It was a morning of frantic, yet choreographed activity. The car changeover day. Leaving one back to Mallusk, picking the other up on the Boucher Road, and collecting kit for next week’s Tech Camp, and a supply of coloured card from Play Resource Warehouse over off Duncairn Gardens.It started well, getting the diminutive Smart Roadster back to the Fleet workshop. It took a while to get the paperwork completed – they give the car a good inspection for wear and tear before accepting it back – and discovering that the bottle of magic run-flat tyre fluid hadn’t been returned by the last driver when I got the vehicle in January.We stocked up with paper in the Aladdin’s cave, and headed south to Charles Hurst’s Toyota dealership. That was where the wheel’s (metaphorically) came...
So first thing tomorrow morning (Friday) it's bye bye time to another car. I'll be dropping the squished-up Smart Roadster off at the fleet workshop - where a careful eye will inspect its every panel and cavity to ensure its in no worse condition that when I collected it in January. Should I pour water over the seats to recreate the wet-bum sensation I lived with for the first month or so? Probably best not to.Then it's off to Charles Hurst (which still feels like it breaks some fundamental law of the universe) to pick up the new car that should be waiting for me. Oh, and there's some kind of financial transaction to complete - thank goodness pay day was this week!So the new car doesn't have heated seats, automatic lights and wipers, electric mirrors, automatic transmission or cruise...
The Google Streetview Car (Streetcar?) spotted in Belfast (Queen’s Road, Titanic Quarter) yesterday morning whilst I sat in my car pondering on the future. A bloke on my Twitter watch list described seeing a similar car in Sheffield just an hour or so previously, or I wouldn’t have even realised it was the Google car (assuming he’s correct of course).
OK, the video’s not up to much, but I had been trying to take a photo......
I’ve noticed that my taste in cars is shrinking.About eleven years ago I purchased my first car. A red VW Polo. As a 1.4CL model, it was perhaps slightly overpowered - at least for me at the time. But eleven years ago, a bit of oomph under the bonnet, electric windows and a decent radio (albeit with cassette) was attractive. We only let go of the Polo a few months ago, and until this year, it was very reliable.Then there was a Mini. A company car. Yellow - to be easily spotted in the airport car park - and a joy to drive. The radio still had cassette and no CD - too expensive to get it added at the time. But on its fourth birthday, it came of age and was reclaimed to go to the great fleet sales auction.The Smart Roadster was a bit of an accident. Never quite getting around to ordering...
Driving back home from the Belfast International yesterday afternoon, we were pottering through Templepatrick when I noticed lots of brands (marks?) of cars that I hadn’t seen all week in France.The French are probably a combination of practical and parochial. They like small cars, and they like French cars (extending the cheque book of friendship across to the odd Italian import). No SUVs. No Land Rovers. No big jeeps. Can’t remember seeing a 4x4 all week.Plenty of Espace-type people carriers, but nothing outrageously oversized.Instead lots of Twingos (old and new models), Peugeot 107s, Citron C1 and C2s, a surprising number of Minis, and quite a few Smart cars around Paris.The only Ford models on the road were the odd Fiesta, Ka and a single Focus.Very few Mercedes or BMW - though...
Time to tie up a few loose ends.There was good news when we got back from a long weekend in Gloucester and wandered around to Lindsay cars. They had a second key (and the original first). So I actually got to drive the car back home instead of walking!Turns out that second keys for Ford cars don't have the remote locking buttons. They're just straight key barrels. Bit of a surprise. But one I can live with.Second surprise was discovering a box of Freesat promotional leaflets in the Ross's Court Argos in the centre of Belfast. No set top boxes on display, but at least a couple of the models are now in stock and available to purchase.Two subjects I hope AiB won't be returning to in a...
The Polo would have been (will be) eleven years old in July. My first little car. It had clocked up nearly 71,000 miles – not a lot, but then it didn’t have far to go on any particular week.I can still remember picking it up from GT Hendersons garage in Banbridge. There was a little ramp up to get out the gate from their forecourt and onto the road. And I remember nearly stalling the car as I revved it to get up and out. The joy of adapting to a new car. A trick that now seems second nature given the number of hire cars that I drive away from airports around the UK.The deal was that we’d trade in the Polo for a second hand Ford from Lindsay’s. It was ex-fleet, with an English registration. So they volunteered to switch it to a local number when they taxed it.To get a tax...
Hurray! Someone found the lost key at the conference yesterday, and it was set on a desk in a locked room. So this morning's Dora the Explorer adventure was to retrieve the key from its lair, and recover the car from where it had been parked for the last 24 hours in the centre of Belfast.Before that I went around to the Lindsay dealer to ask for the second key. There never was one. The ex-fleet car had come across from England with only one key. A pity that they hadn't thought to cut one during the two weeks they had the car on their forecourt, or during the couple of days before collection while they waited for the car tax to be sorted out.Him: "But with the other key we can cut a new one."Me: "Not if it was lost yesterday and the car has been parked in the centre of town all night with...
