A reader has written in with comments about the 1300 and my guitar, so I thought I might add a little:
1) The 1300 was a great shagging car. The back seat was almost flat and the car was quite wide, so you could get quite comfortable and shagging was a dream. It was not a dream in the Corsair, on the other hand, which had a terrible back seat.
2) To date my musical career has still not taken wing. On guitar on know several jazzy sounding chords (tho' I can never remember their names), so I am capable of a certain amount of bullshit playing. However, I never play when I know there are guys around who really can play the guitar as they would spot the bollocks within a nanosecond. Like many things, the more you practise, the better you get, and unfortunately I am something of a gadfly as far as that kind of application is concerned. But to put these things into perspective, I did jam (on separate occasions) with both Jimmy Nail and Sting, but was unimpressed with the talents of both so nothing came of these matters, so, not to put too fine a point, they blew it.
NB I twice got drunk with Black Sabbath, the first time just after Ozzy Osbourne had left, and the second time when they had hired a new singer. On that second occasion I also had a spliff or two, which led to the embarrassing situation when the band invited me to hear a couple of new tracks, but, as usual when I had mixed my drinks - beer and spirits - and then had a smoke, I began to feel very sick, so I ran out of the rehearsal room into the john and was very sick for the next hour or so. On both occasions Black Sabbath were staying at Rockfield Studios in Monmouth and I was nominally a British correspondent of some US rock newspaper or other, which is how I got the in with Black Sabbath. For the record, spliff in hand or not, drunk or not, Black Sabbath's music has never done and never will do anything for me.
PS I should like my correspondent to consider adding content to the blog I know he has registered. I can assure him he will enjoy setting down his thoughts.
Wednesday 28 October 2009
My cars: a short guide. Part III - My Austin 1300 and how I graduate from dodgy 'good runners' to something a little more respectable
In October 1975, I joined the South Wales Argus as one of its district reporters and was based in Ebbw Vale. I was still running the Ford Corsair, but by early 1978 it was obvious the car was rapidly running out of steam, so I looked in the classified ads and spotted a white Austin 1300 for sale. The price was right - that is it was quite cheap and well within my price range - and the specifications were good. In many ways it seemed to good to be true and I was sure that by the time I was able to look it over, someone else would have pipped me to the post. But they didn't, and I bought it. It was a nice car, very tidy and in good condition. There's was nothing at all wrong with it and I had had a stroke of luck. That July, I applied for, and landed a job as a head office reporter on the Newcastle Journal, a morning paper, so I packed all my belongings into my Austin 1300 (there was not too much, just my clothes, a sound system and my guitar) and headed north. More follows
Tuesday 27 October 2009
My cars: a short guide. Part II — a rustbucket Hillman Superminx and a slighly snazzier V4 Ford Corsair
I had the Triumph for a month before it rolled down the hill and out of my life. As I said, my insurance agent just happened to be passing, and he told me of a Hillman Superminx for sale at a garage in Newport. I think I went and bought it the same day, although that seems unlikely.
It, too, was in no great state as a car, but its defects were not immediately apparent. It was something of a tank of a car, ponderous and heavy to steer, but I can't remember any particular disasters or faults. However, I knew the time was approaching when I should get rid of it when my girlfriend and I drove to North Lincolnshire to visit her parents and her sister and brother-in-law who were also staying. Her brother-in-law was an Irishman and a mechanic with the RAF. He kindly said he would take a look at the car to see whether there was anything amiss. It was apparent that there was, that the whole chassis was more or less rust, when he tried to jack up the car. In stead of lifting the car bit by bit as it was designed to, the head of the jack simply disappeared into the chassis. I did get rid of the car, although I can't remember where or how.
My next car cost me, if I remember £295. It was a Ford Corsair with a 1700cc V4 engine and, although he was still almost a banger, was a huge step up from the junk I had so far been driving. It went like the clappers. The only cosmetic fault it had has a hole the size of a small apple at the bottom of the driver's
door. I did have one or two problems with it, however. One problem was simple though bizarre and took a while to diagnose. I was driving from South Wales to Staffordshire to see my girlfriend when the engine kept cutting out. It got to the point where I could only crawl along in fits and starts in second gear. I pulled into a petrol station, but it was after 5pm and the mechanics had shut up shop for the week. The women behind the counter, however, took pity on me and told me her husband was a keen amateur mechanic and he would take a look to see whether he couldn't sort out what was wrong. It took him several hours, but he succeeded. The problem was that the coil had somehow worked itself loose and kept banging against the engine block. This caused the engine to cut out. But when it cut out, the car stopped and the jerky movement banged the loose coil away from the engine block again, so the engine began firing again. This is what I had put up with for several miles before I stopped at the petrol station. He guy simply tightened up the coil again and the problem was solved. The only other problem I had was when the clutch cable went and I had to have a new clutch installed.
