurant in Prague, in the Czech Republic. It was a great advert for a very enjoyable place.

In Collioure, in the south of France, they also use a car to advertise a restaurant.

Regular readers will know that I love the city of Hong Kong and the double-decker trams in that wonderful city are iconic - and cheap too.

In Europe, we rarely see bikes as beautiful as the one below. We have to go across the pond to Boston to catch a glimpse.

Below is another couple of classic cars I spotted at a show in Manchester.

Back across the Atlantic Ocean in Alaska, there is a very enjoyable way to tour Skagway.

In Canada, in the past, a rather special vehicle was required to take tourists onto a glacier. 

These days, the Canadians have replaced it with a monster bus whose wheels are almost as tall as I am.

In a warmer climate, its obvious that there are people in Monte Carlo have a little more disposable income than the rest of us.

And a few kilometres away, in the French city of Cannes, the story is the same. Here is a random car I discovered parked outside the shops.

Before the wall came down in Berlin, East Germans drove around in tiny little cars called Trabants. These days, they also use them to advertise shops.

In Japan, you can travel the length and breadth of the country in super fast Shinkansen bullet trains. They roar through train stations at such high velocities that if you are standing on a platform it is actually almost a scary experience. The picture below was my fourth attempt at capturing this magnificent train. 

Japan is the only place in the world where you will find a neon tank. It is probably the most wonderful place I have ever visited and probably the strangest too. Only in Japan would you experience the Robot Restaurant and find yourself face to face with the tank below while eating your meal and witnessing what I can only describe as the weirdest but most entertaining show I have ever seen.

I will tell you more about the Robot Restaurant in a future post.

The tank was one of the more sensible parts of the show. 

I'll bet you can't wait to hear about it.

The Hypocrite

I have a confession to make and it’s something that regular readers know already.

I am a hypocrite.

There, I’ve said it.

I’m not a total hypocrite and it isn’t a natural part of my personality. It’s just that, sometimes, I find myself behaving in a way that I criticise others for.

I have a few examples.

Probably the best example is the transformation that occurs when I get behind the wheel of a car. When I am not in the car, I am a reasonable and happy person who is friendly and approachable. I am the personification of patience and empathy.

Yet when I turn on the ignition in my car and start to drive down the street it’s almost as if somebody has given my brain an enema, flushing out all of the goodness. I sometimes mutate into a totally unreasonable and impatient arse. I am aware of this and try to stop myself but I simply can’t help it. It gets worse when I am in a hurry and when the roads are busy. The worst time is when I am driving to and from work simply because I am desperate to get the office to get started so that I can leave early, and then I am equally desperate to escape and get home at the end of the day and, to add to the trauma, I am stressed and keen to wind down with the cats and Mrs PM in my safe haven. To make matters much worse, I drive to and from work during the rush hour along with thousands of equally frazzled commuters.

When I pull up at a junction I expect other drivers to let me out as soon as possible, snarling at those who don’t. Yet when I am in a position to let somebody else out, I actually find myself talking to an empty car: “There is NO way you are getting out, sunshine!” I snarl.

See? A total hypocrite. It would be easy and generous to let a person out; I would probably only add another minute or two onto my journey.

I also look down upon boy racers, the type of person who likes to put his foot down and enjoy the speed of the car. Yet on an empty motorway (a rare thing in Britain) if I get the chance, I will put the peddle to the metal and enjoy the acceleration with my hypocritical horns growing out of my hypocritical skull.

I am equally intolerant of cyclists who pull out in front of me to avoid drains and potholes, slowing me down by another microsecond. Yet if I am on a bike myself, I find myself snarling at drivers who glare at me for doing exactly the same thing.

My dad used to say “Don’t so as I do; do as I say”.

I have lectured my sons on the dangers of excessive alcohol, knowing full well that when I was a student, I over-indulged on more than a couple of occasions.

My dad was the same; “Don’t ever let me catch you smoking,” he once said to me with a cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth. When I questioned this, he used the phrase above as if that somehow made it okay.

Other examples are my proclamation on this blog and to work colleagues in particular that I love to travel. Yet when asked to go abroad for work, I rant about how I am sick of going to site. You may forgive me for that though, because when I say that I love travel, I really mean that I love travelling for leisure and pleasure rather than going abroad to a place I don’t really want to go to, where I am expected to work long days with no time to actually go out and see the place.

I also rant about people who seem obsessed with their smartphones, choosing to fiddle with their devices instead of having a conversation with me. Yet I have been known to do exactly the same when my phone buzzes in my pocket. “Oh, it’s an email from Wally,” I will say grinning to my conversation partner who, in my opinion, would be justified in saying “You bloody hypocrite. Put that bloody thing away.”

