The Jolly Buffoon's Guide to Cars

Last night, down the pub, Matt's girlfriend Laura mentioned her search for a new car had almost ended with her getting a Porsche. At this point we all made disparaging noises, took deep intakes of air and sucked our teeth mainly because none of us like Porsches but also it would be a massive bounding leap from the small Toyota Yaris she drives at the moment. Thoroughly down heartened by all this Laura muttered that she quite fancied the new Fiat 500 Arbarth which I quite like. However before I could praise and encourage her Ben launched a scathing attack on the Italian manufacturer. 

Although Ben maybe right about Fiat's frankly appalling past record on reliability and their dealers being a bunch of thieving sharks I still think there is hope and Ben is a terribly wrong. Ben is a bad man he beats up ginger kids and steals sweets from babies and stuff...

Caught in the act! Ben stealing some ginger kid's dinner.

He is also an engineer who worships at the alter of V-tec and owns one of the car nerd's favourites; a Honda Prelude. He loves the twin cam engine and gets excited over the four wheel steering (ok so that is pretty cool) but fortunately for the rest of us he isn't this tiresome most of the time. Although he respects the Japanese for their ingenuity and reliability he bulks at ruthlessly efficient German enginnering, you can see the burning hatred in his eyes when Matt mentions his uber saloon BMW 3 series and this means his views on Fiat are not as rational as he likes them to appear. In my opinion Laura should go for the Fiat 500 Arbarth if she likes it and take a chance with the pitfalls that can come with Italian automobile ownership.

Being the Jolly Buffoon I reject everyone else's view of reality and substitute it with my own that's why I own the Graphite Pig. For those that don't know my car it is an example of the awesome Volvo 240. This bastion of the middle class has a leather interior (despite Ben's claims to the contrary) with heated front seats and electric windows, mirrors and aerial which is pretty good for a car made just over 20 years ago. I believe that if you want a car on a tight budget look for an underated classic like mine. The Volvo brand in the past had a poor image amongst the hip and cool and now no one wants these boxy classics which are well known for being long lived (a Volvo holds the record for the highest mileage of any car in the world) and being executive motors are quite comfortable.

A slightly modified Volvo 240 dispelling the myth that they're shit.

Large Rovers (see Nordschleife or bust post further down) are dirt cheap because everyone says they're unreliable and parts availability is poor. Whilst reliability wasn't Rover's strongest suit we should remember that Darwin's theory that the strongest survive means that the crap ones will mostly have been scraped by now.

Don't want an Uber saloon? Look to older skoda models which seems to have a strong following of music teachers and piano tuners. Good, solid, if a little dull motors which will get you there just not in style. If you want something sporty and you have roughly a grand get yourself one of these classic cheese wedges...

Yes you guessed it it's a Triumph TR7 and this working example is currently at £820 on ebay. Bargain! Anyway I've got to finish up here as I've recieved reports that there is sound Volvo 240 Torslanda estate in red up for sale and as we all know RED CARS GO FASTA! Until next time when I may own two cars *sigh* toddleroo.

 

CONSUME!

After reading through my past dispatches I realised money (and the lack of it) was a recurring feature. It may look to some that my last post was a ridiculous boast about how much I spend on my hobby which I categorically deny it was nothing of the sort. I am however a consumer, a member of the petite bourgeoisie, a grabby materialist, I consume and I was not entirely happy about realising that. 

The question is why do I "consume" and when I say that I mean superfluous stuff like weird hats and books I'll never get round to reading. I also wondered why I hang on to stuff which is surplus to requirements, why not pass it on? After much thinking I came up with an answer for the second question which also answered the first... sort of. The answer is of course "it maybe useful someday" but when? Perhaps when hell freezes over or a plague wipes out most of mankind and turns them into fleshing eating zombies... well you never know. A large part of my book collection are reference style books which I look up stuff in and I do lend novels that I've read to some people once I've besmirched it's virgin pages, bent it's cover and ruined the spine. For the large part I just horde useless stuff but thankfully it hasn't reached the levels of excess of me bottling my own urine and suspending my shit in formaldehyde filled glass tubes. Well not yet anyway.

However I found this answer wasn't satisfactory, I mean it was an answer for some of the crap I've bought over the years but not all of it. It also failed to answer why I in general get the most expensive and not the best value for money item either. I suspect it has something to do with quality and why shouldn't I have the best after all I have no problems with self worth. I'm worth it even if none of you lot think so. The question is where to draw the line and say no I don't need this or I don't have to cough up so much. Wine is a good example of where to draw the line, I'm no wine connoisseur so why cough up the extra cash for an expensive fine wine when a rustic, cheaper wine will suffice? The David Ginola argument of "because I'm worth it" doesn't really apply because I won't notice the difference except for the price. I haven't been doing a good job of this sort of cost cutting so far. At this point my brain was aching so I soothed it by looking at this and others like it...

I found my mind wondering back to my relationship with money when I wondered whether I could build a wood bodied shooting brake similar to the above example as some kind of kit car. I realised I didn't have the skills and it would probably cheaper to buy one or have one built. Sadly such beautiful machines are well and truly out of my price range. I started thinking about how the hell I would get a pay rise and that got me wondering why would I want the extra stress and responsibility of a higher paying job as it would indubitably eat into my free time. Free time is precious to me as I like to do stuff in it but what I do in it is limited by my lack of money and now we're at the crux of my money obsession. I work to live not live to work, what's the point in making loads of cash if you don't have the time to enjoy spending it? 