I had drove the Corsair (which is pictured above. Mine was the same colour, except that it had — a rather naff — black vinyl roof) for about 18 months before I got rid of it. By then it was getting rather ratty. The brakes were completely shot and so was the steering. I sold it for £80 to some guy up the road and felt guilty about that because it really was a death trap. My next car was another step up, an Austin 1300, more of which another time.
It, too, was in no great state as a car, but its defects were not immediately apparent. It was something of a tank of a car, ponderous and heavy to steer, but I can't remember any particular disasters or faults. However, I knew the time was approaching when I should get rid of it when my girlfriend and I drove to North Lincolnshire to visit her parents and her sister and brother-in-law who were also staying. Her brother-in-law was an Irishman and a mechanic with the RAF. He kindly said he would take a look at the car to see whether there was anything amiss. It was apparent that there was, that the whole chassis was more or less rust, when he tried to jack up the car. In stead of lifting the car bit by bit as it was designed to, the head of the jack simply disappeared into the chassis. I did get rid of the car, although I can't remember where or how.
My next car cost me, if I remember £295. It was a Ford Corsair with a 1700cc V4 engine and, although he was still almost a banger, was a huge step up from the junk I had so far been driving. It went like the clappers. The only cosmetic fault it had has a hole the size of a small apple at the bottom of the driver's
door. I did have one or two problems with it, however. One problem was simple though bizarre and took a while to diagnose. I was driving from South Wales to Staffordshire to see my girlfriend when the engine kept cutting out. It got to the point where I could only crawl along in fits and starts in second gear. I pulled into a petrol station, but it was after 5pm and the mechanics had shut up shop for the week. The women behind the counter, however, took pity on me and told me her husband was a keen amateur mechanic and he would take a look to see whether he couldn't sort out what was wrong. It took him several hours, but he succeeded. The problem was that the coil had somehow worked itself loose and kept banging against the engine block. This caused the engine to cut out. But when it cut out, the car stopped and the jerky movement banged the loose coil away from the engine block again, so the engine began firing again. This is what I had put up with for several miles before I stopped at the petrol station. He guy simply tightened up the coil again and the problem was solved. The only other problem I had was when the clutch cable went and I had to have a new clutch installed.
I had drove the Corsair (which is pictured above. Mine was the same colour, except that it had — a rather naff — black vinyl roof) for about 18 months before I got rid of it. By then it was getting rather ratty. The brakes were completely shot and so was the steering. I sold it for £80 to some guy up the road and felt guilty about that because it really was a death trap. My next car was another step up, an Austin 1300, more of which another time.
Saturday 24 October 2009
Don't count your chickens - you never know, one might get away
Well, it all went well for a day, then this morning, while adding 'labels' to my previous entry on how my laptop is behaving again and underling the imperative of smug gits such as myself thanking God for his small mercies, it bloody happened again. Sod's Law — freezing bloody cursor. This really is irritating because my plan was to sell it while the going was good, but — all pretensions to being a complete unethical cunt notwithstanding — I wasn't going to do so until a week or so had passed without the cursor freezing. Oh, bloody well. See how this thing pans out. Onto other matters: dawn broke, and I kept a sharp eye on the clock. Seven o'clock followed six o'clock after exactly 60 minutes, so all is otherwise still well in the world. Further clues that today is shaping up not to include any more unpleasant shocks: the fridge is still quite cold, I turned on the cold water tap at the bathoom sink and water came out, and Justin Webb on Radio 4's Today still sounds like a rather smug git (so that would be two of us).
Friday 23 October 2009
In praise of life's small mercies.
It is quite odd how small, insignificant details can please us. A day or two ago, I wrote about my growing collection of laptops and why I bought the third: the first was slowly misbehaving and I decided I would try to sell it before the malfunction, whatever it was, set in properly. Unfortunately, that seemed to happen far faster than I had anticipated, so that for the past few days, the cursor on this laptop — I am writing on it now — would freeze and the only way I could get to use the laptop again was to reboot it. Things looked even bleaker when I rang an Apple dealer in Kensington who told me that the fault probably related to the logic board, that I would most probably need a new logic board, that I was looking at spending around £200 and that as far as he was concerned it wasn't worth it. He did, however add — and this will put his downbeat analysis rather in perspective — that the dealer he worked for would give me £100 of the price of a new Macbook is I part-exchanged the iBook. What made it all the more galling was yesterday the laptop even stopped recognising that it had a built-in airport card, one which was supposedly brand-new when it was fitted just over a month ago.
Then, researching (a posh word for 'looking up') possible remedies on the internet, I came across a process called 'repairing permissions'. This is quite easy to do, and I did it. And it seems to have cured whatever is was amiss. Such little things can cheer you up.
Then, researching (a posh word for 'looking up') possible remedies on the internet, I came across a process called 'repairing permissions'. This is quite easy to do, and I did it. And it seems to have cured whatever is was amiss. Such little things can cheer you up.
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