Driving in my Car

I think that I’ve mentioned before that I like cars but I know virtually nothing about them. Driving is still fun although I don’t go out driving for driving’s sake like I used to in the months after I passed my driving test. In those days a friend introduced me to a game where we would pick a colour and follow the next car of that colour for nine minutes, wherever it went. These days this would be considered stalking and even then it was frowned upon, particularly when I followed one such target into his own driveway.

These days driving a car is all about taking me from A to B as quickly as possible. I watch Top Gear on the TV but this really tells me nothing about cars. Yes, I can marvel at a Bugatti Veyron and wish that I owned one but in the real world it would be like me trying to open a can of baked beans with a pneumatic drill, it’s the wrong tool for the job. 

What would be more frustrating than sat in a Veyron, knowing that with a slight tap of the accelerator I could be launched on to the moon, when in fact I’m most likely going to be sat behind a tractor crawling along the A15 at 20mph? Despite the Veyron’s top speed of 253mph I won’t even be able to overtake as there’ll be too much traffic skulking behind another tractor coming in the opposite direction.

Did you know that tractors don’t have to have any road tax because they’re primarily off–road vehicles? I often ponder that peculiarity of the law when I’m slowly trundling along in a queue of traffic behind Farmer Barley Mow on his way home, and note that he could be making use of the empty fields either side of the road rather than holding up a mile of traffic. This is a pet hate of mine so don’t get me started.

I am left therefore with the choice of a normal run-of-the mill road car that’s efficient but has a little bit of poke to alarm the present Mrs Hayward with on the motorway, but not enough to have me pursued down the A1(M) by screaming squad cars. 

I do like an unusual looking car though. I put this down to the fact that the earliest car I remember my parents having was a Morris Traveller. Whoever thought of adding a large proportion of wood to the outer shell of the car was a genius and a madman in equal parts. It looked less like a car and more like a sideboard but as a small child I was fascinated with it. 

I convinced myself that when I was old enough to drive I too would have a funny looking car. As it was the first car I drove after passing my test was a beige Austin Maestro that you could only crank into fifth gear when the moon was in alignment with Neptune. It wasn’t funny looking, it just wasn’t very good but it got me about.

Now I drive a Vauxhall Astra. Not the most exciting or attractive car in the world but not the worst looking either. Most road cars blend into one amorphous mechanical blob to me but the Astra has that nice silver band across its rear that I quite like for some reason. Don’t get me wrong, I covet the Honda Civic, the new one with an interior like a spaceship, and in comparison the Astra is a cheap boiled sweet, charming but boring, whereas the Civic is the Malteser sweet out of a tin of Celebrations, all shiny and exciting and full of chocolately naughtiness.

I don’t know what it is about discussing cars that forces an individual into spouting clichés like they’ve been possessed by the agitated spirit of Jeremy Clarkson but I note that it’s happened to me here and I shall ride that wave until I crash face first on the jagged rock of unoriginality.

In the end it doesn’t matter. I’ll probably go and choose another Vauxhall next time because the people at the service centre are quite nice. Not that I intend to be visiting them that often but if something goes wrong I have no idea what to do. What goes on under the bonnet is a mystery to me. I’ve heard of the carburettor and the head gasket but I don’t really know what they are. I’m not bothered by this. People ride horses but I suspect that very few know how its respiratory system works. They just like riding them.

So that’s really where I came in. I have explained in a convoluted way that I like cars but I don’t understand them, and that I don’t like tractors. 

Mind you, give me a tractor and I’ll show you how it should be driven, at speed and in a field with ‘go faster’ stripes down the side. Tractor Drag Racing anyone?

No Heavy Petting

I’ve just had to look up the word ‘petting’. This is mostly because I entered into a discussion with some work colleagues today about what my understanding of ‘heavy petting’ was.  I’d assumed that it was snogging as there used to be a sign in the local swimming pool when I was about seven which declared that there should be ‘No Heavy Petting’ and this was illustrated with the crudely drawn picture of two swimmers puckering up with a little ‘x’ kiss sign above them. 

However the online Oxford Dictionary describes petting as to “engage in sexually stimulating caressing and touching” which has surprised me somewhat and puts an entirely different slant on a ‘petting zoo’. 

The reason that petting (heavy or otherwise) became of interest is that only the day before, whilst in a pool, I’d commented to the present Mrs Hayward that there was no such restriction. I read the signs, ‘No Jumping’, ‘No Running’, etc., all of which were being steadfastly ignored by the kids using the pool, but petting was in no way prohibited. 

That’s not to say there was any petting going on in the pool, that would just be wrong, and probably unhygienic given my new understanding of the words, but I guess it’s just become an unwritten rule. After all, if you had to have signs for everything you shouldn’t do in a pool then it would be a very long list indeed. 

