Suzuki MC

Forthcoming, and nobody does it better, Suzuki's 4-wheel drive mini-camper. I'd like to sell up, bid the UK farewell and drive off into the sunset. Except it'll never happen, the sun setting in the West and beyond us only sea.

David Hockney Post, Mortem.

Died recently and what I found most inspiring the fact he'd just two people attend his funeral ~ partner and nephew in his case ~ which I like the idea of for my own.

My favourite tale concerning was the time Billy Connolly and mother, born and bred in Glasgow, visited him and from the patio admired a San Fernando valley sprawled out below under the sort of sky that appeared in his paintings.

Mother's only observation: 'A drying day like this and not a washing-line in sight?'

Faulty Towers (Ref #13374406) Update

Did in fact get back to me a fortnight ago with promise of a refund (thanks Gemma) and free tickets (thanks Stevie), and whilst these are as yet unforthcoming we live in hope... and have promised a blog post with a positive spin greater than Nemesis.

Happy days tho' because chancellor Rachel Reeves has taken time out from kissing prospective PM Andy Burnham's ass to scrap sales tax on kids' meals and theme parks in summer.

It'll benefit VCs in the US bankrolling the rollers more than it may our dear children, but does divert us from the daily shit-show of politics in the UK.

And of course we're still enjoying the ride here on Britain's Best-Loved Blog*.

* Unsuitable for those under four feet in height except Nicola Sturgeon.

AC DC Bus

We wish the Swindon and Cricklade Railway well in their five-year restoration of the AC railcar pictured here.

You likely know little or nothing about railcars, but in the 1950s or 1960s it became clear that railways were being abandoned for roads and reducing cost on the former meant replacing locos and carriages with such as this: a coach that did rails as well as roads.

Some were literally adapted from an original chassis, like that Leyland introduced in the mid-1980s, which were replaced hereabouts just forty years later as part of the UK's effort to build Europe's worst rail service.

Readers in the US will be surprised, as I was, that the example being restored was originally built by AC of Cobra fame. Even more surprising, and this the joy of the internet, learning that AC was best-known until late for the 'Invacars' provided free by the government to those known as invalids until relatively recently.

The people driving them were truly invalided as you'd have no reason for driving it otherwise... though the head-boy had a Messerschmidt scooter that we'd fly around Ormskirk at an altitude of two feet on occasion.

As a part of successive governments efforts to expand the welfare state, people at a rate of a thousand a week are applying for disability benefits that as often as not include a regular car, ex-showroom, on a three-year recurring basis.

Nice work if you can't get it?

I accompanied our good friend Karl, at death's door during Covid, to apply for such a concession viz. PIP or Personal Independence Payments. Most passing through the waiting room appeared compos mentis, although our good friend was refused... and dead inside six months. I'd take him again to see if he qualifies now, but doubt his family would approve.

Carroll Shelby's Invacar led the pack at Le Mans in 1964 and 1965

On the Contrary

An example of how computing is revolutionising flight, here are single-bladed props running in opposite directions that can steer the drone in any direction by the motor being speeded up during one half of each revolution, and slowed in the other half.

Huge amount of sensing, intelligence and signalling to perform; bit then it's where all else is headed these days.

The only downside with single-bladed propellers ~ as nature found with sycamore seeds ~ is they require a counterweight and as any cyclist knows, wherever weight is being spun there's a loss of efficiency.

Ed. the sycamore's counterweight is the seed, Nature as ever providing the answer.

Axe to Grind

A British success story in the making, and unusual in so far as failure-redundancy drifts from the norm in not simply having fitted eight contra-rotating motors and propellers. It does have eight motors, though how they drive the propellers is not revealed... the website as so often with eVTOLs being light on technical details.

Nonetheless it is standard practise with helicopters to drive a single rotor from a gearbox connecting to turbine engines: where as here the blades themselves are viewed as the least-likely point of failure. As a pilot and world-renowned influencer I am comfortable with that, not least because this can be glided to a safe landing in extremis.

I'm less comfortable with the £150,000 price tag, although that's wholly reasonable in view of the price inflation affecting general aviation these days.

It does beg the question of how the founder progressed the project under Starmer's regime ~ where you're more likely to get a grant as a collective staging happenings that explore the meaning of gender, and which toilet we should use ~ whose answer is the fact that a pair of angel investors stumped up the required (and substantial) cash. I recall ~ and it won't surprise anyone ~ that they are both based in the US.

Am almost tempted to do a Joe Rogan on their founder, but can't be bothered.

Give a LIDL respect, toooo-oo-oo me...

Been giving the 'blog a lot of thought, and what it is you I might want from it and on reflection aside from boat-building it has to be making fun of the unfortunate, loathing humankind in general and above all, entertaining us (me mostly) over our morning coffee.

So we're going to touch on our lives as the living dead truckers, as we do that from time to time to pay the bills, don't we?