I moan about the Royal Family hogging the news and the limelight but I am the first to pop to a street party when two of them decide to get married.

I claim to hate Mrs PM’s music yet I sometimes play the odd song that she likes because deep down I like it too.

To be honest, I think that everybody has a hypocrite inside them fighting to get out an embarrass them. I quite often get caught out but when I do, I am fairly honest about it and admit the truth, just as I have done here.

It doesn’t make me feel any better; it’s just a fact of life.

Are you a hypocrite, dear reader?

Have you any examples of your rampant hypocrisy?

Are you as bad as I am?

Grumpy Old Man On Board

On my way home from work, I pulled up behind a car at a red traffic light and started to rant to myself, thus shattering yet another successful stint of being a mild-mannered Plastic Mancunian instead of the raging grumpy old git that I have become in my old age.

So why was I ranting?

Had the driver in the car in front driven like a maniac? No!

Had the driver of the car in front violated a traffic law? No!

Had the driver in front been an inconsiderate arse and pressed the road rage button in my brain? No!

Had the driver done something stupid? Well – depending on your viewpoint – yes!

I squinted at the rear windscreen and saw a sticker. The sticker was a small yellow diamond with tiny writing on it and a picture of a baby’s dummy (or pacifier if you live across the pond).

This was the sticker:

I’m sorry but this sticker has annoyed me ever since I started driving. 

Why? 

It seems innocuous enough, doesn’t it? Why should it make me pull out my soapbox and make me rant to myself mercilessly? 

Because it is totally and utterly pointless and assumes that random drivers are psychopaths. The problem  is that, while there may be psychopaths on the road, a stupid and pointless sticker is hardly likely to make him stop and think “I won’t smash into the back of THAT car! I'll choose ANOTHER one without a baby on board.”

First of all, the sticker itself has writing on it that is so small that you have to drive almost up the backside of the car before you can read it. 

Furthermore, if I really did have a crazy urge to smash into the back of the car in front, do you really think that when I was a yard away from it and looking forward to destroying both of our cars in a thoughtless act of road violence, seriously injuring or maybe killing both occupants (including myself) and, that a tiny sticker would make me think twice because there was an infant in the car?

There is only one sticker that makes me rant more – and it is this one:

I may be determined to destroy your car and my car even with a child of unknown gender but will definitely back off if it is a little girl.

It’s ridiculous! I just don’t get the reason for making the stickers so small. If anything they are more likely to make a driver think “What does that say” and drive closer than he would normally. I have driven my car with two young children in it and if anybody had dared to buy me a Baby on Board sticker I would have hurled it into the nearest bin.

That pointless sticker wasn’t the only one that irritated me. As I drove on, I turned away from the Baby on Board car, which was a good thing, but then I found myself behind another car with an equally ridiculous sticker in his back windscreen.

I was on a roll now. I ranted to driver in front, even though I knew that he couldn’t hear me.

“What do you mean Jesus I Trust In You? Are you expecting Jesus to drive up behind you and say “Thanks”? Are you just being smug and think that you are better than me because I am not religious enough to boast about my bond with the Son of God? Do you think anybody cares?”

Personally, I don’t have any car stickers because I simply don’t see the point of them. Some of them are vaguely funny but once you’ve got the joke why bother?

Here are a few examples of what I mean:

Yes, they bring a smile – once! See what I mean? They too are pointless –utterly pointless.

I’d rather have a nodding dog – and I hate those too. At least some of them are cute. Thankfully, they are few and far between these days:

And do you remember furry dice? What was the point of those? Do people actually buy them now? It seems they do:

I think a lot of people go overboard when it comes to pointless car accessories. I mean who in their right mind would buy headlight lashes?

Thankfully I have both taste and common sense. I don’t have a nodding dog and no stupid stickers will ever find their way in or on my car. 

The only thing I need is a music machine of some kind so that I can allow myself to drift into song instead of ranting at Baby On Board stickers.

To any readers who think they serve a purpose – they do not. The chances of them preventing a psychopath from ramming your car are miniscule. 

And they annoy people like me!

Mind you, if you like seeing grumpy old gits like me rant to themselves in a car, maybe you can get a perverse kind of pleasure from it.

I think I like my own sticker at the head of this post, actually. Maybe I will print it off and glue it to the back of my rear windscreen. It will certainly be accurate.

What do you think?

Roadwork Rage

First of all, I have to apologise to you, dear reader, before I begin this post.