‘No usage of Mobile Phones in the pool, ‘No Washing of Swine in the Pool’, ‘No Riding of Mopeds off the High Diving Board’, ‘No Re-enactment of Historical Naval Battles’, the list could go on and on. 

I suppose the point is that I have never encountered the phrase ‘No Heavy Petting’ anywhere else but in a swimming pool. Maybe that’s what put me off swimming pools during my formative years, it wasn’t the deep water and fear of drowning, it was the lack of opportunities for petting with girls.

Ah yes, the swimming. Unlike my new found running abilities the swimming has gone backwards a little since the lessons stopped. I’ve lost the confidence to actually put a few strokes together to swim. However this weekend, whilst we were staying in a Marriott Hotel (tres posh - it had an ironing board and a trouser press in the room so it gets the Terry Hayward seal of approval), was the first time in a while where I was happy to float in the pool without staying within grabbing distance of the edge. 

As I’ve mentioned before, the swimming instructors taught me the basics of how to swim assuming the confidence just  comes with this new found knowledge. Perhaps it does for normal folk but if you have a phobia of deep water then it takes a little more time. So, once I’ve found a quiet pool locally, I’ll go back and re-gain my confidence. At least I can say I have swam this year, and I am more confident now than I was six months ago, so I’ve achieved something, even if I’m not challenging for a place in the GB Olympic swimming team. 

So, it’s a phobia I am conquering slowly. Perhaps next year I’ll try to conquer my fear of spiders. Who knows, I could try to tackle both the same time and swim in a pool full of spiders.

Summertime Blues

Thank heavens for Friday. I have been rushed off my feet this week. There’s been no gentle easing back into work after our holiday, it’s been chaos from start to finish. 

Someone asked me why I was looking so wistful, and occasionally pained, on Monday. I replied that I was thinking and I hadn’t had to do much of that during the previous week. When I was laid on a sunbed in a charming resort in Majorca the only things I needed to really consider was whether I was going to go for a dip in the pool or have another drink. That kind of decision doesn’t take much in the way of serious thinking.

Consequently my brain has been slopping about my head this week like a congealed rice pudding. Staring blankly into space has become the norm and rudimentary thought processes have required me to self-flagellate my skull with a ball point pen to spark the old grey matter into life. 

It’s now the end of my first week back at work and already that sun lounger is becoming a distant memory. The heat of the Majorcan sun is fading (even if the present Mrs Hayward’s tan isn’t) and the taste of freshly cooked Tapas has been replaced by the taste of vending machine cardboard-flavoured tea.

My melancholy has come about because we had a really nice holiday. We’ve never been on holiday with friends before but it was a very nice experience. We laughed, we drank, we swam, we drank, we ate, we drank, we ran (you what?), we drank, you know how it is, all good fun. 

Well maybe apart from the running bit. That hurt. My lungs were at risk of exploding thanks to the humidity so I only did it the once, I was on holiday after all. Oh and my liver? Well, as we all know, it is evil and it must be punished.

So here’s to holidays and sunshine and fizzy Spanish beer. Oh, and cats. Many cats, although their presence hasn’t softened Mrs Hayward’s attitude to them, despite getting the chance to name one. She called it ‘Dog’. 

I will most likely regale more tales from the Balearics in the coming days and weeks, for a start I need to get your opinions on the unwritten rules of ‘I Spy’, but for now I shall turn my brain off until Monday morning.

Adios!

Running Out of Steam

It’s only 41 short days now until I get to show off my lack of physical prowess to the good people of Peterborough when I take to the streets for the Great Eastern (Fun) Run. I’ve added the hyperlink so that you can look at the website should you choose and to see the alarming countdown timer.

OK, so it’s all fine, but I have my concerns. I am only traversing a short distance, especially given that the full run is 13.1 miles. I am only doing about 2.5. What surprises me is that, whilst 2.5 miles is much better than the 20 metres I could only manage back in February before running out of steam, I still feel that I should be able to do more. 

A colleague of mine is doing a half marathon next month and has only recently started training, however she casually remarks how she went out for a run for an hour. An hour? I can do 35 minutes, but not easily. I have a remarkable ability to make running 2.5 miles look incredibly difficult. I certainly couldn’t get to the end of my run and think to myself, you know what, I think I’ll just keep going for another 30 minutes, maybe even an hour. By the time I’m finished all the moisture in my body has been sweated out and my heart is beating out a salsa rhythm.

Tomorrow we go on holiday, to sunny Majorca, with some friends. I have good intentions to keep up my running but given that the temperature over there is reaching highs of 35 degrees Celsius I’m more likely to be hidden from the burning sun under a beach umbrella and ploughing my way through the turgid bore-a-thon that is ‘Atonement’. Seriously, does anything actually happen in that book? Does there need to be so much tedious descriptions of all the minutiae? Thomas Hardy was bad for that but at least he stuck in a few more twists and turns along the way in between describing the rolling Wessex countryside.