I once took an Indian flight-crew after training them in the simulator for a curry and a beer nearby Gatwick, and suggested to the lady captain it was perhaps not done to snap her fingers whenever she required the waiter's attention. It was however a simple reflection of the caste system, I guessed, in which everyone has their place.

It's as true in every society, not least here in Britain where truckers (a) keep your every need supplied and (b) are rightly viewed as the 'untouchable' caste, not least among the warehouse operatives who ~ being just one rung above ~ will often be determined to make the most of it and especially so at 01:34, as when I arrived in the early hours of the morning of 24th June:

Stark contrast to a pleasant late-evening traverse of the Woodhead Pass, as visits to LIDL's distribution centre rank among least favourite, principally because they expect you to do much of the unloading and rearranging of goods that used ~ and still so often is ~ by warehouses themselves. It's why German supermarkets are able to undercut British... by exploiting suppliers in much the same way.

Thus it is that before going anywhere I'd to scan two dozen pages of invoices from suppliers, so that LIDL didn't need to, before being provided with 'training' on an electric pallet-truck that consisted of a tick-box hand-out that no, I couldn't retain for the purposes of reference because it had to be filed away. I was told through that I would be met at the door of Bay 90 (circled) for training on opening the door and lowering the ramp.

Except they don't let you in. The door marked GOODS INWARD DRIVERS DOOR is no longer in use except for egress, but they don't tell you that, and nor do any of the pushbuttons connect except to an engaged tone. You are expected to use the unmarked door farther along instead, where the pushbuttons are equally ineffective and drivers kick the door hard enough to hope one of their number will let them in.

In view of this: no lady to meet at Bay 90 where, it not being rocket-science, I raise the door and drop the ramp myself. So, health and safety, LIDL O and Colin 1.

I had though been given a driving lesson with the electrified pallet-truck, which are quite entertaining to use except that here in Runcorn (unlike Lutterworth) they're old and rusty, and work only intermittently or left uncharged ~ your problem at 02:00 a.m. and not LIDL's... so shut the fuck up and remember who you are.

Nice ginger-haired lady I do look for, who advises me to leave the (two) pallets of frozen food nearest the bay door. Remember this for later.

I then proceed eventually to unload two-dozen chilled pallets of food from a variety of suppliers who've done their best, although prior the final frozen pallet the pallet-truck that has been sub'd repeatedly dies a death. I'd gone to get gloves meantime to handle goods kept at -22C, but this being LIDL couldn't get back in for a further fifteen minutes. But hey, it's only my time isn't it?

I therefore approach the guy with piercings everywhere ~ nose, ears, tongue and brain ~ and say I'd like to speak to a manager. He wheels out the modern litany of workplace responses, 'I thimply find your attitude not overly helpful, and thlightly confrontational...' before dropping the Newspeak and telling me to fuck off, when I know I'm making progress.

His manager, driving a long-fork truck deigns to step down from his or her mount, as 'they' look like an effeminate Andy Burnham and I wonder what the biological sex might be. Tourette's Colin is asking, 'You a girly bloke, or a fucking ugly girl?' and being ugly myself, I forgive him it.

I invite him/her/they to take a look at both pallet-trucks and warehouse means of ingress, but she refuses. I mean, who takes time out to respond to complaints from a greasy trucker?

Meantimes piercings-man ~ definitely a man ~ interrupts looking at his phone from time to time with telling people what to do and directs me to move the frozen pallet to the far end of the line, whereupon I let him know at a distance of twenty metres that that is not what LIDL previously requested.

Previously he'd relished the oppo to tell me too ~ seeing I'd nothing better to do ~ to split some of the pallets of food by supplier onto separate pallets, and here's me wondering why it wouldn't be simpler just to take a warehouse job instead?

It's why the bulk of warehouse operatives and drivers are East European, because capital (or should I say Das Capital?) knows they're wholly expendable. Well they're drifting back to the places set to overtake the UK in terms of per capita wealth, so what will LIDL customers do when ageing British drivers (average fifty-five) figure out it'd be easier to join everyone else on benefits instead?

Things getting a little heated now at the refrigerated warehouse, so I suggest 'they' give me the keys as it's GAME OVER. Am told this is not possible without me placing a 999 call to say I'm being detained against my will here at Cold-itz... and you see the thought flicker momentarily across the face. So instead I'm told that I can go, and that they'll instead trash all twenty-five remaining pallets of food.

So, Ryan McDonnell, CEO of LIDL's GB operation, we'd all like to know whether you or your staff really are bloody-minded enough to have ditched thousands of pounds worth of food instead of splitting a few pallets on a night-shift (when to be fair you could be watching YouTube instead)?

The pic's of Ryan taking tea on the terrace at Westminster, as per his LinkedIn blog. 

No cream teas for us, eh Ryan?

Ed. The URL has been provided Ryan, whose response to contact ref #134554601 is to appear here. To androgynous or pierced warehouse operatives everywhere, we salute you getting out of bed to pursue what's a fairly shit job. And for reasons of transparency, Colin does enjoy a cream tea.