I promised myself that I would try to put my soapbox away in 2013 and seriously cut down on the amount of time that I spend ranting.

Fate has decided, however, that this dream is just that – a pointless and futile dream.

Yesterday, my normal journey home, which usually takes between 15 and 20 minutes, became a nightmare of frustration and rage. To aggravate the situation further, it was my turn to waste an hour of my life in a supermarket doing the weekly shop, something I look forward to as much as a kick in the happy sack.

You can imagine, I guess, how I felt when instead of a 15 minute journey from work to the local supermarket, I had to suffer a 75 minute journey instead.

Why?

Because of a single bad decision – and the target of my wrath in this post:

BLOODY ROADWORKS!!

Where do I begin?

I calculate that I have wasted months of my life stuck in traffic jams due to roadworks. There is nothing more exasperating than sitting in a line of motionless traffic with absolutely no escape, because roads are being dug up, resurfaced or diverted.

At the moment is South Manchester the Metrolink system is being extended. This is a good thing in many ways particularly as one of the extensions is to Didsbury, where I live. That particular extension is having virtually no effect on the roads near in the Didsbury area because the trams will run on a former rail line, meaning that all of the track laying and station construction has been done on a path that already exists and therefore does not in any way impinge on the road network.

The East Didsbury line opens later this year and will provide residents of Didsbury with a fast way to get into Manchester city centre. I am actually looking forward to it opening.

The problem I have is the extension to Manchester Airport.

Unfortunately, this particular route cannot use any former train lines and therefore has to traverse existing roads.

The worst part of it is that one or the affected roads is right next to where I work and the entire road network in that area is in a constant state of upheaval and turmoil, leading to an absolute nightmare for any commuters, like myself, who have to negotiate the resulting roadworks to get to work.

If that wasn’t bad enough, this extension isn’t scheduled for completion until 2016.

2016! !!!!!!

That means at least three more years of mayhem.

You might argue that this extension is a good thing and that ultimately I may be able to ditch my car and use Metrolink to get to work. While that may be true – the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, if you like – in order to take advantage of this new and exciting innovation in public transport, I have to suffer three years of constant roadworks every single working day of my life until 2016.

Last night, I left work early and hit a wall of traffic. As I thumped the steering wheel in frustration, I was suddenly faced with a choice.

Should I take a deep breath, turn my music up loud and ride it out hoping for a minor delay of, say, 10 minutes?

Or should I take the next left, go the long way round and arrive at the supermarket congratulating myself that I had, in my own minor way, kicked the system up the arse?

I opted to turn left.

Approximately 30 minutes later I was sitting in another traffic jam due to one of the main roads having been half closed thanks to Metrolink roadworks. Since that route was not normally on my itinerary, I had no idea that temporary traffic lights were in place, that were badly timed (i.e. we had 10 minutes of red light followed by a second of green)  thus causing long tailbacks.

I found myself heading in completely the wrong direction on a road that had temporarily and unwittingly converted into a car park with what seemed like a thousand cars queuing at a traffic light that only allowed one car through every 10 minutes.

I wanted to cry. I wanted to get out of the car, march up to the guy in the car in front and scream at him for having the audacity of choosing to be on the road at that time in front of me for no reason other than to wind me up.

I turned up the volume on my music so loud that my windscreen shook in fear.

I was listening to Metallica at such a high volume that local people thought the road was being dug up underneath my car.

An hour later I had managed to cover a full circle and arrived fairly close to where I worked. I had wasted a complete hour, an hour I could have spent buying potatoes and cat food.

Driving has a way of bringing out the worst in me. Normally it is not a pleasant experience. I am not one of these boy racers who liked to drive for the sheer fun of being behind a wheel. The only time I have ever truly enjoyed driving is when I have been abroad. Driving from Brisbane to Sydney was a highly pleasurable experience because I was on holiday and in a foreign country. Equally driving around the US in the middle of nowhere listening to rock music is a marvellous experience.

Driving in the UK is as close to driving in Hell as it is possible to get, particularly when the resident demonic entity decides to torture my mind by inflicting pointless roadworks to infuriate me.

Our island is overcrowded and congestion is bad enough even without roadworks to make journeys a hundred thousand times worse. Motorways are a particular target.

The journey from Manchester to Birmingham and the south of England via the M6 motorway is a particularly horrific journey. And when there are roadworks, you may as well just pull over onto the hard shoulder and walk.

I’m sure it would be quicker to walk 70 miles than crawl along at the speed of a lame tortoise in your car.

