Is cycling sexy?

The boys and girls at copenhagenize.com would have you believe cycling is indeed sexy (see above) but then they asked the question should cycling be advertised like cars? They then showed that Renault Clio advert. You know the one it's got that hot french bird Annelise Hesme arguing with that good looking actor that was in Casualty and all the girls at school fancied him until they found out he was gay... Yeah that one... Anyway the cyclists argue that cycling could be advertised like this too. I however beg to differ although I'm pro-cycle it will always play second fiddle to anything with an engine. This film called simply "Rendez Vous" shows why with a Ferrai being driven around Paris early one morning at naughty speeds. Just sit back and listern to that engine sing. 

 

Nordschleife or Bust

As you're no doubt aware (if you follow housemate Ben's Blog) that Ben and Matthew (he has no memory of events between the years of 1939 to 1945) have been planning a little trip in a couple of crap cars to the Nuremburg ring. When they get there they intend to thrash said crap cars around the ring and then head home. However as I'm the poor sap who gave them this idea I'm going to gate crash the party with one of these...

It's a Rover 820 Coupe and it's huge. Designed for the well-to-do elderly and the dickhead executive this car cost thirty thousand pounds new back in the late nineties but now Rover has gone down the toilet no one wants these petrol swilling, luxury leviathans. This leather interiored beauty is ideal for those long drags along the autobahns and I suspect give Matt and Ben in their Johnny-Foreigner-mobiles a damn good thrashing.... maybe I hope.... Anyway this particular one I found on ebay and at the moment the bidding has only reached twenty one pounds and that is a bargain folks. I secretly and shamefully coverted this car in my early teens and memories of that time were reawakened when watching Jonathan Meades on you tube. If you have not come across Jonathan Meades he's a rum chap who wears dark glasses and delivers clever word play in a flat, monotone voice. He was extolling the vitues of Birmingham or extending a sly dig at the city's expense (I can never be sure which with Meades) whilst driving around in a Rover 800, which at the time of filming was a machine built in Birmingham. If I'm going to gate crash their fun I need to start saving now and that's all my poor cash strapped bank balance needs. Ho-hum one can dream...

Day dream of the week!

Firstly before I go any further I must warn you this could be the last posting for a few weeks as Dan has not paid the bill. Apparently he is waiting for Ben and Charlie to cough up their part of the bill. Tensions between Ben and Dan are high at the moment with both of them claiming that the other owes them money it could take some time to sort out....

Anyway it's time for my new feature "Daydream of the Week!" In this addition to the blog I will explain what great mystery of the world I've been pondering this week it really should be called "the reason why I keep calling some of you Dave or forgetting what I went shopping for". Basically my absent mindedness is due to daydreaming and every week or so the subject warps into something else.

Last week I was pondering about the reintroduction of steam locomotives to Britain and fantasising about French Beyer-Garratts like this one...

These beautiful monsters hauled heavy passenger trains through the then French colony of Algeria. It had a transverse double PLM chimney and Cossart valve gear and the first machines were apparently hand fired requiring two firemen to feed it's gaping maw of a firebox! Fortunately for the firemen the engineers saw sense and added a coal pusher on the later machines. The Prototype locomotive 231-132 AT 1 had a revolving bunker to feed it but it wasn't a success and was not replicated on the production machines. Revolving bunkers seem to have been a bit crap wherever they've been used. The LMS tried revolving bunkers on their smaller 2-6-0+0-6-2 garretts but they proved unpopular. If you know why leave a comment... Anyway I love these Algerian Garratts and if I had the ability and the equipment I'd build a 5 inch gauge model of one fully capable of steaming.

