Friday, July 29, 2005
I found out today that I’m not cut out to be a Top Gear presenter. I can’t exactly say that it came as a shock to me, despite once been in enough proximity to Richard Hammond in order to compare heights. Sorry Richard for being that loon shuffling towards you on a train at Waterloo. I just can’t drive other cars, i.e. other cars that are even vaguely fancy. I got used to my brother’s Audi A4 reasonably quickly, but this one is a bit of a jump too far. Having dug in my heels about not willing to do a 150-mile round-trip for 3 days for work in my currently delicate car, somehow the company secretary made some calls and got around the over-25 insurance policy for the pool cars. Hence I drove home a scarily large fancy Scenic.
It’s been a bit of a heeby-jeeby shock. Mostly because I’m just happy when my car moves and having present a bitchin’ stereo that I can turn up so high that I can’t hear the brakes squealing or the radiator bubbling. And also that there’s only so much financial/embarassment damage I can do to my car because it’s only worth so much, and so having responsibility for something that isn’t mine is making me run to the window every half an hour just to see if it’s still there.
Like it’s a big enough jump from driving my golf cart Clio to driving my mum’s Fiesta, without being faced with keyless cars and a digital speedo and being sat about 50 miles off of the ground. I tried driving the Scenic round my office building, parked on the usual tilt down towards a crash barrier, and then when I had to reverse out, I had a bit of a ‘aaargh freakout’. Which frickin’ stupid person in Renault decided that it was a good idea to get rid of the handbrake? And institute something that apparently decides when you want to move and so takes off the hand-brake, rather than leaving you an opportunity to, uh, maybe get to the bite that you want to before reversing up a slope? Especially when one is used to driving a glorified motorised wheelchair (albeit with said bitchin’ stereo) for quite a while, which tends to helpfully telegraph the bite by sticking its ass up in the air violently. Thanks go out to my boss, who didn’t deride me for being a dithery nurdle who should take what she asked for, and nodded sympathy as we discussed exact foot position on the clutch.
Hoo boy, I’m getting old. I’m trying to remember quite how I did those 100-hour weeks last summer, because I feel like I’ve been battered over the head repeatedly just from going out two nights in a row. One day of getting up at 5.45am, a bit of driving up the M1 followed by my manager swinging us up to Yorkshire at 100mph, a crap drive home (meh bomb scare road closure in close proximity), and then a 10 minute fling into the house before flinging myself on to a train into London to go to the pub, seems to have done me in. I apologise for spending the following evening mostly yawning, moaning about aching limbs, moaning about being too old to spend a gig standing up, having not enough energy to properly avoid lobbed play texts, and not having enough self control to not get the giggles at the support support act. Good gig though. People (i.e. more than one) today asked me if I had a cold because of my deep voice. Which is always my symptom of beer and tiredness combined, though to be fair, it used to mainly occur about 11pm on a Friday night during my college days.
It’s been a bit of a heeby-jeeby shock. Mostly because I’m just happy when my car moves and having present a bitchin’ stereo that I can turn up so high that I can’t hear the brakes squealing or the radiator bubbling. And also that there’s only so much financial/embarassment damage I can do to my car because it’s only worth so much, and so having responsibility for something that isn’t mine is making me run to the window every half an hour just to see if it’s still there.
Like it’s a big enough jump from driving my golf cart Clio to driving my mum’s Fiesta, without being faced with keyless cars and a digital speedo and being sat about 50 miles off of the ground. I tried driving the Scenic round my office building, parked on the usual tilt down towards a crash barrier, and then when I had to reverse out, I had a bit of a ‘aaargh freakout’. Which frickin’ stupid person in Renault decided that it was a good idea to get rid of the handbrake? And institute something that apparently decides when you want to move and so takes off the hand-brake, rather than leaving you an opportunity to, uh, maybe get to the bite that you want to before reversing up a slope? Especially when one is used to driving a glorified motorised wheelchair (albeit with said bitchin’ stereo) for quite a while, which tends to helpfully telegraph the bite by sticking its ass up in the air violently. Thanks go out to my boss, who didn’t deride me for being a dithery nurdle who should take what she asked for, and nodded sympathy as we discussed exact foot position on the clutch.
Hoo boy, I’m getting old. I’m trying to remember quite how I did those 100-hour weeks last summer, because I feel like I’ve been battered over the head repeatedly just from going out two nights in a row. One day of getting up at 5.45am, a bit of driving up the M1 followed by my manager swinging us up to Yorkshire at 100mph, a crap drive home (meh bomb scare road closure in close proximity), and then a 10 minute fling into the house before flinging myself on to a train into London to go to the pub, seems to have done me in. I apologise for spending the following evening mostly yawning, moaning about aching limbs, moaning about being too old to spend a gig standing up, having not enough energy to properly avoid lobbed play texts, and not having enough self control to not get the giggles at the support support act. Good gig though. People (i.e. more than one) today asked me if I had a cold because of my deep voice. Which is always my symptom of beer and tiredness combined, though to be fair, it used to mainly occur about 11pm on a Friday night during my college days.