Sometimes, there are warnings of roadworks ahead and one lane is segregated for about twenty miles by a line of cones with absolutely no workmen in sight, no sign of roads being resurfaced, no holes in the road visible and irritating signs saying:

 Sorry for the Delay to Your Journey

How annoying is that?

When I see such a sign, I want to get out of the car (this is easy because the average speed through roadworks is about 30 inches per hour) and smash these signs into a cube of metal and hurl it in the direction of the Transport Secretary.

Why do they close lanes for weeks before they actually start the roadworks? Are all of the workmen skiving or on holiday? Or – as Ben Elton once said – do they have fun driving up and down the closed off lane, moving cones from end to the other?

I apologise for subjecting you to this rant, dear reader, but if you are British you will know what I mean and hopefully be a kindred spirit.

Even better, if you are a South Mancunian reader and have to do daily battle with the Metrolink roadworks you will applaud and say “Yes YES YES!!!!!”

Roadwork rage is a way to make work rage seem insignificant because each day I get to work having endured a journey of frustration, I can then face a hellish day at work before embarking on a repeat journey home.

Thankfully – next week is a four day week. On Friday, Mrs PM and I are going to be English tourists by visiting two places we have never seen before – Bath and Stonhenge.

Hang on – we have to drive down the M6 to get to Bath.

AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!

The Great Car Park In The Sky

I bought a car in December 1999. It was a three year old bright shiny blue Ford Escort.

I loved it.

And now, after 13 years, it’s gone to that great car park in the sky.

And I’m sad.

People who know me might think I’m a hypocrite because I have been known to mercilessly mock those boy racers who seem to be in love with their cars. It is almost as if their car has been an extension of their manhood (and I’m not trying to be rude here – well maybe I am; the phrase Big Car; Small Penis leaps to mind).

“Look at me! My car can accelerate from 0 to 60 in 3 nanoseconds. It roars past every other car on the motorway because, it is a machine for a MAN!”

Or as I like to think “a machine for a MEATHEAD!”

To me a car has always been something to make my life easier. If it gets me from A to B in a reasonable time, that’s good enough for me. It doesn’t have to have a body that gives meatheads orgasms, it does not have to have a gargantuan engine that eats bears for breakfast; it doesn’t have to be faster that the Starship Enterprise racing at Warp 10 to save a planet from the Domesday Machine.

All it needs to do is work. All it needs to do is get me to where I need to go, carrying everything I need when I get there.

My trusty blue Ford Escort did that.

It did that for 13 years.

It wasn’t fast but it had a reasonably sized boot, a modestly sized engine and radio that allowed me to sing along with rock songs at an embarrassingly high volume as I drove.

Only once did it let me down in all that time. I was on the way to Yorkshire and it broke down on the motorway. A hasty call to a breakdown company soon rectified the situation and a quick repair later and it was as good as new.

My trusty old Ford Escort took me, Mrs PM and the two lads to Eurodisney in Paris, all the way from Manchester, via London, Dover and some beautiful villages in northern France, even driving on the wrong side of the road, as these mainland Europeans tend to do.

My faithful car negotiated hellish conditions in the centre of Paris, sparring with French cars driven by angry lunatics whose sole mission was to destroy every other vehicle on the road.

Recently we had two horrific winters with huge quantities of snow and temperatures that plummeted to 10 to 15 degrees below freezing; yet my car started first time every day and somehow got me to work and back despite the conditions causing chaos for other road vehicles.

My car was my ally, my trusty sidekick – my friend.

And then came the day, three years ago when the mechanic uttered a sentence that sent shivers of dread down my spine.

“This car is nearing the end of its life.”

The annual MOT was due and it failed because of deteriorating bodywork. All of the rain and misery of British weather had taken its toll.

Happily, the mechanic told me that he could repair the damage with his faithful welding kit.

“The engine is fine – but I would consider getting rid of it.”

Mrs PM and I talked about the situation and decided to keep the car.

The following year, the problem was the same.

“The engine is fine but it needs more welding – and we’re running out of bits to weld to. It will be fine though. But I seriously recommend you get rid of it.”

I remember staring at it out of the window with its new body repair in place as the rain cascaded down its outer shell. My Escort seemed happy, content to sit in the rain waiting to serve me.

I decided to leave it for another year.

Last year, the mechanic said nothing and against all odds, the car passed its MOT with only a few minor issues due to natural wear and tear. I was delighted.

Last week, however, I was told the bad news.

“I can get it through its MOT but it will cost you a lot of money. The body work on the other side of the car is in a bad way. I just don’t think it’s worth it. The engine is fine though.”