My other issue is more delicate and personal, but one that came close to thwarting my new found running activities. 

I took a trip to a sports shop on Sunday afternoon. It’s not my natural habitat I grant you, as I fall into neither category of an incredibly fit person who is looking for clothes in x-small, and neither do I fall in to the category of a dangerously overweight individual who wears cheap sportswear because they can’t squeeze their corpulent body into normal clothes, however without my recent bursts of exercise I was fast heading in that direction. I think the turning point was when I found myself idly browsing the Jacamo website and suddenly realising that I really had to change my ways.

So I’d gone searching for a new pair of running shorts and settled on a particularly comfy pair that were a little shorter in the leg than the ones I have at the moment. 

Just before you ask they were not lycra shorts. No-one needs to see that. 

Their shortness in the leg seemed to surprise and startle the present Mrs Hayward when she saw me modelling them. She explained that it looked like I was going out running in a pair of boxer shorts. Frankly I’ve seen far more bizarre sights on the streets of Bourne so this did not concern me overly.

I should have listened to her though as my problem did, in the end, come from the shortness of said shorts as the first time I wore them I encountered some unfortunate chafing. 

So there I was on Monday evening looking up ‘chafing thighs’ on Google which feels somehow dirty and wrong but I was heartened to find that this was not an uncommon problem amongst us athletes and various solutions were offered on the Runners World forum, including the liberal application of Vaseline. 

My solution to this burning issue for now is to go back to my original longer shorts and wait until my thighs become less flabby. That seems sensible in the circumstances. Greasing myself up before a run is just not an option, especially as I’m concerned as to what happens to the Vaseline once I start sweating. 

The good people of Bourne, whilst used to unusual sights, might still be quite alarmed to see me panting my way down the road whilst white slime trickles down my inner thighs. The slimy leg guy is a moniker that I really don’t want to get in a small town.

Despite these issues I shall persevere. As the present Mrs Hayward wisely said to me, “If it was easy everyone would be doing it”. This is true, but I just wish the others that are doing it could make it look a little harder.

Under Pressure

I saw on the news yesterday morning that the NHS are changing the way they test for blood pressure. Those suspected of having it will be attached to a rather bulky looking machine for 24 hours so that it tests their blood pressure as they go about their normal activities during the day. Apparently this is to reduce the cases of people just having temporary high blood pressure due to being anxious during the test. I can sympathise with this.

About 10 years ago I went to the Doctor’s to have my ears syringed by a rather surly looking nurse. It was a hot day and I’d come straight from work. After she had removed the grim contents of my aural passages she decided, apropos of nothing, that it would be a marvellous idea to test my blood pressure. At the time I’d never had this done before in my life so I was a little surprised and perturbed by this sudden turn of events.

She wheeled out the archaic looking blood pressure meter (called a Sphygmomanometer if you’re interested), attached the thick black strap to my arm and started pumping away. As it tightened on my arm I felt myself become a little nervous and my heartbeat quite naturally increased. She looked at the results and concluded that my blood pressure was ever-so-slightly higher than it should have been and she requested that I return the following week for a further test.

So a week later, on an even hotter day, I went back to the surgery. It was a Friday afternoon and again I’d come straight from work, dashed on to a bus, sat downstairs on an old double decker where the only available seats were at the back seemingly on top of the engine. Worse still the bus got caught in traffic so no cool air was coming in and I was melting considerably. This of course had the knock on effect of making me slightly late to my appointment and I burst into the surgery in a sweaty mess.

The nurse strapped me up again, started pumping, and concluded that I definitely had high blood pressure. She told me that I would have to see a Doctor as things were not looking good. She handed me a leaflet about how I needed to change my shameful and decadent lifestyle. 

As I was leaving she gave me some cheery words of medical wisdom, “Blood pressure is a silent killer”. I looked at her, horrified. She responded by cracking a thin smile and saying “Have a good weekend”.

Mortified, I left the surgery and drifted along the pavement whilst scanning the leaflet she had given me. It basically told me that I would have to change my ways or else I’d be brown bread.

I was bereft. My life was over. So I did what any other man would do when faced with the prospect of the Grim Reaper and I went to the pub.

The following week I visited the GP but this time I booked an appointment for first thing on a Monday morning. I wasn’t hot and sweaty this time as I hadn’t rushed straight from work and, as expected, my blood pressure was normal. The GP speculated that it was only high because of the external factors I’ve mentioned.

He sent me away with the reassurance that he didn’t expect me to drop down dead from a heart attack at any given moment. I was relieved but also annoyed that the nurse had dragged me back a couple of times and predicted my premature demise with such relish. 

