Guitars and Life

In the middle of all the moaning about the weather and the taxman etc. I have omitted to tell you about a fantastic Saturday afternoon. Back last Christmas Mrs F and I were a little stuck with ideas of a gift for Daughter-of-Furtheron, having only turned 16 a month before the Yuletide festivities she had had a new super doper camera from us and other things.   Anyway I stumbled on a great idea - Young Driver at Brands Hatch - any kid over 11 who is tall enough (D-o-F does just qualify on that poor thing) can have a go at driving a car with an instructor through a course.  Now this is about teaching them to drive a car not racing the thing although they do all the driving on the Grand Prix loop of the famous circuit!   Anyway I bought the voucher thing but we've been waiting for the good weather before doing it!  Luckily despite the regular downpours across the country in the last few days we actually did get a nice dry and reasonably sunny afternoon on Sa...

This will no doubt rate as another stunningly boring post in the history of this blog but what the heck... So the fuel crisis - unbelievable, I won't go into discussing the possibility that this is the most inept government I've ever seen in my life (and I do include the disastrous Jim Callaghan administration of the 70s in that) but you have to say the British public (encouraged by senior politicians) managed to create chaos out of nothing.  So there is no strike planned and if so there is 7 days notice but Dave Cameron says "Fill your car up to be safe" and suddenly there is a 800% increase in fuel sales and all the garages around our area are shut!  Brilliant! Anyway I had to go to Wales to retrieve Son-of-Furtheron for the Easter break.  I did manage to find one service station with diesel before I left on Saturday morning.  I decided given I didn't know if I could fill up anywhere that I'd drive a little more conservatively.  I set a cruise at 68mph o...

On the drive back from Wales yesterday a couple of things struck me... again whilst I was cruising along the M40 at 70mph a Prius with a bike rack on it came thundering past me.  I'm lost if you buy a Prius aren't you saying "I care about the planet"... but then you flog a 1.4l engine to death over 80mph and even better stick your I'm-so-green mountain bike on the back to act like the air brake on an old Russian freighter!  Bonkers. My new car - is a lot like the old one... I like the Peugeot 407 SW we'd had for 4 years that when I saw a "brand new" one for sale as a 2nd hand one at a knock down price I snapped it up.  Now previously the 50mpg performance of the old one had impressed me, it is a large estate car after all.  Well don't know what they have done in the intervening 4 years but the new one manages as near as damn it 60mpg!  In fact the bit between Newtown to Shrewsbury which is all twisty A roads I managed to get 75mpg - why'd y...

I dropped Son-of-Furtheron back at university this weekend. So with Mrs F back at work as of last Wed and Daughter-of-Furtheron back at school as of last Tuesday we are pretty much back to normal now... well as normal as we ever get around here! Although D-o-F will be out of school for a week soon as she has "work experience" week. Never seems right when that came for my son I thought "he is too young for this" but she is 15 now - where have the years gone? We timed the run to deepest, darkest Mordor (Ceredigion in other words ;-)) brilliantly. We'd thought of going on Friday but the weather didn't look great so delayed a day. Great planning it turned out, as we had a really good run - my sons flat mate had a terrible journey on the Friday as the weather caused some accident on the A44 which is the main route into Aberystwyth and that meant detours through some tricky roads. If you know West Wales at all you'll know that there aren't many roads...

As regular readers will know Son-of-Furtheron is residing at Aberystwyth uni these days. So we needed to get him back home for Christmas but with the weather... I originally planned to go Saturday but weather in Wales on Friday and at our place on Saturday made that a non-starter. I thought I'd wait until Monday. But Sunday morning I watched the weather and thought "I better go today I think". So 2 hours to dig out our drive, car and road - we'd had about 4 inches I suppose. I left about 11:30 and got through the slush to the motorway. All went well until I got to the M1 - first crash. Wasn't too long there. Then into the roadworks and frankly aweful road conditions near Newport Pagnell there was just packed ice that wasn't shifting. Two lanes only as the contraflow was shut and then a break down. Through that and carry on. My biggest problem was the washers gave up working about Shrewsbury. So I had to stop and clean the screen from time to time. I...

I now know what that means when referring to a road over a hill in Wales!!! In the end after aborting getting my son back to Aberystwyth at the weekend we heard that friends of his were making it back ok so we set off Monday morning. We had a really good run, M25 quieter than you'd expect on a Monday, the Dartford Crossing queue free for example. We thumped up the M1, M6 and onto the M6 Toll where we stopped for the usual exorbitant snack lunch. Push on along the M54 and A5... everywhere blanketed in snow with Kent where we live and the M6 Toll looking the biggest snow falls. Into Wales through Welshpool and the amount of snow on the ground increased esp. through Newtown. Then the climb up over the mountains. Stunning! The most wonderful sight! It was clear and sunny and white peak after white peak in front of us and walls of snow and ice on either side. I remarked I was hugely impressed that the council had got and kept the road so clear esp given our local council has struggled t...