The state of the engine was little consolation. I imagined driving around in a rust bucket with bits of the bodywork dropping off in the wind until I was left sitting there open to all the elements with a fine engine but nothing else.

I had to make a decision. And sadly I made it.

My faithful, dependable and loyal car is no more. I told my work colleagues. Some of them mocked me:

“Finally you’re getting rid of that bloody shed on wheels.”

Others were shocked. One guy said:

“Dave – I almost fell off my chair when I heard about your car.”

One guy was totally sympathetic:

“I know how you feel. It’s really hard getting rid of them.”

The boy racer gene took over in most cases as people urged me to splash out on a monster girl magnet with an engine that could get me to Mars and back.

Last Saturday I bought my new car. I picked it up yesterday. It is a three year old silver Vauxhall Astra.

And it is beautiful.

And it drives like a dream. Like the Ford Escort, it is reliable, trustworthy and so far has managed to get me where I want to go, with all of the things I need when I get there.

As I drove back from work this afternoon, I took an alternative route via the motorway and allowed the boy racer gene to kick in for a brief moment. I put my foot down and my new car responded, accelerating in time to a progressive rock track on my flashy new radio. I looked in the mirror and saw a man, smiling as he sang along to a song about a car; Red Barchetta by my favourite band Rush:

Wind in my hair

Shifting and drifting

Mechanical music

Adrenaline surge...

Well-weathered leather

Hot metal and oil

The scented country air

Sunlight on chrome

The blur of the landscape

Every nerve aware

That man was me.

And I realised that I had found a new friend.

And in honour of my Ford Escort, here is Red Barchetta. OK - I know the car wasn't red and it wasn't a Barchetta and I didn't race it along the highways of Canada.

Nevertheless I shall always remember my trusted companion of 13 years when I hear this song.

I will miss you.

I'm In Love With My Car

Why do many men fall in love with their cars?

And if you don’t think that they do, think again. A large number of men are obsessed with their cars and treat them better than they treat their women.

I hasten to add that I am not in this category. I drive, what my mates describe, as a shed on wheels. It is a thirteen year old banger, although the manufacturers prefer to call it a “Ford Escort”. Boy racers and car-obsessed guys pour scorn on my old car, and openly mock me for continuing to use what they also describe as a “heap”.

I’ve owned my car now for about nine years. One of the reasons that I have kept it, instead of succumbing to pressure from car-loving mates to replace it, is that my car is totally and utterly reliable. In the time I have owned it, my car has only let me down once; I broke down on the M62 crawling up a hill in a traffic jam and the car overheated because a fan had failed. The breakdown guy who rescued me managed to get it going within two minutes and I managed to get home without further problems.

Sure, it’s got a few dents, a couple of rusty spots and it has definitely seen better days, but it still goes. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that the point of having a car? Aren’t cars simply meant to be devices that simply take us from A to B?

One thing’s for sure; I am definitely not in love with it. I would be a little miffed if something happened to it, but not for any reason other than the inconvenience it would cause.

There are men I know who have spent hundreds of pounds on their cars; their obsession is laughable. All of their spare time is spent polishing the thing and when you are a passenger in it, you have to watch where you put your feet.

These guys drive around for fun; I HATE driving – the only reason I do it is because it gets me to my destination quicker. I have absolutely no desire to drive around for the hell of it. We’re talking about guys who would marry their cars if it were legal to do so.

One mate of mine was so in love with his car that he barely drove the thing; it sat in his garage and he polished it religiously and rarely went out in it. His wife had an old banger and he used that instead Then came the fateful day when his wife announced that she was pregnant. He was faced with a stark choice. Well, to his wife it was a no-brainer but to him it was a huge problem. Could he afford to keep a high performance beauty of a car that he rarely drove AND have the ability to support his wife and forthcoming child? In the end, common sense prevailed and he sold it. There were tears in his eyes as he handed over the keys. He also handed over a handwritten book about how to look after the car, covering details of which polish to use, how often to service it, etc. and what to call it when he drove it.

And his final word was “If you crash it, I’ll bloody kill you.”

He didn’t say that really but I know that he was thinking it.

You only have to watch TV shows like Top Gear to get a feel for man’s obsession with his four-wheeled friends. The three presenters spend the entire show drooling over the latest high performance motors, blinding us with statistics about how fast the things go:

0 to 60 in 2 seconds – now THERE’S a car

I love the show because it is hilarious but the obsession with cars is there for even the most stupid among us to see.