I think steam is a viable form of traction and should be taken more seriously. The disastrous rush to scrap the steam engine on Britain's railways led to poor reliability and time keeping and the loss of an obscene amount of money. Britain's railways had taken an obscene pasting from two world wars and a serious recession and the fleet was a mixture of locomotives of various ages which the engineers ot the big four railway companies had tried to replace, rebuild or modify. The newly nationalised railway groaned under the weight of its own crapness and started building a more standardised fleet of its own. The man in charge was a chap called Robert Riddles who was an acolyte of Sir Willaim Stanier, former Chief Engineer of the LMS who advocated standardisation and use of proven technology over the experimental. The Standard Classes were machines that were either modernised LMS designs or brand new designs with reliability and easy maintenance in mind. These machines were generally successful but too few to replace the entire fleet on all the new regions. The modernisation plan was then published which called for a slow change towards dieselisation and electrification with tender being put out for a number of experimental locomotives of varying haulage capacity like Brush Traction's Falcon (see below).

The call for careful experimentation was not heeded as politicians pushed for modernisation. Proper experimentation would have shown that a large number of the designs were highly unreliable but this wasn't discovered until they were in service (in some cases in large numbers). There was also little thought given to standardisation either which pushed up maintenance costs. This unmitigated disaster led to the railways being in even more dire financial straits than before and could be partially blamed for the unleashing of Beeching on the rail network. If steam had continued to be used and developed maybe we'd still see steam traction on british railways today in the form of advanced steam turbine locomotives, who knows...

Andre Chapelon's 3 Cylinder Compound 4-8-4 Locomotive

Oliver Bullied's Leader Class 0-6-0+0-6-0 Locomotive 

Livio Porta's 'Argentina' 4-8-0 Locomotive (with Designer)

Steam is now being proven that it has the ability to compete against diesels on efficiency and power. The company below is at the fore front of these developments....

http://www.dlm-ag.ch/index2-en.htm

I live in hope...

Going over to the Dark Side

I have weakened and finally turned to the dark side. I have started a blog. The Jolly Buffoon Blog will attempt to look through my life ignoring or throwing over its shoulder the boring and tedious bits and hopefully find some gems to dust off and present to you. I wouldn't hold your breath....

Charlie Cat is a hero (I should use 'heroine' but I don't like the word so I shan't). She has cleaned up the stinking pile of crockery and cutlery plus polished the turd which is our kitchen. Some of the pile was my creation but most was produced by the return of Charlie Cat from making children cry in the darkest parts of Hampshire and Dan had his biweekly purge of his room. The return of Charlie created chaos as she sorted herself out after 6 weeks away from civilisation with bras, knickers and jeans spread everywhere some washed and now drying and those that were being sorted for washing. Chaz didn't have time for washing up and I kept out of way whilst she dashed about the kitchen loading up the washing machine and cooking a chicken casserole for us all. I was busy tidying my room for someone to view it but that's a different story. Anyway the next evening I was exausted after a long day at work and was in no mood to deal with the rapidly growing heap of dirty plates. I awoke this morning and almost wept when I entered the kitchen for the sight of so much mess was a depressing one. I made my breakfast and prepared my lunch and then scurried off to work vowing to get home at a sensible hour that evening and make a start on crockery mountain.

Now at this point I should like to point out that I'm gainfully employed neither of which Dan or Joe (a temporary housemate and breaker of oven doors) are. Did they help Charlie clean up? Of course they bloody didn't! The bone idle pair hid away in Dan's room fondling each other and playing on the sex box 360. Bastards. I should, of course, tell you about the disappearence of plates, cutlery and cotton buds amongst other things which have actually got dragged into the wormhole that is Dan's room just to be spat out again a couple of weeks later dirtier and covered in mould. Dan purged his room on Tuesday covering most of the kitchen surfaces in dirty plates, mugs and cutlery when I saw this I could have killed him. Charlie thinks or rather I think she hopes that by cleaning the kitchen so thoroughly people will want to keep it clean but knowing Dan Charlie's hopes will be dashed on another mouldy mountain of dirty plates before long.

For now me and Charlie celebrating, we shared a rather tasty chocolate yum-yum, she is watching Hollyoaks and I'm off to prepare a tasty risotto. TTFN