So the moral of this tale is that if you’re told you have high blood pressure by a belligerent nurse then, until it’s properly checked out, take it with a pinch of salt. Well, not literally. That won’t help at all.

Shopping in the Past

Whilst mooching within the vicinity of the TV the other morning my attention was grabbed when the reporter mentioned that he was in a shopping centre in Southampton. Sure enough, there he was, stood in the deserted belly of West Quay, the sprawling retail behemoth that sits right in the heart of Southampton City Centre. 

The reporter linked into a piece about how John Lewis in Southampton was re-organising its layout so that shoppers could roam with ease throughout the store without feeling they are crossing main thoroughfares. It sounds like they’ve created a maze of expensive crockery and ladies underwear but I can sort of understand the logic. 

For example, if I were in the Millinery Department and I spot a jaunty hat I like I could excitedly cross the aisle to reach it but, horror of horrors, I risk being mown down by a Hell’s Grandma speeding along in her souped-up mobility chariot. Thanks to John Lewis in Southampton I can now fulfil my desire for jaunty hat-based retail opportunities without the fear of shopmobility rage, or something like that.

When the report finished and they threw back to the lonely reporter, still standing in an empty shopping centre like the last survivor of a deadly plague that has wiped out humanity, he made the passing comment about how supermarkets put fresh fruit and veg at the front of the stores so as to give a good impression of the delights contained within.

It’s true of course, at least in most cases. The exception to the rule is Asda in Totton, just six miles away from the last man on Earth, and most likely the place where the plague started its deadly journey.

I know this supermarket well, my mum used to work there back in the 1980s and 1990s and even I had a brief spell there replenishing the booze aisles during the summer holidays in 1997. It was just the place you ended up going for, well, everything that you couldn’t get in Woolworths or couldn’t be bothered trekking up to Kwik Save for.

OK, so the fresh fruit and veg in Asda Totton is somewhere near the front of the store, I accept that, but the over-riding thing you see when you venture in is clothes. Rail upon rail of cheap, sorry affordable, clothing. I’m not dissing the clothing, I have many articles courtesy of George at Asda including a nice blue shirt that gets frequent wear.

It made me reflect on how bizarre the Asda of the 1980s would seem to a shopper these days. 

Firstly, like all supermarkets back in the day, you couldn’t just amble in. You would have to venture through a turnstile system and push your trolley underneath some orange flaps whilst a smartly dressed security guard in a cap would eye you up and down with some considerable suspicion. If you were under 16, or looked it, then you had absolutely no chance of gaining entry without being accompanied by a responsible adult. There are some prisons these days with far less security.

Right at the front of the store were records and tapes. I used to spend a great deal of time here perusing the chart hits of the day before settling on something I would later regret purchasing. ‘Spies Like Us’ by Paul McCartney, ‘The Only Way is Up’ by Yazz and the Plastic Population, and ‘John Kettley (is a Weatherman)’ by A Tribe of Toffs, were all bought from here. 

Fresh fruit and veg was further towards the back of the store, roughly in the middle. In those days you couldn’t just sling a few carrots in a bag and head to the till as first you had to get them weighed and stickered by your friendly greengrocer who had a little counter of his own. 

If you wanted a newspaper or a book then you had to wait until you finished your shopping and then head to the ‘Browser Bar’ where a lady called Beryl would sell you The Sun or the Daily Mirror, or even Today, that long forgotten newspaper (in colour). I used to spend much time here whilst my parents were trawling around the aisles, perusing the selection of ‘Fighting Fantasy’ and ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books on offer.

If you were a smoker or had a sweet tooth then you needed to go to yet another counter. This is where the pick and mix lived. Not pick and mix as you know it now; there were no Fizzy Cola Bottles or Fried Eggs recently mauled over by sticky fingered toddlers. There was however Peanut Cracknel, Pina Colada (they were blue and pineapply), Sherbet Lemons and Chocolate Limes, displayed on adult-height shelves illuminated by bright lights, as if they were glittering jewels rather than cheap boiled sweets.

Nowadays we just sling everything in a trolley and if we have to queue more than once we consider it to be an inconvenience. In fact if we have to speak to another human it’s a bit of a pill. Mind you, even I don’t fully understand why I willingly choose to be bellowed at by a malfunctioning self-service till. 

“PLEASE PUT THE ITEM IN THE BAGGING AREA” 

“I’m doing it, for the love of God stop shouting at me, everyone’s looking!!!”

Like most things I write here, I don’t have any life changing point to make other than to reflect on how times change and not always for the better. I suppose what I’m saying here is, I miss not being able to buy ZX Spectrum games, I miss the strong tea served in the smoky café, and I miss having my bags of fruit having a little sticky label telling me what I’ve bought. 

Hell, I just miss the Browser Bar.