I must admit that some of the cars featured on the show are quite exquisite to look at but how the hell could the vast majority of people in Britain (or indeed anywhere) afford such a beast? Most of the cars featured on the show cost more than my house. If I were to drive a top of the range Ferrari around Manchester, I would be travelling at 5 mph for fear of damaging it. And woe betide the person who crashed into me.

Why do people spend so much on cars? I don’t understand it. My old banger costs quite a lot to keep it on the road and, although the repair, service and MOT bills are modest, they are still expensive. To service a top of the range car (even a modest saloon) it would cost a fortune. To me that would be a disaster – it would be like throwing my wallet over the cliff – utterly pointless and very expensive.

And have you ever been to a motor show?

A car-loving mate once persuaded me to go down to Birmingham to see a show covering mainly motor sport. He and just about every other male there were drooling over the sports cars, formula one cars, rally cars etc. – I was drooling over the busty models who were sitting on the bonnets of these cars (and I think I was in a minority). Honestly, the place was awash with dribble from car-obsessed men. There were stalls with wheels, bits of engines and all sorts of other anatomical bits and pieces for high performance cars and I have never seen so many men in lust with them. It was absurd and ridiculous. I was bored out of my brain after an hour or so.

My mate spotted a Finnish rally driver and bought a video covering a two year old rally season just so that he could get the guys autograph; I’d never heard of the man, even though I exchanged a few words with him. I can’t even remember his name and I wouldn’t know him again even if I tripped over his outstretched boot.

If only I had been single, good-looking and charming, I could have tried to pull one of the busty models – but sadly that was also a non-starter.

All the way back, my mate enthused over the show and I nodded but lost interest. I haven’t been back to another show.

There is a song by Queen called “I’m In Love With My Car” and I reckon that it could have been written by any one of my mates who are obsessed with their cars. The lyrics are very funny to somebody like me, who regards them as functional devices – here are a few excerpts:

When I’m holdin your wheel
All I hear is your gear
When my hands on your grease gun
Oh its like a disease son

I'm in love with my car
Gotta feel for my automobile
Get a grip on my boy racer rollbar
Such a thrill when your radials squeal

Told my girl I’ll have to forget her
Rather buy me a new carburettor

Here’s the song in full:



I personally think that Roger Taylor’s lyrics probably don’t go far enough for men who love their cars; perhaps they would if the song were called “I’m OBSESSED with my car”, with new lyrics:

When I’m rubbing your wheel
All I feel is your gear
When I’m stroking your bodywork
Oh your touch drives me beserk

I’m obsessed with my car
Want to marry my automobile

Anyway, my old banger does me proud but it will be a sad day when it finally dies and goes to that great garage in the sky.

Why?

Because I’ll have to bloody well fork out for a new one, that’s why.

It's All Over The Front Page - You Give Me Road Rage!!

I want to attach a huge gun to my car. I’m not talking about the kind of gun that fires bullets. Instead this gun (or as I prefer to think of it “paint bazooka”) will fire huge globules of paint, mainly at cars whose drivers piss me off – that would be most cars then. I want this gun to sit on top if my car and to automatically rotate on my voice command and eject a massive blob of paint in a direction of my choosing and onto any adjacent car that causes me to descend into road rage.

I am normally a very placid and laid back guy, a man who tries to smile in the face of adversity. I am relaxed and, apart from the odd rant, I am a happy chap.

However, put me behind the wheel of a car, ask me to reach my destination quickly, throw in a little traffic congestion (just for a laugh) and then fill the roads with moronic drivers and pedestrians and you will see me mutate into a monster, a little like the Incredible Hulk but without the muscle and green transmogrification.

Why does this change occur? I don’t know. I’ve asked myself this question repeatedly. I am a very patient fellow and can normally cope with most situations. Yet put me into the middle of a traffic jam with inconsiderate arses on either side and I want to crush, kill and destroy.

A deep primeval rage surges from within and I become a ranting monster; I turn into “Road Rage Man”, the Mr Hyde to my normal Dr Jekyll.

So what annoys me about driving? Well under normal circumstances – nothing! It is the stupidity and selfishness of others that annoys me. Driving on at the weekend is sometimes a pleasurable experience and I sing and smile as I pootle along the roads without a care in the world. It’s when those thick drivers encroach on my happy driving experience that I lose my temper.