An excellent author called Stephen Clarke has wrote a few books on living in France and the French psyche and he points out the French are just the same, the vast majority work to live and not live to work. I don't suffer from quite the same militant attitude to work as the French and I won't run at the first sign of danger but I will shoot anything that moves, eat horse meat and small birds and put garlic in just about anything I cook. There are persistent rumours in my father's side of the family that claim we're of Huguenot or Flemish origin. So maybe my need to consume is due to the fact I'm part French. If it's the latter it just explains why I bore everyone to death as the Belgians are hardly known for being exciting. Either way it's those bloody foreigners' fault! And with that I'll bid you goodbye, au revoir and vaarwel.

Next time on "The Jolly Buffoon":

Woodies - A budget option to replacing rusting body panels or a daft liability?

A Guide to Re-enactment

I have been at a loss recently at what to write about with everyones' blogs being so exciting of late. With all the exciting social commentary on important questions such as why Christmas shoppers are so fucking rude and why guns are cool. How could I compete with that and to make matters worse my musings on the decline of the moustache led to one individual attempting to disembowel them self on their own keyboard. So now I won't be reviewing the moustache wax I ordered on the interweb which is probably a good thing as it's German and called "Brother's Love". Hmm....

Anyway moving swiftly on to today's babbling which is an introduction to the world of re-enactment. This isn't the kinky kind of stuff that goes on between a couple making a last ditch attempt to save their marriage this is historical re-enactment where you get to dress up in funny clothes and pretend that it's not the twenty first century.

The world of historical re-enactment can be horrifically expensive with uniform and equipment costing several thousand pounds. To avoid huge costs join a popular time period with lots of suppliers as competition generally brings down costs. The beardy weirdy brigade (the viking and saxon groups), the mud eaters (the medievals) and the English Civil War groups are the best catered for in Britain. I joined ECWS (the English Civil War Society) in 2003 and the uniform cost roughly £150 which was spread out over a couple of years thanks to the regiment having loan kit for beginners and foot wear was even pricier at £90 (don't be put off there are cheaper traders). I opted to become a musketeer with all the added headaches and cost that come with it (£50 for a shotgun licence and £250 for a gun) but if you want to be a pikeman the pointed stick and armour are provided by the regiment. Of course there are additional costs for getting to events and camping gear which I won't bore you with.

Now I've finished boring you to death with the cost lets look at in detail what happens at an ECWS event...

1) Turn up on Friday night tired as you've just driven 4 hours to get to the event after finishing work. Put up camp and head for the pub or beer tent and get thoroughly blasted on your favourite poison. Engage in drunken banter, singing and dancing.

2) Wake up thoroughly hung over and totter off to the loos (the toilets are another post all in themselves). After relieving yourself head for the water tap to get water to have with the aspirin/ibuprofin/paracetamol you brought with you. Return to bed.

3) Reawake to the dulcet bellow of your sergeant who would like you to get dressed and ready for drill (what?!) NOW! You drill until the officers grow bored, the sergeant gets fed-up of trying to get you to walk in step or you finally remember which of your feet is the left one.

4) Have breakfast and depending on when and where you're supposed to assemble for the march mooch around the camp site or look "orfentic" on the living history. Generally the former involves drinking either tea or more beer, the latter chopping fire wood and answering daft questions from the public (trust me you'll get loads). 

5) Form up for the march and stomp onto the battlefield. The battle then begins after a prolonged wait and the pikemen (and women) batter the snot out of each other and the musket fire upon one another whilst all the while officers are shouting a load of bollocks at them. All the while cavalry are trying to kill just about anyone that lets them get close enough and the artillery are doing their best at deafening not just themselves but the rest of the armies too.

6) Give a salute to the crowd and march off the field saluting fellow regiments as you go. Have a few beers and toddle off back to camp for dinner. After dinner return to the pub/beer tent and get thoroughly blasted on your favourite poison. Engage in drunken banter, singing and dancing.

7) Repeat points 2 to 5 before saying your goodbyes and shooting off or if you had leave booked do point 6 too and head home on the Monday.

This sort of thing is par for the course for most regiments within ECWS and other groups too. Some are more safety conscious than others and drill will of course vary. Smaller groups might introduce cameos into their skirmishes where individual combats are carefully arranged and choreographed. There are groups who take re-enactment alot more seriously these are generally more expensive kit wise but worth joining if you're a hardcore re-enactment nut like me. At the moment I'm getting together kit for a French army Irish Piquet (see below) for re-enacting the 1745 Jacobite Uprising.

The cost of this kit is bloody eye watering costing at least £1200. The main problem is this period although well documented (and therefore easier to copy) it isn't so popular and therefore traders are thin on the ground with most being in America because of the popularity of the American War of Independence (AWI) over there. I'm using up my savings (specifically put aside for this) and have bought bits of kit over time to off set the cost. I'm going to be skint again but I will look the mutt's nuts. Ho-hum I'm off to try out that moustache wax. Au revoir.