DVTA responded to a couple of questions about the publicity prior to the change in legislation making display of MOT vehicle test certificates mandatory for cars tested in Northern Ireland and a grace period before fines would come into effect.I've added their answers to the original posting (the purple coloured...
With a ten year old Polo in the family, I’ve been used to taking it every summer for its annual medical MOT at the test centre in Lisburn or Boucher Road. The exhilaration of being confident that the car has recently been serviced balanced against the possibility that the garage missed something or the chance that the DVTA guys are more thorough. They’ve been handing out certificates - the size of a tax disc that can be cut out from the printed sheet - for the last six years or so. And the certificate makes clear that while you might want to display the MOT pass certificate, it’s not mandatory.Quite randomly, I read a news story online saying that the certificates had to be displayed by law from 1 May. What? Hadn’t heard that before.4NI.co.uk fills in the detailAs if drivers...
Saturday was dominated by cars.On the way back from Belfast to Lisburn to pick up Littl’un, I noticed that my car’s fuel gauge had suddenly gone from saying 2/8 to showing an empty fuel tank. It’s not a big car, so the tank isn’t particularly large – you tend to get about 200 miles out of it. Yet the hard-to-rely on range display was saying I could go for another 71 miles on what was left in my tank. Umm.Suspecting a software fault, I decided to pull off the Malone Road, turn off, turn back on (though since it’s not a Microsoft Car there’d be no need to actually get out and slam the doors before it would reboot – like the old joke that used to circulate by email) and see if that fixed the problem. Coming down the hill, I indicated, pulled into the quiet side street,...
Yes, shameless promotion I know, but I recently purchased a 3 year old Astra so my beloved Escort is up for grabs. It’s in good working order and has only 73k miles on the clock (fuck all for a 1996 car). I think £595 is a very good price for this motor.
Feel free to make any enquiries through this blog or give me a call (numbers on the LoadzaCars......
It’s really bad when it’s so cold outside that you need to scrape the inside of your windscreen because it has iced up ... hence the white dandruff scattered across the dashboard. A good thick coating ... after five minutes the car’s air blower hadn’t made much of a dent in it. After last week’s fogginess that badly affected flights in and out of Belfast City Airport, I asked the airport if they’d any plans for CAT III instrument landing facilities ... no reply yet.But this morning, the heavy fog over Belfast has once again caused major disruption over at St Georges. The early morning arrival from Heathrow diverted to Belfast International (Aldergrove). Ryanair’s flight from East Midlands diverted to their base in City of Derry ... quite a bus journey if you want to get...
I'd like to be able to tell you all about the launch of David Park's new novel The Truth Commissioner at Belfast's Linen Hall Library tonight. But I can't.Despite taking off on time this morning, bmi's flights in and out of Belfast have been badly affected by the pea-souper that settled over Belfast as most of you had your breakfast. (And it wasn't confined to bmi - other carriers were troubled too, as well as flights in and out of other northern-UK airports.)Some flights during the day were cancelled, and others coming in from Heathrow diverted to Aldergrove Belfast International as Belfast City Airport has neither a long enough runway nor the required Cat III instrument landing system to get down in very poor visibility.So tonight, the expected touchdown of BD90 at 19:00 (which would...
It should have been straightforward. Nip down to the Mercedes showroom (which doubles up as Smart) on the Boucher Road, give them my car key and the vehicle code, drink a cup of their finest tea, and be handed back two keys.The original owner of my car had handed it back with only one key – not terribly useful for everyday use or emergencies. But Agnews had ordered in a spare key, and just needed to programme it.So this morning after being sent from desk to desk, I settled down at a glass table in the waiting area to boot my laptop, enjoy a cup of their finest tea and type up some notes while I waited ... and waited ... as if they were programming the key with a chisel!By the magic of technology it takes a mere 35 minutes to generate the code for a new key. I imagine the long time is...
Apart from the sickening spectacle of USPCA officers finding 70 animals dead in a car in Coleraine having suffered from heat exhaustion and dehydration, what the hell was the driver of the vehicle doing with 477 birds, hamsters, gerbils, rabbits and rats in their car in the first place?!The law is far too lenient on those who abuse animals- the effects of leaving our furred and feathered friends couped up in cars on warm days is well-documented, yet there are those who continue to do it. Are these people brain-dead?Perhaps we should trap them in a car on a scorching day and see how they like it- either that, or give them the prison sentences they deserve....