Here is a list of things that truly make me mad:

(1) Tail-gating: Joking aside, tailgating is one of the most dangerous bad habits that any driver can have. I sometimes wonder whether certain drivers take their brains out as soon as they enter a motorway slip road. When the motorway is busy, what usually happens is lane one is full of lorries and lane two is full of cars overtaking those lorries. If I drift into the fast lane to overtake those cars, I usually find myself behind a steady stream of other cars all travelling at the same speed. So when Mr Tailgater looms up behind me, there is usually absolutely nowhere to go. The lane inside is busy and full of traffic with little or no space to move into and in front there is another car, a safe distance away, who is the same distance behind the car in front of him. So when Mr Tailgater approaches my car, driving less than a foot behind me at 70mph, flashing his lights to try to force me over, I tend to lose my rag. Mr Tailgater typically drives a top of the range BMW and is a high powered businessman – you know the kind; the kind of man who screws up a company then escapes with a golden handshake. Well if you are reading this and you tailgate I have one thing to say to you: STOP IT!!!!!!

(2) Hogging the middle lane: Mr Hogger probably considers himself to be a safe driver. In the UK it is illegal to undertake, particularly on a motorway. So why does Mr Hogger continue on his merry way, driving at 60mph in the middle lane when there is absolutely no traffic in the slow lane? Now I’m sure Mr Hogger would argue that he his perfectly within his rights to do so and he may even say that he is travelling in the middle lane to save him from pulling out again when he encounters the car on the inside lane that is about a mile in front of him and in most cases travelling faster than him. I say to you, Mr Hogger, that you are driving dangerously. Why? Well, there are people like me who probably aren’t as sensible as I am who will lose their tempers with you. And to teach you a lesson, they will undertake and gesticulate at you, or they will shoot out behind you, crossing two lanes, and then cut you up as they return to the slow lane. But you probably won’t even notice will you? So if you are reading this and you hog the middle lane: PULL OVER!!!!!

(3) Sunday Afternoon Driving: Mr SAD is usually an old person who owns a car that can break the land speed record but drives it like it is a milk float. He is usually a pensioner and wears a hat in the car. WHY DO YOU WEAR A HAT???? Furthermore, Mr SAD will drive in a 30mph zone at 20mph ALL THE TIME. Why? When you are driving in a conurbation there is only one lane so people have to pull out facing the oncoming traffic to overtake you. If it is busy people can’t do this so you hold up traffic. And again, those with less patience than me will pull out and risk a collision with oncoming traffic – I’ve seen it happen – I’ve been the oncoming traffic. So if you are reading this: DRIVE FASTER AND TAKE OFF THE BLOODY HAT!!!!!!

(4) Dithering: Picture the scene. You want to turn right onto a main road (for Europeans and Americans this will be left). The traffic on the main road is fairly busy but there are gaps. At the front of the queue to turn right is Mr Ditherer. This careful driver takes an absolute eternity to pull out. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been stuck behind Mr Ditherer. I’ve wasted probably a year of my life screaming in frustration as I’ve watched him dither for what seems like an eternity. Even when cars have slowed down on the main road and flashed to allow him to pull out, he has dithered and dithered – and I have wasted another five minutes of my life. Three cars could have drifted out and he sits there dithering. So if you are reading this Mr Ditherer: TAKE YOUR TEST AGAIN!!! YOU CAN FAIL FOR DITHERING!!!!

(5) Bad Parking: Have you ever parked at a supermarket and returned to your car to find that somebody has parked right next to the driver’s side leaving about a millimetre for you to open the door and get in? Do these people have no sense of distance? Mr BP is either totally inconsiderate or just hopeless at parking. I have to go round to the passenger side and climb in usually injuring myself on the gear stick as I clamber into the driving seat. One time, I returned to my car to discover that Mr BP and his brother had parked either side of me. I am not making this up. I could not open either door and had to open the hatchback door and climb in through the back. Mr BP is also incapable of parking his car in an empty car park, usually straddling two places. This is fine until the car park fills up and you are driving around looking for that elusive last spot. So if you are reading this and you are a bad parker: PRACTICE AND HAVE SOME CONSIDERATION!!!! THE CAR PARK IS USED BY OTHER DRIVERS!!!!

(6) Extreme Road Rage: OK I may sound like a hypocrite here but I suffer from passive road rage – i.e. I rant and rave in the car and my screams of frustration are usually drowned out by Metallica or Judas Priest. However, there are certain people who take it a little too far and either bang on their horns or actually get out of their car and use threatening behaviour. I have encountered such a person who quite literally exploded because I didn’t pull off the second the light turned green. He drove right up behind me, shaking his fist, beeping his horn and flashing his lights. So if you are that person and are reading this: CALM DOWN!!!!! YOU WOULD HAVE SAVED ALL OF TWO SECONDS IF I HAD MOVED THE MICROSECOND THE LIGHT TURNED GREEN!!!!

(7) Failing to Indicate: The purpose of indicators is to tell other drivers where you intend to go. If you want to right you indicate right and if you want to go left – guess what? Yes that’s correct – you indicate left! You do not indicate left to go right or vice versa. One mistake that Mr Directionless makes is that he assumes other drivers are psychic! We are not. If you do not indicate, we do not know where you intend to go. The number of people who fail to indicate and then move without looking astounds me. Do they have a death wish? Mr Directionless, I implore you: USE YOUR BLOODY INDICATORS!!! I CANNOT READ YOUR MIND!!!! AND LEARN WHICH DIRECTION IS LEFT AND WHICH DIRECTION IS RIGHT!!!!!

(8) Dazzling: There is nothing more irritating than driving on a dark country road at night time and then having Mr Dazzler loom up behind you with his lights on full beam. Worse than Mr Dazzler is his friend Mr Lorrydazzler. Lorries have higher headlights so they illuminate the inside of my car entirely and blind me completely, as well as giving me a terrible headache. Mr Dazzler: TURN OFF YOUR BEAMS!!!!!

(9) Overtaking Lorries: On the motorway, lorries tend to travel slower than other vehicles. Sometimes they overtake each other, but when they do, they do so extremely slowly. A huge articulated lorry struggling up a hill on the motorway will be travelling at less than 50mph in the slow lane. So if another articulated lorry decides to overtake him travelling at 51mph, it will take an absolute eternity, cause congestion and give Mr Tailgater the chance to intimidate people like me. To the drivers of lorries: PLEASE DON’T OVERTAKE ON BUSY MOTORWAYS BUT IF YOU MUST, WAIT UNTIL THERE IS NO HILL!!!!!

(10) Stupid Pedestrians: I am particularly annoyed by youngsters who walk out in the middle of the road very slowly as I sit there waiting for them. I’m talking about teenage kids with attitude problems who glare at me as I glare at them. They assume that I won’t move and run them over. Believe me lads, the temptation is almost unbearable. And those pedestrians who are in the middle of the road as you turn left or right. They are usually crossing the road but appear like startled rabbits as you approach them, wandering whether they should move or go back. They end up standing there like idiots, waiting for me to run them over. JUST MOVE!!!

(11) Cyclists: I have cycled on a road and am aware that traffic can be very dangerous for cyclists. I try to be careful so that I don’t end up smeared over the bonnet of a car. However, there are cyclists who think they are invincible and weave in and out of slow moving traffic. Worse, there are cyclists who ride in the middle of the road oblivious to the queue of angry drivers behind them. Even worse are those idiots who cycle at night wearing no reflective gear and without lights. There are numerous occasions when I’ve only noticed these pillocks at the last minute and had to slam on my brakes to avoid crashing into them. Other cyclists pull out to get round parked cars without checking how many faster moving vehicles there are behind them. A message for cyclists: IF A CAR HITS YOU BECAUSE OF YOU STUPIDITY YOU WILL BE INJURED. IN A FIGHT BETWEEN A CAR AND A BIKE, THE CAR WILL ALWAYS WIN!!!!

(12) Finally, the most annoying people of all. These people make me furious even when I am not in a car. Picture the scene; you’re walking down the street when you suddenly start to feel the ground shake. You look around expecting to see buildings moving and then it appears about half a mile away: the dance car, usually driven by a complete arsehole. As the car approaches, the incredibly loud thumping scares local creatures and shakes houses to their very foundations. You see the driver, usually a young buffoon, moving his head in time to the dreadful dance music played at a volume that would make Ozzy Osbourne’s ears bleed. As the car passes, you see that he has a complete sound system occupying the rear of the car, with speakers that Metallica would think twice about using for a concert at Wembley Stadium. I can only surmise that these morons are deaf. If you are in a car it is much worse – because you can’t escape them. I have driven along listening to heavy metal at a fair volume and had one of these loons behind me playing music so loud that I have heard it above my own. No volume in my car is loud enough to drown out the sound of the dreadful crap coming from their car. When I arrive home I am deaf myself. I have two things to say to these guys: TURN THE BLOODY MUSIC DOWN!!!! PLAY SOME ROCK MUSIC INSTEAD!!!!!

That’s’ enough for now – I’m losing my patience just reliving the episodes of my life where I’ve encountered road rage.

I need to take a chill pill now as I am quite worked up. Breathe deeply, Dave, breathe deeply. It’s Sunday tomorrow – I could go for a nice drive. And if I encounter anybody in a car wearing a hat I might just cover his car in red paint fired from my new multi-directional paint bazooka.